Memoirs of the countess Louise Charlotte of Schwerin

The memoirs of the countess Luise Charlotte of Schwerin (16831732) provide highly valuabe insights into female agency and networks in contemporary court society in the early 18th century. For the Imperial court in Vienna and the Habsburg monarchy, no other comparable autobiographies (or diaries) by women have survived from this time. The countess first came to Vienna as a Prussian envoys wife in 1716; in 1719 she converted from calvinism to catholicism. She failed in her plan to buy an estate in Silesia, which might have facilitated a possible change into the emperors service for her husband. she was Expelled from Prussia because of her conversion, she spent the rest of her life in Cologne, Silesia, and Vienna and wrote her memoirs in the 1720s. The text has survived in two copies in French. In the course of the research project, a modern digital edition will be created that will make the text accecible online and provide background information, digital analytic tools, and a German translation. The research project will be focused on investigating the countesss social network and womens scope of action at the Imperial court and the partly protestant circles the countess frequented in Vienna. In doing so, one of the aspects that will be considered are contemporary ideas about publicity and privacy (or, secrecy), which differed largely from modern ones in all aspects of life-from gender roles to kinship, or the relations between religion and politics, to the intended audiences of texts like the countesss memoirs.