AGATE

Printed funeral sermons of the two centuries between 1550 and 1750 have gained decisive importance for research into the early modern period beyond their original function as funeral sermons of the Protestant upper and middle classes. The aim of the project is to catalogue the funeral sermon collections of the early modern period and to evaluate them as a source for cultural and social history, especially of the 16th - 18th century. The main focus is the cataloguing of materials from Hesse, Saxony and Silesia. About 250,000 sermons have been handed down in the German-speaking world, which are being researched by the research centre in Marburg and processed with the help of electronic data processing. On the basis of the funeral sermons, hypotheses of literary and educational history as well as historical family research within the early modern period, where relatively few source material is known, can be qualitatively and quantitatively tested. The database also provides a valuable basis for further research in a wide range of disciplines.