Rhenish Seers and Prophets: A Contribution to Cultural History

Bahlmann, Paul, 1857-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
87K words
Chapters
9

Tags

Foreign Language Books History and CultureReligion Historical AnecdotesLegendary LivesProphet FigureAestheticismRegional CultureGerman SettingCultural ChangeFolk Customs

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Rheinische Seher und Propheten: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte by Paul BahlmannAuthor: Bahlmann, Paul, 1857-1937,Language: German, Class: BF: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Psychology, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Release Date: May 31, 2017

Editor's review

This is a work of cultural history that takes the tradition of folk seers and prophets in the Rhineland as its point of entry. Paul Bahlmann, the author, long concerned himself with local religion and folklore; this book is no mere collection of curiosities but an examination of the phenomenon of "prophecy" within the contexts of regional society, religious life, and historical memory, combining source-based scholarship with the critical concerns of cultural-history writing. For Chinese readers its value lies in offering a concrete, finely grained case for observation: how folk prophecy is generated, transmitted, and accepted by communities, and how it interacts with religious authority and the changes of the age. The original is in German and is not long, making it suitable as a crossover text for German reading practice and as an introduction to cultural history. There is no need to rush through it; readers may combine the notes and background materials to understand individual cases within the local context of nineteenth-century Germany.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the introduction or table of contents to clarify the author's central questions before turning to specific cases.
  2. Keep paper and pen at hand to note names, places, and sectarian terms, building a background index as you read.
  3. Read alongside a German dictionary and local-history materials to lower the threshold of comprehension.
  4. After finishing, summarize on a single page the author's core interpretive framework for the phenomenon of prophecy.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a novel or an academic work? It is a work of cultural history in the field of religion and folklore studies, not fiction. Taking the tradition of seers and prophets in the Rhineland as its subject, the author organizes and interprets historical sources in a scholarly style that requires some patience with background material.
Can I read it if my German is not good? The original is in German and shows the syntactic features of nineteenth-century academic writing, which is difficult for beginners. If your German is limited, it is advisable to read paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary, or first consult Chinese scholarship on related topics for reference; it is not suitable as light reading.
What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition? This is a public-domain e-book, set mainly in plain text, so notes and page numbers may be less clear than in a printed copy. It is advisable to use reading software that supports dictionary lookup and annotation, and to record chapter positions yourself for easy review and note-taking.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Bahlmann, Paul, 1857-1937 Author

Paul Bahlmann (1857–1937) was a German author whose life and background are only sparsely documented in publicly available sources; what can be confirmed is chiefly one work. His Rheinische Seher und Propheten: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte (Seers and Prophets of the Rhineland: A Contribution to Cultural History) is a study of religious and cultural history focused on the Rhineland, examining the region's historical seers, prophets, and the beliefs associated with them. Judging from the title and subtitle, the author's interest was not limited to anecdotes about individuals but sought to place prophetic phenomena within the broader context of regional cultural history, combining religious ideas, local traditions, and historical narrative. Because only this single work is held in the collection and reliable information on the author's nationality, education, and career is lacking, a full assessment of his overall style and scholarly influence is difficult; readers may regard him as a writer concerned with the religious and cultural history of a particular region.