Professor Gábor Gángó, Associate Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kollege of the University of Erfurt and member of the Research Centre for Early Modern Natural Law of the Gotha Research Centre and the Max-Weber-Kolleg, has collected Johann Christian von Boineburg’s letters from German libraries and archives, processed their metadata in part and transcribed the texts. Now the first part of this correspondence has been published on EMLO Oxford (Early Modern Letters Online).
Johann Christian von Boineburg was born in Eisenach on 12 April 1622. He studied in Jena and later in Helmstedt. His marriage to Anna Christine Schütz von Holzhausen produced his important son, Philipp Wilhelm Reichsgraf von Boineburg (1656-1717). The last years of Johann Christian’s life were intellectually shaped by his encounter with the young Leipzig jurist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who not only became Philipp Wilhelm’s tutor but, thanks to Boineburg, also obtained a position at the Mainz court of Johann Philipp von Schönborn. A number of works by the young Leibniz were written in collaboration with Boineburg. Boineburg died in Mainz on 8 December 1672. Philipp Wilhelm was appointed governor of the Electoral-Mainzian city of Erfurt and rector of Erfurt university, and moved his father’s library from Mainz to Erfurt in order to maintain and expand it.
Professor Gábor Gángó collected Johann Christian von Boineburg’s letters from German libraries and archives (mainly from the University Library of Erfurt, the University Library of Giessen, the Bavarian State Archives of Munich, the Herzog August Library of Wolfenbüttel, the Lower Saxony State Archives of Wolfenbüttel and the Bavarian State Archives of Würzburg) between 2016 and 2018 as part of a MWK-COFUND Fellowship (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 665958). A fellowship at the University of Erfurt subsequently made it possible for him to partially process the metadata of the letters as well as their previously unfinished transcription. The University of Padua is currently funding the completion of the metadata preparation for upload to the EMLO union catalogue. The first part of the correspondence is now available.
„I am pleased that my previous basic research on Boineburg is gaining great international visibility in this way. I also expect new fruitful research collaborations from the planned complete publication of the correspondence,“ says Professor Gábor Gángó. At the same time, the publication increases the international visibility of Erfurt’s research in the field of digital humanities and makes an important contribution to making central sources available for early modern research.