Huguenots during the early modern period: Observations on research in intellectual history in Germany

Abstract

Abstract Until well into the 1980s, research on the Huguenots in Germany was concentrated on their escape from France, limiting itself to the topics of the prehistory of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), the Revocation itself, the acceptance of Huguenot Refugees in their new lands, and the question of the ‘descendants’ of French Protestants in Germany. However, as early as 1959 the investigations Rudolf von Thadden and Erich Haase and later Werner Krauss (1987) opened up an interdisciplinary field of research on the Huguenots. According to Haase, Krauss, and von Thadden, the Huguenots did not merely join up with the ‘mainstream’ of German ‘school philosophy’. Some, such as Isaac de Beausobre, were not only active as priests, pastors, and diplomats but also made significant contributions to the history of the church and heresy, which connected with other important developments in intellectual history.