Jun.-Prof. Dr. Joana van de Löcht

In the last third of the 16th century, a growing number of texts appeared on the German book market that sought to make sense of weather phenomena in general as well as of specific weather events. One of these is Michael Bapst's ‚Wetterspiegel' (1589), in which the Lutheran pastor sets contemporary explanatory approaches to the origin, meaning and protection from weather side by side. Taking Bapst's text as its starting point, the first part of the study reconstructs early modern conceptions of weather and shows it to be a boundary object negotiated across confessional, natural-historical, economic and demonological discourses. Particular attention is paid in this context to popular bodies of knowledge and practices. Following the Protestant notion that believers should pray and sing in the face of adverse weather, the second part of the study focuses on the genre of song and the practice of singing. In several case studies drawn from the 15th to the 18th century, weather songs are examined in their respective contexts and their function reconstructed as lying between an informational medium and affect regulation.