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Dr. Kilian Harrer

Research associate

Office: 03 304
+49 (0)6131-39 23459
e-mail

Studies (B.A. 2012, M.A. 2015) in History with a minor in “Sprachen, Literaturen und Kulturen” at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Ph.D. (2021) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with the dissertation topic “Places of Power, Spaces of Peril: Pilgrimage and Borders in Western Central Europe, c.. 1770-1810”; 2021-23 research associate at SFB 1369 (“Vigilance Cultures”) at LMU Munich; since 2023 research associate at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG).

  • Religion and Politics from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Era
  • Transnational history and borderlands
  • Early modern Central and East-Central European history
  • Work, Piety and Holidays in the Early Modern Period
  • Environmental history

  • Troubled Feast, Contested Fast: The Uniate Dilemma and the Rural Economy in Eighteenth-Century Poland-Lithuania, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 72, no. 1 (2024): 20–43.
  • Mass Pilgrimage and the Usable Empire in a Napoleonic Borderland, in: The Historical Journal 66, no. 4 (2023): 773–94, Open Access https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X23000080
  • Enlightenment and Linseed Oil: Conflicts over Fasting Rigour in Eighteenth-Century Poland-Lithuania, in: Food & History 21, no. 2 (2023): 139–60.
  • The Keys of Heaven in the Hands of Women: History, Hierarchy, and Gender in Early Modern Catholicism, in: Catholic Historical Review 106, no. 1 (2020): 50–76.
  • La suppression de cinq paroisses à Tours (1777–1782): Un exemple de rationalité administrative au siècle des Lumières, in: Dix-Huitième Siècle 46 (2014): 673–93.

Ongoing
Jan. 2024 - June 2028
Religion

Excellent Insects: Beekeeping, Silk Farming and the Ecological Struggles of the Enlightenment

Honeybees and silkworms held great, notably physico-theological cachet as ‘virtuous’ animals whose tireless labour, when aptly conjoined with that of humans, would create abundance. In exploring this discourse, my aim is to consider the political-economic dimension of the European Enlightenment writ large. I will combine this approach with a case study of Brandenburg-Prussia to show how insect-farming projects played out on the ground. To elucidate the connections between those two levels – the European and the regional – I will draw on the social history of the clergy and of religious minorities. The project will also explore how efforts to increase beekeeping and build a large silk-farming sector from scratch created ecological dilemmas, especially in colder climates such as Prussia’s. For example, as agricultural expansion chipped away at heathlands and forests, writers and local communities began to lament the loss of natural spaces especially suited for beekeeping. In sum, the story of eighteenth-century beekeeping and silk farming will shed new light on the Enlightenment’s relentless drive to reshape nature.
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Ongoing
July 2023 - Dec. 2026
Religion

Enlightenment and Holiday Reform in East-Central Europe

In the eighteenth century, Catholic populations in Europe as well as in other parts of the world were confronted with a wave of radical holiday reforms. At the request of secular rulers, popes exempted the people from the obligation to refrain from all field and manual labour for a series of saints' days and Marian days. Religious reform ideals and political economy interacted in these attempts to initiate an "industrious revolution" from above. These historical processes are the subject of a project whose current aim is to contribute to the international research platform "Entangled History of Poland" (funded by the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the Centre for Polish-Lithuanian Studies at the University of Aberdeen), which has been running since 2022. In the context of his affiliation with this research group, Kilian Harrer deals with both implemented and failed plans of holiday reform in Poland-Lithuania, where the problem of unfree labour (corvée for landlords) played a particularly important role. Furthermore, he is interested in the option of expanding the area of investigation and looking at analogous reforms in Protestant as well as Catholic Silesia.
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Completed
July 2023 - June 2025
Religion

Transgressive Devotion: Pilgrims and Borders in the French Revolutionary Era

Throughout the turbulent decades around 1800, Catholic pilgrims mingled piety and politics in the borderlands between German- and French-speaking Europe.
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