![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Personal Note: Eagles of a feather
Jul. 6th, 2009 08:46 pmHappy belated Independence Day to my fellow Americans! I spent the day engaged in those two most patriotic of pursuits: shopping (bought me a ceiling fan on sale, yay!) and watching baseball (my team pulled itself out of a month-long slump to beat their divisional arch-rivals, yay redux!). The rest of the time I sat around with my feet up doing nothing at all. Lovely.
Then, of course, I had to return to work. I spent the day wading hip-deep through Salzburg emigrants, finishing up the cataloging on a collection of 18th-century pamphlets and broadsides I first turned my hand to six months ago. (Background for the curious: in 1731, the Catholic Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg booted out all the Protestants in his realm; Frederick William I of Prussia, sensing a potential propaganda coup, offered them sanctuary in an underpopulated area of his demesne, and a ream of anti-Catholic polemic was born. Some of the emigrants went other places, notably the American colony of Georgia; a substantial collection of information about them is still held in a library down that way, I believe.) One of my professional colleagues upstairs had spent the intervening half-year tracking down the answers to my questions; I have nothing but respect for her research skills, because she seems to have left no relevant stone unturned. I tried to incorporate as much of what she gave me as I could into my records without letting the notes get out of hand. For my own part, I was surprised to discover that you can buy a stock photo of the German National Library's copy of an illustration of a pious emigrant family that we have on a broadside. I hadn't thought there'd be a market for images of displaced 18th-century European Protestants sheltering under the wings of the Prussian eagle, but I guess I just don't have an entrepreneurial mind.
Then, of course, I had to return to work. I spent the day wading hip-deep through Salzburg emigrants, finishing up the cataloging on a collection of 18th-century pamphlets and broadsides I first turned my hand to six months ago. (Background for the curious: in 1731, the Catholic Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg booted out all the Protestants in his realm; Frederick William I of Prussia, sensing a potential propaganda coup, offered them sanctuary in an underpopulated area of his demesne, and a ream of anti-Catholic polemic was born. Some of the emigrants went other places, notably the American colony of Georgia; a substantial collection of information about them is still held in a library down that way, I believe.) One of my professional colleagues upstairs had spent the intervening half-year tracking down the answers to my questions; I have nothing but respect for her research skills, because she seems to have left no relevant stone unturned. I tried to incorporate as much of what she gave me as I could into my records without letting the notes get out of hand. For my own part, I was surprised to discover that you can buy a stock photo of the German National Library's copy of an illustration of a pious emigrant family that we have on a broadside. I hadn't thought there'd be a market for images of displaced 18th-century European Protestants sheltering under the wings of the Prussian eagle, but I guess I just don't have an entrepreneurial mind.