Chris Friedrichs
Phone #
Office
Office Hours
Research Interests
Early modern European urban and social history; German history 1500-1800; German Jewish history; social history of the Reformation; early modern world history.
Research
For additional information, please go to my research and teaching website: www.history.ubc.ca/faculty/friedrichs
Research Interests
After many years devoted chiefly to working on the social and political history of cities in early modern Germany and Europe, I recently undertook a comparative study of urban political cultures in early modern Europe and Asia. In connection with this project I was awarded a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute faculty training grant to spend three months in India during the fall of 2003. From February to June 2004 I continued my work on this project as a Visiting Fellow at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. Two papers based on this research have now been published and are listed below.
A second area of research concerns the use of memoirs, letters and diaries to examine social networks and patterns of acculturation among German Jews of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I recently published an annotated edition of the diary of a young Jewish bank apprentice in Dresden from the years 1833 to 1837 (see listing below). I am planning further work in this field, with emphasis on the Jewish communities of Dresden and Bernburg.
In addition, I am currently engaged in a small research project on house-razing as an extension of punishment for serious crimes in early modern Europe. Papers presenting my preliminary findings were presented at the conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Venice in April 2010 and at the University of Heidelberg in June 2011.
Publications
Principal Publications
Books
Urban Society in an Age of War: Nördlingen, 1580–1720 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 350 pp.
The Early Modern City, 1450–1750 (London and New York: Longman, 1995), 381 pp.
Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2000), 89pp.
Edited Book
A Jewish Youth in Dresden: The Diary of Louis Lesser, 1833-1837 (Bethesda, MD: The University Press of Maryland, 2011), 239 pp.
Selected Articles
"Capitalism, Mobility and Class Formation in the Early Modern German City," Past and Present, no 69 (November 1975), 24–49.
"Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History," Central European History, 19 (1986), 186–228.
"Anti-Jewish Politics in Early Modern Germany: The Uprising in Worms, 1613–17", Central European History, 23 (1990), 91–152.
"Urban Politics and Urban Social Structure in Seventeenth-Century Germany," European History Quarterly, 22 (1992), 187–216.
"But Are We Any Closer to Home? Early Modern German Urban History since German Home Towns," Central European History, 30 (1997), 163-85.
Jüdische Jugend im Biedermeier: Ein unbekanntes Tagebuch aus Dresden, 1833-1837 (Leipzig: Simon-Dubnow-Institut fur jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, 1997), 22 pp. Reprinted in Stefi Jersch-Wenzel and Günther Wartenberg, eds., Annäherungen: Beiträge zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur im Mittel- und Osteuropa (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2002), pp. 115-132.
"Jewish Household Structure in an Early Modern Town: The Worms Ghetto Census of 1610," The History of the Family: An International Quarterly, 8 (2003), 481-93.
"The European City Hall as Political and Cultural Space, 1500-1750," in Philip Benedict and Myron P. Gutmann, eds., Early Modern Europe: From Crisis to Stability (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 234-58.
"Das städtische Rathaus als kommunikativer Raum in europäischer Perspektive," in Johannes Burkhardt and Christine Werkstetter, eds., Kommunikation und Medien in der Frühen Neuzeit, (Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft N.F. 41; Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005), 159-74.
"Urban Transformation? Some Constants and Continuities in the Crisis-Challenged City," in Troels Dahlerup and Per Ingesman, eds., New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2009), pp. 253-72.
"What Made the Eurasian City Work? Urban Political Cultures in Early Modern Europe and Asia," in Glenn Clark, Judith Owens and Greg T. Smith, eds., City Limits: Perspectives on the Historical European City (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010), 29-64.
"Urban Elections and Decision-Making in Early Modern Europe and Asia: Contrasts and Comparisons," in Rudolf Schlögl, ed., Urban Elections and Decision-Making in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 300-21.
"Leisure and Acculturation in the Jewish Community of Dresden, 1833-1837," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 56 (2011), 1-26.
Selected Articles about Teaching
"The First-Year History Course: The Case for Content," The History and Social Science Teacher, 24 (1988-89), 128-31.
"Teaching the Unteachable: A Canadian Perspective," in Franklin H. Littell, G. Jan Colijn, Marcia Sachs Littell and Irene G. Shur, eds., The Holocaust: Remembering for the Future, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 548 (Nov. 1996), 94–104.
Recent Public Lectures
"The European City in Global Perspective, 1500-1800," Keynote lecture, Conference on "City Limits? The European City, 1400-1900," University of Manitoba, Sept. 2004
"Adventures in (Urban) Space: Moving Through the Early Modern City," Keynote lecture, Workshop on Jews and Urban Space in Early Modern Europe, University of Maryland, August 2005
"Letters from a Lost Fatherland: Micro-Histories of Mass Murder," Kristallnacht Commemorative Lecture, Vancouver, November 2006
"The Archives Right Under Our Noses," Keynote lecture, Qualicum History Conference, Parksville, B.C., January 2008
"Jewish Selfhood in a Christian Society: Youth and Religious Identity in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Annual McMartin Lecture, Carleton University, Ottawa, February 2008
"Language and Identity in European History: The Case of the German Jews," Department of History, University of Mumbai, January 2009
Honours
Wallace K. Ferguson Prize (Canadian Historical Association),1982 for Urban Society in an Age of War
Killam Teaching Award (UBC), 1997
Just Desserts Award, UBC Alma Mater Society, 2006
Teaching and Supervision
In recent years I have taught History 102 (World History from 1500 to the Twentieth Century), History 103 (World History since 1900, formerly History 125), History 220 (History of Europe formerly History 120), History 436 (European Social History, formerly History 316), History 413 (The Reformation, now History 366), History 369 (Europe, 1900-1950, formerly History 462), History 490 (Seminar for History Majors) and numerous Honours and graduate courses.
Like all university teachers, I am concerned that students should understand the importance of giving credit for insights and information they draw on in constructing and defending their own arguments. To see my personal guide to correct footnoting (Footnotes: A Guide for the Perplexed), go to my Web Site (www.history.ubc.ca/faculty/friedrichs) and click on "Footnote Guide."
I am available to supervise master's theses and doctoral dissertations on various aspects of European history, including German social and urban history (especially prior to 1900), German Jewish history, and early modern British social history. Potential graduate students who plan to apply to UBC and might wish to write a thesis under my supervision are welcome to contact me at crf@interchange.ubc.ca.
