Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft

The Library has recently created an online exhibit which focuses on the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Fruitbearing Society) collection, located in The Bancroft Library. This collection contains over 1,500 manuscripts, early printed books and pictorial items relative to Germany's first literary society, founded in 1617, and constitutes an eloquent embodiment of the Baroque period in European history and culture. The German Baroque in letters and science is marked by a flowering of intellectual activity over a wide array of new fields for scholarship, and it is particularly interesting for students of European cultural history because it is the period in which the German language, after a long period of neglect, becomes again the vehicle for scholarly and literary communication of a very high order. The exhibit was created by Brooke Dykman of the Library's Digital Publishing Group in collaboration with James H. Spohrer, Librarian for the Germanic Collections.

Also of interest, the German Studies website created by Dr. Spohrer was recently reviewed as "outstanding" in Choice, a professional journal.