Lindemann, Mary 1949–

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Lindemann, Mary 1949–

PERSONAL:

Born April 23, 1949. Education: University of Cincinnati, Ph.D., 1980.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Miami, Ashe Administration Bldg., Rm. 605, Coral Gables, FL 33124. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, former history faculty; University of Miami, Miami, FL, professor. Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Wassenaar, Netherlands, fellow-in-residence, 2002-2003; Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbütte, Germany, fellow, 2006-07; Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London, London, England, affiliate.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Outstanding Academic Book for 1990, Choice, for Patriots and Paupers; National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, 1997-98; William H. Welch Medal, American Association of the History of Medicine, 1998, for Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany; Guggenheim fellowship, 1998-99.

WRITINGS:

140 Jahre israelitisches Krankenhaus in Hamburg: Vorgeschichte und Entwicklung, [Hamburg, Germany], 1981.

Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, 1712-1830, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1996.

Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) Ways of Knowing: Ten Interdisciplinary Essays, Brill Academic Publishers (Boston, MA), 2004.

Liaisons Dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2006.

Member of editorial board, Central European History and H-German. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mary Lindemann is a historian whose work focuses on early modern German, Dutch, and Flemish history, as well as on medical history in the early modern world. Her research includes the analysis of biological and medical factors that influenced civil and political capabilities in Germany during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how these factors affect the legal rights of various segments of society, including the ill, disabled, castrati, and hermaphrodites. She has also studied the comparative political cultures in the early modern cities of Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg, from 1650-1790.

In Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, according to History: Review of New Books contributor Audrey B. Davis, Lindemann ‘combine[s] three forms of history: the history of mentalities, the history of everyday life, and the history of social and economic structures (which analyzes society and mentality).’ The author conducted extensive research in the Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel archives, where large volumes of secondary literature and resources are housed for various European countries. To tell her historical view of society and medicine in Germany, Lindemann focuses on Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel itself, a rural area in modern Germany's lower Saxony. She discusses the establishment of a Collegium Medicum to oversee medical affairs in the area that actually focused on fostering a type of moral order among the government-paid Physici, or physicians, in the belief that this was an essential part of medical care. In her book, the author discusses the politics and economics of the time and how they influenced the medical world. She also writes on the area's folk medicine tradition. Noting that Lindemann presents ‘a rich picture of the patient and the healer, struggling to stay alive physically, economically, and morally,’ Evelyn Bernette Ackerman wrote in the Journal of Social History that ‘Lindemann's picture of the physicus, drawing heavily on well-chosen examples, is brilliant, capturing the tone of rural life."

In her next book, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, Lindemann presents what Journal of Social History contributor Alison Klairmont Lingo called ‘a ‘revisionist’ overview of the history of early modern medicine.’ Lingo added: ‘By describing the medical landscape through the changing lens of historiographical fashion she provides the reader with a critical understanding of the state of the field.’ Lindemann examines a wide range of topics relevant to the medical history of the early modern era, from 1500 to circa 1750. Her discussion includes aspects of disease, medical education, asylums and hospitals, and the influence of the state and private entities on the field of medicine. The author closes her book with an in-depth look at the hands-on practice of medicine during this time. In her historical account, she also discusses issues such as the use of naturalistic approaches to health and the role that belief in the supernatural played in thoughts about health and disease. Lindemann, furthermore, provides an overall social perspective of the times. ‘Although the subject of the book is medicine, it has been written to appeal also to those with a more general interest in early modern history,’ wrote Australian Journal of Politics and History contributor Emily Wilson, who added that the author ‘succeeded in her aim of writing a book accessible to undergraduate students.’ Lingo commented: ‘Overall, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe fills an important gap: it summarizes and evaluates the last twenty-five years of scholarship in a lively and critical way while providing students in a variety of fields a detailed summary of many of the insights and conclusions which this scholarship has accrued."

Liaisons Dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great was called ‘an innovative work of historical scholarship that reads like a whodunit’ by Mary Lee Townsend in the American Historical Review. Townsend went on to assert that the book ‘showcases her [Lindemann's] trademark detective skills.’ Like detective novels, the book focuses on a mysterious death. In this case, it is the murder of Joseph Visconti, who posed as a Milanese count and was killed in October, 1775, in Hamburg, Germany, by Baron von Kesslitz, a lieutenant in the Prussian army. Lindemann uses the murder as a jumping-off point to examine the history of Europe in the eighteenth century, especially regarding the politics and life of the times. Several reviewers observed that the author avoids speculation about the murder itself, ignoring such issues as why Visconti was stabbed nine times. Ultimately, Kesslitz acknowledged that he killed Visconti while agreeing to help a friend rescue his mistress, who was supposedly going to be abducted by her lover, Visconti. Placing the incident within the context of the times, the author reveals how the episode has far-ranging repercussions because it involved a German noble and a Spanish consul, Kesslitz's friend Antoine Ventura de Sanpelayo. Brian Craig, writing in Library Journal, enjoyed how ‘the book moves along smoothly."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 1992, review of Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, 1712-1830, p. 570; February, 1999, Matthew Ramsey, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 262; June, 2007, Mary Lee Townsend, review of Liaisons Dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great, p. 939.

Australian Journal of Politics and History, September, 2000, Emily Wilson, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 441.

BJHS: The British Journal for the History of Science, December, 1998, David Harley, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 478.

Central European History, summer, 1998, Isabel V. Hull, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 258; March, 2007, Jonathan Sperber, review of Liaisons Dangereuses, p. 146.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May, 1997, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 1534; June, 2000, T.P. Gariepy, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 1848.

Economic History Review, August, 2000, David Gentilcore, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 595.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, spring, 1999, Karl J. Fink, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 405.

Historical Journal, September, 1992, John Breuilly, review of Patriots and Paupers, p. 701.

History: Review of New Books, summer, 1997, Audrey B. Davis, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 174.

Isis, December, 1998, Caroline Hannaway, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 736; March 2001, Lynda Stephenson Payne, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 138.

JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, October 1, 1997, Guenter B. Risse, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 1121.

Journal of Modern History, September, 1993, Mary J.A. Fulbrook, review of Patriots and Paupers, p. 644.

Journal of Social History, summer, 1992, Peter K. Taylor, review of Patriots and Paupers, p. 895; winter, 1998, Evelyn Bernette Ackerman, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 415; fall, 2001, Alison Klairmont Lingo, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 252.

Journal of the History of Ideas, January, 1991, review of Patriots and Paupers, p. 173.

Journal of Urban History, March, 1996, James H. Jackson, review of Patriots and Paupers, p. 384.

Library Journal, May 1, 2006, Bryan Craig, review of Liaisons Dangereuses, p. 99.

London Review of Books, July 6, 2006, Richard J. Evans, review of Liaisons Dangereuses, p. 25.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 1997, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 144; August, 2006, review of Liaisons Dangereuses.

Sixteenth Century Journal, winter, 2000, Robert Jutte, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 11123, Duane Osheim, review of Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, p. 1125.

Times Literary Supplement, March 14, 1997, James J. Sheehan, review of Health & Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 10.