The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Kepler’s Fight for his Mother was written by Ulinka Rublack, a German historian of sixteenth and seventeenth century culture in Europe. Rublack received her PhD in history at the University of Cambridge where she has also taught history since 1996. Her research has earned several prestigious awards and recognitions including a lifetime achievement award, the Reimar-Lüst Prize, from the Humboldt and Thyssen Foundations. The research and scholarship for The Astronomer and the Witch also earned her the Deutsche Historikerpreis, Germany’s highest historical award. Rublack, a scholar of cultural history, focuses much of her work in material and religious culture of Europe during her period of study.
Rublack’s The Astronomer and the Witch highlighted the intersectionality of several aspects of life in the region occupied by modern-day Germany during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries through the witch trail of famous astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother, Katharina. The work explored the religious conflict and theology in the post-Reformation German states, the nature of witches and witch trials, the lives of women, particularly widows, and the effects of scientific thought during the period. One major focus of the book, a story woven throughout as a means to discuss the earlier-mentioned themes, was how Johannes’ relationship with his mother, particularly during the trial, “[recasts] our sense of Johannes Kepler himself” (8).
Rublack began the story by setting the scene of the region and period through explaining Katharina’s life. Katherina grew up in sixteenth century Eltingen during tense theological debates following the Reformation. She married a merchant’s son, Heinrich Kepler whom she had four children with before he left them in 1589. Background of Katharina’s life was followed by a description of the life of a woman named Sybille, wife of the Duke Frederick of Württemberg. The anecdote showed the life in a Lutheran court and intermingling of noble interests with science and religion. Rublack, too, highlighted the frenzy of witches and witchcraft, particularly focusing in on the year 1615 in Württemberg, the time and place Katharina was accused, to assert the complexities of witchcraft accusations as they “were not made in the poorest areas and cannot be explained as a simple scapegoating mechanism in villages” (75). These early elements served to set up the background and environment in which Johannes Kepler lived and worked which, as Rublack contended, influenced Kepler’s scholarship, beliefs, and skills.
The main portion of the book was dedicated to the trial of Katharina more directly, utilizing archival documents as well as the writings Kepler, especially to his family members. The trial, firstly, emphasized the complex interconnectedness of life in German communities as accusations required the trust and confidence of peers and betters in order to build cases of condemnation or defense, such as Christoph had tried early after Katharina was accused of witchcraft. Additionally, the importance of reputation and education was displayed plainly through Johannes’ involvement. Kepler’s prestige and education allowed him to contact ducal councillors who indeed helped Kepler and his mother. Kepler was able to become Katharina’s guardian through the trial, a requirement during this time as women needed a man to act on their behalf in courts. During his guardianship of his mother and throughout the trial, Kepler wrote about his thoughts on the cosmos and their relationship to God which served to help him reflect on his own relationship with his mother, complex feelings which humanized Kepler and cast him in a slightly varied light. In fact, throughout the whole account of the trial, Kepler’s character and skill was constantly shifting in minute ways, especially towards the end as he worked even harder in conjunction with family and colleagues to mount a persuasive defense of his mother. Rhetoric might usually prove to be an unusual skill for a figure renowned as a mathematician and astronomer but given the trial and its relation to and influence on Kepler, as well as the time and circumstances of his life, make far more sense.
Rublack presented The Astronomer and the Witch as a microhistory, “designed to complement our sense of this period by taking us into the Lutheran world as the Reformation came of age, celebrated its first centenary in 1617, and moved into the Thirty Years’ War” (306). She compared her work to other traditional microhistories, most famously the story of Menocchio described in The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg; however, The Astronomer and the Witch is in some too grand to be a true microhistory. It certainly contains the main ingredients for a microhistory as the core of the history lies in the account of a specific case which serves to relate the vast intersectionality of themes and topics of the period, ranging between gender relations, theological debates, and natural philosophy/science as a discipline as compared to Kepler’s own approach.
The focus on the trial of Kepler’s mother does, at times, feel as just that, a trial about Kepler’s mother. The book grants much of its time and space to Kepler, his upbringing, and his work and scholarship as they engaged with the events of the period. It also works, as Rublack asserted, to recast Kepler, becoming in some chapters very biographical. These are not detractions from the work; on the contrary, these scholarly choices help to ground the book in something – or rather, someone – that is familiar to far more people than some of the other themes and people in the book. The extremely thorough research and excellent writing style masterfully weaves these many elements together in a way that gives the reader a far greater historical understanding than one might get from a straightforward biography.
The only criticism that one could perhaps derive from the work is its breadth versus depth. A traditional microhistory would likely be more focused on depth of understanding in one or two specific historical elements to derive meaning; The Astronomer and the Witch ties in far more which can, at times, confuse the story and take the reader down several themes at once. This issue could likely be best solved by reorganizing chapters to follow themes more rigidly or perhaps narrowing the scope of the topics discussed slightly. This is, however, a minor issue and one that does not too significantly detract from the overall skill in scholarship demonstrated by Rublack in her depiction of Johannes Kepler, the post-Reformation period, and witch trials.
