Acknowledgements
This project has moved towards completion with the dizzying velocity normally associated with plate tectonics. That pace has allowed me to store up a lot of thank-yous, and it is my delight to offer them here. Research for this work was funded by Texas State University, Harvard University, and the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, and I am grateful to all three institutions for that backing. Although not strictly an institution, I received support and encouragement from David Blackbourn of greater monumentality. I am profoundly grateful.
I very much appreciate the comments by my anonymous reviewers, whose careful readings vastly improved the manuscript. (All remaining deficits are of course my own.) I also thank the editors at Brill, my map maker Kate Blackmer, and particularly the series editors Celia Applegate and David Luebke for their help and backing.
Over many research trips, I relied heavily on the expertise of the staff at Leipzig’s remarkable city archive and city history museum as well as the wonderful music and regional history libraries within the city library (itself housed in the original Grassi Museum building). Their skill and generous patience made everything else possible.
Many of my colleagues at Texas State University have read portions of the manuscript and offered sage advice. I am especially grateful to Kenneth Margerison, José Carlos de la Puente Luna, Peter Siegenthaler, Louie Dean Valencia-García, Jessica Pliley, Ellen Tillman, Sara Damiano, and Carrie Ritter for close readings, smart questions, and much needed cheerleading. This is a better book because of you all. I also want to thank the staff of Alkek Library, in particular Margaret Vaverek and Michelle Williams. Between the two of them, they were able to find me almost every book I needed, both before and during the pandemic.
I am happy to be able to acknowledge my own Verein of historians (German and otherwise) and its Saxon sub-section. So many of my colleagues have generously talked to me about my work, read some or all of it (sometimes more than once), never flagging in their belief in the project. I especially thank Jon Alterman, Benita Blessing, James Brophy, Roger Chickering, Elizabeth Drummond, Lynne Fallwell, Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch, Will Glenn Gray, Tanya Kevorkian, Suzanne Marchand, James Retallack, Marc Smyrl, Corinna Treitel, and George Williamson for their collective wisdom, encouragement, and editing chops.
Finally, I want to thank my family, my chosen and expanded family who have seen this through with me. Kim Carpenter and Julia Sullivan probably know this manuscript almost as well as I do. Leipzig would have been a much less joyful place without the family warmth of the Singers, Eberhard Patzig, and particularly the entire extended Hermann family. My local friends, Mas Cabeza and my chamber music pals, have been a great comfort. And, finally, to John Menninger and Elizabeth, Andrew, Ian, and Sumner Wallace: all done.