“Centuria Sapientiae”: Monumental Books That Shaped Modern History

Overview

“Centuria Sapientiae” is a scholarly initiative dedicated to the creation of an annotated corpus of major books that have influenced the development of modern social, political, historical and intellectual thought. The project is based on the premise that key texts from different periods of history continue to provide essential insight into how societies understand norms, order, conflict and transformation. Rather than functioning as a fixed canon it is conceived as a structured interpretative framework through which foundational works of human thought can be examined in their historical context and in relation to contemporary challenges.

The initiative will bring together historians, political theorists and scholars from related disciplines for the launch event in Potsdam from 23 to 26 August 2026. It will present the conceptual framework of the corpus and open a broader interdisciplinary dialogue on the role of books in shaping modern historical consciousness.

The books included in the project will comprise major historical and intellectual contributions such as the following:

• Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down Your Arms) by Bertha von Suttner
• Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
• Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Jerusalem (1901–1902) by Selma Lagerlöf
• Max Havelaar (1860) by Multatuli
• Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz
• Pennskaftet (The Penholder) by Elin Wägner 1910
• Pirej (The Millet) 1980 by Petre M Andreevski
• Poems of Tampere 1918 by Viljo Kajava
• The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andri?
• The Living Mountain (published 1977 written in the 1940s) by Nan Shepherd
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• The Quarry Wood (1928) by Nan Shepherd
• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
• The Social Contract (1762) by Jean Jacques Rousseau
• The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách
• War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy
• Väckarklocka (The Alarm Clock) by Elin Wägner 1941