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Book Review: Dorlikon An Der Grenze Des Wachstums. Zur Kulturgeschichte Einer Zürcher Dorfschaft Im 17. Jahrhundert., Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Review

This impressive study has three main sections. The author offers, first, what he titles as Erzählung, that is narrative or story. In five chapters he gives a wealth of detail about the lives of the Dorlikon families, their struggle to meet the challenges of a sometimes harsh climate, their sparse resources due to bad harvests, the resulting loss of rented farms, and the cycles of birth, procreation, and death. Their valorous strivings as well as occasional misdeeds are reconstructed with meticulous concern for exact documentation. Key documents are cited in their original seventeenth century German. What emerges is a …