Social Program

GUIDED TOUR: ERASMUS IN BASEL. On the tracks of Erasmus von Rotterdam.

DATE & TIME: Saturday 29 October 2011, 17:00 – 18:30 

MEETING POINT: 16:30: Registration Desk (foyer, 2nd floor), Messe Basel.

TRANSFER: We will take tram nr. 6 to ‘Barfüsserplatz’ (the transfer time is approximately 20 minutes). The tour will begin at 17:00 at ‘Barfüsserplatz’. 

You will need a ticket for the tram. If you stay in a hotel in Basel, you received the free Mobility-Ticket, which gives you unlimited use of all public transport. Or you can buy a single ticket for one zone (3.20 Swiss Francs). 

REGISTRATION: There is only a limited number of places available. Please register for the tour using the registration form at the registration desk. 

 

ERASMUS IN BASEL. On the tracks of Erasmus von Rotterdam.

Everyone knows the name – but who was Erasmus? The tour brings you closer to the man and his work – and the tumultuous time in which he lived.

"Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467?–1536) was the most famous and influential humanist of the Northern Renaissance, a man of great talent and industriousness who rose from obscure beginnings to become the leading intellectual figure of the early sixteenth century, courted by rulers and prelates who wanted to enhance their own reputations by association with the greatest scholar of the age. He was his generation's finest Latin stylist, in a society that revered good Latin, even more impressive for his much rarer mastery of Greek that no contemporary could equal. He was a phenomenally productive writer (the most complete edition of his collected works fills ten large folio volumes) and was the first European intellectual to exploit fully the power of the printed word, making the true center of his career not a university or the court of a secular prince or high prelate but the greatest publishing houses of the Netherlands, Paris, Venice, and—above all—Basel."

Nauert, Charles, "Desiderius Erasmus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/erasmus/>.