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Daniel Juette, Harvard University:The defenestration of Prague in 1618 triggered one of the most cataclysmic wars in premodern Europe, the Thirty Years’ War. It is much less known that defenestrations also happened in numerous other parts of early modern Europe. They were often carefully staged and performed in highly politicized situations. As I will show, visual representations played a crucial part in the justification as well as in the symbolic interpretation of this ritual form of punishment.&#160;Daniel Jütte is a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. His research focuses on early modern and modern European history, with a particular interest in cultural history, the history of knowledge, and Jewish history. He is the author of Das Zeitalter des Geheimnisses: Juden, Christen und die Ökonomie des Geheimen, 1400–1800 (Vandenhoeck &#38; Ruprecht, 2nd ed. 2012). An English translation of this book, titled The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets (1400–1800), will appear with Yale University Press in 2015. His main research project at the moment is titled House, City, and Threshold: Sites of Passage and the History of Space in Pre-Modern Europe.