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In most habitats, vegetation provides the main structure of the environment. This complexity can facilitate biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore, measures of vegetation structure can serve as indicators in ecosystem management. However, many structural measures are laborious and require expert knowledge. Here, we used consistent and convenient measures to assess vegetation structure over an exceptionally broad elevation gradient of 866–4550m above sea level at Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Additionally, we compared (human)-modified habitats, including maize fields, traditionally managed home gardens, grasslands, commercial coffee farms and logged and burned forests with natural habitats along this elevation gradient. We distinguished vertical and horizontal vegetation structure to account for habitat complexity and heterogeneity. Vertical vegetation structure (assessed as number, width and density of vegetation layers, maximum canopy height, leaf area index and vegetation cover) displayed a unimodal elevation pattern, peaking at intermediate elevations in montane forests, whereas horizontal structure (assessed as coefficient of variation of number, width and density of vegetation layers, maximum canopy height, leaf area index and vegetation cover) was lowest at intermediate altitudes. Overall, vertical structure was consistently lower in modified than in natural habitat types, whereas horizontal structure was inconsistently different in modified than in natural habitat types, depending on the specific structural measure and habitat type. Our study shows how vertical and horizontal vegetation structure can be assessed efficiently in various habitat types in tropical mountain regions, and we suggest to apply this as a tool for informing future biodiversity and ecosystem service studies.
According to Arthur Rimbaud’s famous saying “Je est un autre” Max Frisch develops in his early diaries an idea of love which has to orient itself by the ban on images in the Old Testament and which, as a modern concept, has to renounce every image of oneself and the other at all. In Max Frisch’s novel Stiller the roots of this seemingly biblical belief can be found both in an aesthetic attitude towards life (as pointed out in Sören Kierkegaardʼs scriptures, especially in Entweder-Oder) and in an existentialist understanding of life (as set forth in the philosophical work of Jean-Paul Sartre). Max Frisch’s novel Stiller can be read as a literary experiment of achieving the ultimate goal of love and self-acceptance by radical self-negation and negation of the other.
The present contribution deals with the reception of the figure of Alkestis both in Greek antiquity (Euripides) and in German literature around 1900 (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke). The contribution shows on the one hand that already Euripides had problems with the dramatic transformation of the antique mythological narrative into a tragic subject. On the other hand it shows that the two modern versions of the narrative of Alkestis around 1900 deal with it quite differently: Hofmannsthal’s free adaptation of the Euripidean Alkestis shifts the subject matter into a Dionysian context, in the light of Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy, whereas Rilke implants themes and motifs of his own poetry in the narrative of Alkestis and amalgamates them with it.