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In a similar way to dramatic performances and plays, song lyrics establish a complex discourse structure whereby listeners are placed in a position to overhear ‘the pretence of a conversation constructed to convey the performer’s meaning’ (Nahajec 2019: 25; see also Short 1996: 169). In Taylor Swift’s songwriting, listeners are positioned not only to eavesdrop on the narratives presented but are also invited to conceptualise and enact particular roles and scenarios in the discourse. This paper offers a stylistic analysis of songwriting and narrative structure across Swift’s oeuvre to identify how disnarration strategies are used to build stories in her two sister albums written and produced during the Covid-19 pandemic, folklore (2020) and evermore (2020). Specifically, this study examines how disnarration characterises the albums’ narrators, establishes narrator-narratee relationships and invites listeners to adopt a participatory role in the meaning-making process. Through close analysis of four songs across the two albums, this paper builds on developing studies of the stylistics of songwriting (see West 2019) and argues that disnarration strategies foreground particular themes within the discourse, such as nostalgia, wistfulness and regret, and contribute to the fictionalisation and self-aware storytelling characteristic of these albums’ storyworlds.
Rezension zu: Social preferences: an introduction to behavioural economics and experimental research, by Michalis Drouvelis, Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2021, 205 pages, £22.99, ISBN 978-1-78821-417-9 (paperback).
Hepatology highlights
(2016)
Pawar SV, et al. Most overweight and obese Indian children have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
De Keyzer B, et al. Percutaneous shunt reduction for the management of TIPS-induced acute liver decompensation. A follow-up study
Baptista-González H, et al. Frequency of hepatitis C virus infection in a single institution in Mexico with a focus on birth-cohort population
Microsurgical free flap reconstruction in acute burn care offers the option of reconstructing even challenging defects in a single stage procedure. Due to altered rheological and hemodynamic conditions in severely burned patients, it bears the risk of a higher complication rate compared to microsurgical reconstruction in other patients. To avoid failure, appropriate indications for free flap reconstruction should be reviewed thoroughly. Several aspects concerning timing of the procedure, individual flap choice, selection and preparation of the recipient vessels, and perioperative measures must be considered. Respecting these specific conditions, a low complication rate, comparable to those seen in microsurgical reconstruction of other traumatic limb defects, can be observed. Hence, the free flap procedure in acute burn care is a relatively safe and reliable tool in the armamentarium of acute burn surgery. In reconstructive burn care, microsurgical tissue transfer is routinely used to treat scar contractures. Due to the more robust perioperative condition of patients, even lower rates of complication are seen in microsurgical reconstruction.
Rezension zu Literary Activism. Perspectives. Ed. Amit Chaudhuri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017. 369 pp.
I first encountered the work of Miriam Hansen as a graduate student in the mid-1990s when her book Babel and Babylon was the talk of the (at that time still fairly modest) film studies town – even though it was sitting somewhat uneasily on the fence. In fact, it was this position beyond the canonical that made the book so attractive in the first place. It did not fit into the raging debate of that time between psychosemiotics and neo-formalism, nor did it offer the (often too schematic and naive) way out within the cultural studies paradigm of empowering the individual or sub-culturally constituted groups.
Rezension zu: David SHERMAN. Sartre and Adorno - The Dialectics of Subjectivity. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007, xii + 328 pp., €64.59, ISBN 978-0-7914-7115-9.
Review of: Vinzenz Brinkmann, Oliver Primavesi, Max Hollein (eds.), Circumlitio. The Polychromy of Antique and Medieval Sculpture. Proceedings of the Johann David Passavant Colloquium, 10-12 December 2008. Liebighaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main, 2010, 423 pp., 334 colour ill.,ISBN 978-3-7774-2871-0
New scientific methods now being applied to the analysis of traces of pigments and gilding on ancient Greek and Roman marble statuary, and other marble artefacts, have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the relationship between form and colour in antiquity. At present the enquiry is still in its infancy, but the papers delivered at a conference held in Frankfurt in 2008, reviewed here, provide a general introduction to the subject and to a wide range of work in progress.
Built to colonize
(2019)
Since the study of Late Antiquity evolved in the last few decades into an important research topic, several publications have been dedicated to the late antique city, resulting in lively discussions on "decline" and "transition". In line with this evolution Late Antiquity has recently been the central theme of several conferences and workshops, dealing with specific study themes of Late Antiquity as a whole, focussing on a particular time period and/or dedicated to well-defined geographical areas. ...
After this contribution dealing with the capital of Asia, the paper of Axel Filges discusses the late antique and Byzantine situation in the smaller town of Blaundos in Phrygia (Zum Aussagepotential ruinöser Mauern. Bevölkerung und Bebauung im spätantiken und byzantinischen Blaundos [Phrygia]). ...
The question of Russia’s European identity has traditionally been controversial. Usually, the country is either defined as belonging to Eastern Europe in a narrower sense or, contrarily, totally excluded from the concept of Europe. From the times of Czar Peter the Great (1689–1725), Russia acquired the unquestioned status of a European power; however, despite the "enlightened" reforms of Empress Catherine the Great (1762–1796), its society remained feudal, its economy backward and its government autocratic. Right up until its collapse, the Russian Empire was decidedly less urbanized and less advanced in agriculture in comparison not only with the West but also with East-Central Europe. ...
In 1875, the Liebig Extract of Meat Company began to distribute a series of pictures printed on small (11 x 7 cm), colorful, collectible cardboard cards along with its main product, Fleischextrakt. While not the first to adopt this advertising technique, Liebig quickly became the best-known purveyor of Sammelbilder. ...
The focus of this work, the debate about a body of law dealing with aristocratic issues, is not easy to summarize. This problem stems in part from a topic that historians who do not work on law might be forgiven for considering nonexistent; in part, it has to do with the indirect way in which Dorothee Gottwald engages with current trends in the historiography of nineteenth-century Germany. ...
This special issue of one of the leading German historical journals features case studies and a theoretical model to conceptualize multinormativity in the early modern period. The overarching concept that holds the contributions together is that of "normative competition" (Normenkonkurrenz), developed by Hillard von Thiessen. It offers a dynamic, interactive, and actor-centered approach to the co-existence of potentially conflicting normative orders in the early modern period. Von Thiessen draws attention to the manifold ways in which subjects consciously or unconsciously contribute to the shape and operation of norms. He offers an alternative to existing models that try to describe and explain normative change in the early modern period, such as Gerhard Oestreich’s model of "social discipline" (Sozialdisziplinierung) and Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling’s model of"confessionalization" (Konfessionalisierung). In von Thiessen’s view, these models are inadequate. They are implicitly indebted to Max Weber’s paradigm of the gradual rationalization of Western civilization, and they assume a static opposition between norm-creating authorities and norm-receiving subjects. The models of "social discipline" and "confessionalization" start from the belief that citizens’ behavior gradually and homogeneously adapted to the norms laid down by the authorities. Recent historical scholarship has demonstrated that the top-down imposition of norms by state authorities and religious institutions often failed. A gap existed between the norms on the books and the norms in action, to the extent that daily life deviated from norms imposed by central authorities like the state or religious institutions in the first place. Von Thiessen, however, wants to avoid narratives of failure or success. Rather than starting from an antagonistic vision that pits institutional norm-producers against passive norm-receiving subjects, von Thiessen emphasizes the synergistic role played by all actors in the production and implementation of norms. ...
"Nothing is more soothing to the nerves than a detailed discussion of homage and lordship …" If William de Briwerr, fictional English knight and narrator in Alfred Duggan’s historical novel Lord Geoffrey’s Fancy, is right, then a conference held in April 2011 will have set the participants at ease. Following the call of the Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte and the conference organiser, Karl-Heinz Spieß, they had gathered to discuss the "Formation and dissemination of feudalism in the Empire and in Italy during the 12th and 13th century". The conference proceedings have now been published, and I suppose William de Briwerr would have approved of the intensity of discussion contained therein. ...
Five hundred years ago, Hernán Cortés launched his invasion of Mexico (1519–1521), which culminated in the fall of Tenochtitlán. A little over a decade later, the Inca realm was destroyed by Francisco Pizarro’s clan in Peru (1532–1533). The decisive factors and myths of the Spanish "conquests" are treated in the pertinent historiography. Recent literature has had less to say on the subsequent phase of early colonial history, when the Castilian Crown and its representatives in the "New World" tried to reinforce their dominance – essentially against the interests of the first generation of conquistadores. This tumultuous period is the subject of Gregorio Salinero’s book, which re-examines disobediences, political trials and governance in Spanish America, as the subtitle reads. It is an augmented version of Salinero’s La trahison de Cortés (Paris 2014), now skillfully translated into Spanish by Manuela Águeda García Garrido. The author, professor of history at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, is well known for his research on transatlantic relations between Spain and Spanish America. ...
As the numbers of people moving internationally increased in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, states tried more rigorously to regulate borders and counteract the problem of fugitives crossing international borders to evade arrest. This presented a legal challenge to domestic state power that increasingly defined its sovereignty on jurisdiction within borders. It is this issue and within this important era of globalization and law formation that Bradley Miller’s book examines how British North American colonies and post-Confederation Canada reacted to the problems posed by international fugitives through ideas and practices of extradition. His work goes beyond the traditional perspective of examining extradition treaties to view the practices of extradition in action, the everyday challenges states faced, and how the key concepts of sovereignty and international law were understood in relation to extradition. ...
The relationship between past and present has been the subject of controversial debates in historical research time and again. In 2013, to give a prominent example, Philip Alston in a review essay discussed the issue of "Does the past matter?" with regard to a debate on the origins of human rights. The debate was dedicated to the controversial question of "[h]ow far back can we trace the genealogy of today’s international human rights system". In this review, I would like to rephrase this question to ask instead to what degree the present matters for historical writing. Other than in the work of Alston, this is not meant as a question on the contingency and path-dependence of history, but rather as a reflection on how historians describe and evaluate the past and what role knowledge of the present may have in this context. ...
In the recent historiography on the canon law of the early modern Spanish Empire, legal historians have been considering many forms of normativity. Nevertheless, law still remains, and there is no reason to think otherwise, as a primary source of legal orders. In the case of canon law, many of the legislations drafted remained largely unknown due to their lack of recognitio by the Holy See and pase regio granted by the Spanish Monarch. Such texts were not printed and only circulated in manuscript form, likely resulting in a very low and uncertain degree of compliance. During the 20thcentury, gradually but fragmentally, many of these texts became known in academic publications. The book reviewed here finally gathers together in a single volume all the legislative texts drafted at church assemblies celebrated in the archdiocese of Santafé (today Bogotá) before 1625. ...
This collection edited by Dave De ruysscher, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy and Heikki Pihlajamäki considers what size or varieties of business were considered to be the best. The answer to this question depends on the time period under examination, and it also differs between jurisdictions. The chapters in the collection take a broad approach as they collectively cover a long time span and have a wide geographical spread. They consider examples from the Middle Ages, the early modern period and the 19th century. The places examined here are now in the jurisdictions of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain and England. As a whole, the chapters address some of the tension between the perceived advantages and disadvantages of big business against the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and also the limited liability corporation in comparison to the unlimited liability partnership form. The edited collection takes a deliberately integrative approach, as it combines concepts and ideas from legal studies with those of economic history, business studies and comparative political analysis. ...
Since the turn of the millennium, historical research has become increasingly interested in knowledge-based societies and their cultures, not least medieval ones. Whereas legal historical medieval studies have joined the interdisciplinary discussion about the notion of order as well as that of law, the notion of knowledge, and especially that of legal knowledge, has not been in the focus of interest. This observation serves as the starting point for Stephan Dusil’s habilitation thesis, which he submitted in 2016 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich and which is now available as a monograph. ...
Every now and again, one is overcome by a sense of utter disbelief. How can it be that some conventional narratives are still so persistent and influential in this day and age? In fact, they are so pervasive that one feels compelled to put pen to paper in order to combat them. Among these narratives, we find the tale of cultural evolution, where law plays a fundamental role as an instrument for rationalizing archaic societies. Having rejected this kind of historiography in his last essay on the early history of law (ZRG RA 127, 1–13), the late Raymond Westbrook instead postulated new paradigms. Moving in the same direction, Philipp Ruch thwarts this story of civilizing progress in a twofold manner: In his eyes, honor and vengeance are not the anthropological factors that law has to contain in order to create civilization. According to Ruch, and the main thrust of his 2016 dissertation, it was in fact law in the context of honor and vengeance that produced emotionality. ...
In the past 30 years, the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the modernist frame of politics have promoted the historical turn of international law. A non-Eurocentric narrative of international law is needed not only to help it go beyond the geographical and conceptual self-justification, but also to open itself to other normative orders. This presents an intellectual and normative challenge to legal historians, who increasingly explore the normative dialogue and competition in interstitial areas, such as South and Southeast Asia in their existence between the Islamic, Sinocentric and European orders. It is this issue and this important era of globalisation that Clara Kemme’s book examines roughly over the period from 1500 to 1900, in particular how the key concepts of tribute and treaty were understood through diplomatic ideas and practices in South and SoutheastAsia, how the treaty system as a product of international law became global and why it prevailed over other systems of order (2). ...
Many historians of Britain (and indeed, many Britons) celebrate that nation's "splendid isolation" from what they often deem "the continent," a.k.a. Europe. Scholars ranging from J. D. B. Clark to Linda Colley frame the formation of the United Kingdom as a "modern" state and a "modern" nation over the course of the eighteenth century as a process either unique to the British Isles or one that occurred as a (more often than not, positive) reaction to political and religious developments occurring across the English Channel. Few of these historians acknowledge that from 1715 until 1837, the British monarch also was the elector (after 1806, king) of Hanover, and that for most of this period the interests of that electorate/kingdom played a significant role in British politics and foreign policy, just as Ireland and Scotland had while they were in personal union with England. Those who note this union refer to these rulers as "The Hanoverians" (as a bevy of titles of works on eighteenth-century Britain attest to), but by and large, they minimize any influence that the actual or ancestral homeland of these rulers had in Great Britain besides the bequeathing of their dynastic name or, more negatively, the involvement of a reluctant "Blue Water" power in "European" wars of little significance to her. ...
Mike Rapport is one of the few scholars who write European history not as the history of a few select countries, but of the entire continent. Rapport is at home in the history of the Balkans as well as France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Scandinavia, and well versed in the historiography published in English, French, and Italian. Rapport's well-rounded viewpoint is one excellent argument for anyone suffering from "1848 fatigue" after the sesquicentennial celebrations and their aftermath in conference volumes and historiographical reviews to put aside any skepticism regarding the possibility of anyone presenting a novel perspective; the book itself is another. In it, Rapport offers a narrative history of the events of 1848 in those European countries and regions affected directly by the revolution--France, Italy, the German states, Denmark, and Rumania--with some remarks on areas where the impact was more indirect (Britain, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Scandinavia). This book is less obviously an academic textbook than Jonathan Sperber's excellent survey of the revolutions of 1848, and less encyclopedic than the survey of national events and overarching themes edited by Dieter Dowe and others for the 1998 anniversary. ...
As Alex Potts points out in his essay, "Colors of Sculpture", "all sculpture is colored, in a literal sense". Yet, despite the fact that the addition of colour to objects as well as its presence as an inescapable fact of sculptural media makes imperative its inclusion in any consideration of sculptors’ intentions and the meaning of their work, Amanda Claridge is right to note in her review, that polychromed sculpture has been given short shrift in the post-enlightenment settlement. ...
The study of civilization is one of the core subjects of international legal history. This is no recent development. Jörg Fisch published his seminal work "Die Europäische Expansion und das Völkerrecht" in 1984, the same year in which Gerrit W. Gong presented his renowned "Standard of Civilization". Today, the more recent works by Martti Koskenniemi and Antony Anghie probably represent the most influential research in this field. What all these path breaking works have in common is that they discuss concepts of civilization in international law especially with regard to its function as providing justification narratives for the European/non-European unequal relations, in particular in the 19th century. ...
"In the beginning all the World was America" reads the iconic opening of § 49 in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. Beyond mentioning "America", Locke’s theory and the story told by Juan Pablo Scarfi in The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas share an unsettling resemblance. The expansion of international law and the deepening of legal techniques for the purposes of US hegemony in the American hemisphere, the invasion of politics by the language of science, the double standard, one of real military and monetary interventions, and another of (usually) suave diplomatic correspondence about the advantages of pan-Americanism, all are part and parcel of The Hidden History. Moreover, around the mid-20th century the pattern extended around the entire globe. Therefore, as Scarfi elegantly suggests, the interventions in Latin America by the newly established US empire in the early 20th century had the nature of laboratory experiments. In the end, all the world was America again, but with a good number more of international organizations, institutions devoted to the scientific study of international law, and international legal norms and principles. This image, of course, simplifies tremendously the complex history of the past century. However, it summarizes the message of Scarfi’s book. ...
It was seventeen years ago when the first same-sex marriage was celebrated in a civil ceremony in Amsterdam, right after the Dutch Parliament passed legislation that legalized same-sex marriages. Since then, same-sex marriage has become legal in over two dozen countries worldwide. Last year, the German Bundestag added Germany to the growing list of countries where same-sex couples can obtain a legal marriage license. The past decades have indeed witnessed social mobilizations around the globe for LGBTI+ rights. Whether through legislation, court rulings, or popular referenda, 25 countries grant full juridical marital recognitions only recently enjoyed by opposite-sex partners to all citizens, regardless of their gender and sexual preferences. However, this legal evolution has been uneven. Currently, in many countries, LGBTI+ relations not only contravene moral codes but are still punishable crimes with varying amounts of prison time, fines, and in a few cases, with the death penalty. ...
We live in the age of commentaries. When I was a law student at Heidelberg University and wrote a take-home exam on private law in the mid-1990s, I had to survey eight commentaries on the German Civil Code. Today, students have to check twice as many commentaries, among them whoppers like the Historical-Critical Commentary and the Beck "Grand" Online-Commentary, the latter still in progress with more than 400 individual contributors – not paragraphs. Publishers and editors must use all kinds of incentives to lure new authors onto their juridical treadmills. Nobody needs an oracle to predict that most of the commentaries without a digital interface will soon vanish – sometimes to the relief of their authors, who are deeply frustrated by the lack of citations in textbooks and court cases. There is no need for the Club of Rome to issue a paper on the limits of legal commentaries. Despite all this intertextual Darwinism, the commentaries call to mind a kind of legal oasis with plenty of resources. The desert beyond buries the few remaining "grand" textbooks that traditionally developed legal principles and legal system. The commentaries can provide no guidance on these points. Their focus lies on practical details, not overarching structures. It is no wonder that mainstream contemporary German legal writing on private law is unable to master the overwhelming number of changes in the German Civil Code introduced over the last two decades. ...
The four tomes included in La herencia de Cristóbal Colón. Estudio y colección documental de los mal llamados pleitos colombinos (1492–1541) are a scholarly contribution intended to settle the decades-long debate around the lawsuits that were (erroneously) designated in the historiography as the pleitos colombinos (Columbian lawsuits). The archival discoveries made by Consuelo Varela, Bibiano Torres, Antonio López Gutiérrez, Isabel Velázquez Soriano and Anunciada Colón de Carvajal (researcher and descendant, as it turns out, of Christopher Columbus) have led to a substantial revision of some preliminary and tentative arguments outlined earlier in partial editions of these documents. That is, the claim put forward by professors José Manuel Pérez-Prendes and Anunciada Colón de Carvajal in the voluminous introductory study contained in the first volume of the four-volume set, which, including the documentary collection, comprises more than 3,500 pages. ...
It is a rare and wonderful thing when a book of 383 pages leaves a reader wanting to read more, much more in fact. That is certainly the case with this intriguing collection of thirteen assorted essays on the Rhine economy from 1815 to the present, organized in six broad topical sections: origins, enterprises, sectors and clusters, infrastructures, transport, and environment. ...
The volume under review is the result of a conference on historical graffiti held at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich in 2017. The aim of this book is to analyse — for the first time — graffiti from the ancient, medieval and modern periods in their historical and geographical contexts from an interdisciplinary point of view. Following this comparative approach the authors show the tremendous potential of this nascent area of research by investigating epigraphic material that has been neglected and underestimated by scholars for a long time. ...
In this concise volume, author and legal scholar Michael Stolleis provides an overview of the development of the modern German welfare state. Stolleis’ analysis focuses on labor law and social policy, while acknowledging the influence of economic, social, and cultural factors thereon. Origins of the German Welfare State does not emphasize a complete understanding of its subject; rather it seeks to provide insight into the development of German social policy in relation to the political/ historical eras in which it finds itself, leading to a deeper understanding of the foundations of social policy. ...
The volume under review contains the published proceedings of a conference held in 2009 with the challenging title, "Merowingische Monetarmünzen und der Beginn des Mittelalters". These Merovingian "Monetarmünzen" are a distinctive group of coins of which less than 10 000 are currently known. Quite suddenly, in the late sixth century, this type of gold coinage appears, with the name of a moneyer ( monetarius ) on the obverse and the place name on the reverse (presumably, but not necessarily in all instances, the mint). Thus, over a thousand moneyers and 722 place names are recorded, many only attested once or twice. In the late 7 th c. these coins slowly give way to a system based on the silver penny/denier, no longer showing names of moneyers. Who were these moneyers? What was their relationship with the court and the kings? To what ends were those coins produced, and how were they used in daily commerce? Why are so many different mints attested? These questions have occupied scholars for several generations now. However, Jarnut and Strothmann have added a new perspective: in how far are these coinages and the associated monetary policy a continuation of late Roman practices, or do they represent something altogether different and can, therefore, be understood as an expression of a fundamentally altered society that could be termed medieval? ...
In the last thirty years, the study of the Late Roman period has intensified and has spawned a whole new branch of study commonly known now as Late Antiquity. Within this field there are now research journals dedicated exclusively to the theme, regular congresses now convene on the same and scholarly articles and books are produced at a rate annually that makes it a herculean task to keep up with it all. Within such a historiographical framework is the Germanic invasion and settlement in Western Europe by a wide variety of tribes. Discussions on the nature and impact continue without abatement, as an example the recent works by Heather, Ward-Perkins, Goffart and others demonstrate that considerable divergence of interpretation still abound and will so for a long time. ...
In a year of many anniversaries – the death of Charlemagne 814, Council of Constance 1414, Congress of Vienna 1814, the outbreak of World War 1914 – it was appropriate to remember Bouvines 1214 for, as Pierre Monnet and Claudia Zey note in their Introduction (p. 9–15), it marked an important event in Franco-German relations with which all these events are in one way or another bound up. These two authors attach much importance to Georges Duby and his study of the battle, making it clear that the book is not about a single event, but concerned to contextualize and set it in the longue durée, hence the timespan of the title. ...
In Johannes Fried’s The Middle Ages, the author makes his case for an alternative interpretation of the medieval period as much more sophisticated than commonly thought, writes Ignas Kalpokas. The book intricately traces how ideas and systems of thought that we now consider quintessentially modern European ways of life, thinking and culture stemmed from this time period.
Over the last few years the boom in Rathenau-studies has continued. The latest addition to the list is Lothar Gall’s biography, which was published last year. Reading Gall’s biography makes it understandable why Rathenau’s life has remained such a popular subject. As a multi-facetted polyglot and business man, as an active and critical commentator of political events and contemporary trends and as an early victim of violent anti-Semitism, he remains a focus for study and research. ...
Published in good time for the 2014 "Karlsjahr", marking 1200 years since the emperor’s death, Johannes Fried’s latest book is intended to make specialist scholarship on Charlemagne accessible to a broad audience. Judging by the impressive sales figures, it has admirably fulfilled that purpose. That is not however to say that it is an anodyne synthesis of current research. The picture of the Frankish ruler it provides is very much the author’s own, as he himself emphasises, so there is little danger that it might be lost to sight amongst the many other biographies currently available. ...
Johannes Fried saves the programmatic aim of his book for the last chapter, but I’ll begin with it: unlike their counterparts in China or India or really any other center of historical civilizations, Europe has a particular disdain neither for its oldest period nor for the most recent but for the middle age (507). Some, and Fried chooses his countryman Immanuel Kant as their chief, regard the middle ages as an age lacking in the beauty of the ancient world and without the dedication to reason that his modern counterparts share. He holds Gothic architecture in particular contempt (506). Just as bad, Fried notes, are those who would romanticize the middle ages, ignoring the truly radical thought of characters like Meister Eckhart and William of Ockham, whose philosophical explorations set the stage for the most radical thought of what Kant would regard as his own era’s Enlightenment (508). In his masterful book titled simply The Middle Ages, Fried begins with Boethius and wends his way to Machiavelli in a campaign against such dismissals and such flattening accounts, telling a tale of political thought and philosophical exploration and most importantly of complexity at every step, a journey through Western Europe’s middle millennium that encourages the reader to think of the period as a truly fruitful period of intellectual, political, and social transformation. ...
In Charlemagne, Johannes Fried offers a new account of the life of the Frankish king and emperor, one of the most influential figures in European history. Although the limited surviving resources from the period make the book more of an in-depth account of the socio-political context of Charlemagne’s reign rather than a strict biography, Sara Perley welcomes this as a well-researched and engaging read that will foster curiosity about both Charlemagne and this lesser known period of history.
Wilhelmine Germany enjoyed something of an economic miracle that enabled men from modest backgrounds to become wealthy and influential. Among these was Carl Duisberg, who rose as the son of a modest ribbon weaver in Barmen to head the Bayer chemical works and later the massive German chemical trust I. G. Farben. Like others of his generation, Duisberg was the beneficiary of an excellent scientific education and the opportunities opened up by a rapidly expanding economy. In this massive and definitive biography of the man, Werner Plumpe explores Duisberg’s life as an industrial entrepreneur to uncover the role of the individual manager in the creative-destructive dynamics of capitalism, drawing on his own extensive knowledge of German entrepreneurship and industrial relations in the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras. ...
As Bernhard Jussen correctly stresses in his introduction to this essay collection, we do not need to rediscover kingship. Kings and queens have always been favorite subjects for historians--at least, one might add, as far as medieval and early modern history are concerned. But even for the premodern period, kingship has rarely been studied in long-term perspective. This lacuna is all the more striking as kingship, existent in one form or another since ancient times, seems ideally suited to such a study. A history of kingship--prescinding from specific rulers--would bring to light the very characteristics of this form of rule. Moreover, as kingship was a highly visible and politically relevant phenomenon, and thus comparatively well represented in the sources, such an approach would also allow insights into general social, political, and cultural developments. Jussen's essay collection, in filling the gap, strives for both goals. It does so in a form that, at least in the German context, is innovative. The book combines the characteristics of a single-author volume and essay collection in the sense that each chapter follows clear rules and--with some exceptions--the same structure, though written by different authors. In addition, the strict chronological order, with each of the twenty-six chapters focusing on one particular date and source, and the respective headlines in the form of general questions (for example, "How to Depose a King"), point beyond the scope of the chapter and at the same time make the process of historical analysis visible to the reader. ...
Andreas Fahrmeir’s history of the first half of the "long nineteenth century" begins with a disdainful Arthur Young travelling through France at the beginning of 1790 and ends with London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. The contrasting fortunes of France and Great Britain exemplify the contrasting concepts of the title. While the former experienced at least eleven contested regime changes – 1789, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1799, 1814, 1815 (twice), 1830, 1848 and 1850 – the British political system endured, albeit modified by reforms. Moreover, revolutionary-Napoleonic France was responsible for numerous revolutions from above elsewhere, uprooting old regimes and creating satellite states right across the continent, from the Batavian Republic to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Old Europe was not restored in 1815. With the Holy Roman Empire gone for good, the Low Countries combined in a single kingdom, Poland expunged from the map once again and the Habsburg Empire much more of an Italian and Balkan power than in the past, quite a new order had emerged. The shallow roots of the new creations ensured their future fragility. ...
The 900th anniversary of the death of Emperor Henry IV (7 August 2006) occasioned several special colloquia (in Cologne, Speyer, Goslar) and publications in celebration of the so-called "Year of the Salians" . While several scholarly publications and exhibits also appeared with specific focus on Henry IV himself, the present volume contains the papers given at a colloquium held at the University of Cologne (26–30 September 2006), which accordingly focused on the Salian dynasty’s history in the lower Rhine region. Prof. Dr. Tilman Struve (emeritus professor at the University of Cologne), who has spent much of his career studying the Salian house during the Investiture Struggle, lends his considerable expertise to framing this collection of disparate essays. ...
This study explores the development of the concept of administratio between the early Merovingian period and the late ninth century. The author’s thesis is that administration lost its original connotation of authority delegated by and exercised on behalf of the state, and that this signals the loss of an abstract awareness of the commonwealth in the early medieval period. In the fifth century the idea of administratio as public powers derived from a higher authority was still in place, but soon thereafter this conception vanished (p. 2–3). Yet when in 814 Louis the Pious became emperor, the original meaning of administratio seemed to get a revival – or, should one say, a new lease of life? Hardly, for only in Italy and Aquitaine was there any awareness left of public service as an abstract concept (p. 7–37). North of the Alps, those in charge did not understand such abstract concepts referring to "Staatlichkeit", as is shown by the fact that the authority of the Carolingian mayors of the palace was never called administratio, even though, in the original meaning of the word, the mayoral office was a clear case of delegated power (p. 16–18). ...
What happened to Jews in areas annexed to Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1941? In what ways was their persecution similar or different from that of Jews in the old Reich? What do we learn about the Nazi regime more generally by examining anti-Jewish policies in the annexed areas? This elegant volume explains how the unique demographic, economic, and social situation in each area annexed to the Third Reich played out in antisemitic policies. For some areas, such as Memel, Eupen-Malmedy, and Alsace, it offers the first overview of the persecution of Jews in a particular area. In other locations, such as Austria and East Upper Silesia, the volume presents a stellar overview of areas of the Final Solution that scholars have already well documented. But as the editors' introduction underscores, the real strength of the volume is that it examines the cases together. This, in turn, reinforces insights into some of the fundamental dynamics of the Final Solution, including the role of local initiative and the transfer of Nazi persecution practices from one area to another.
Zeitgeschichte in Germany has now been focusing for some time on the 1970s and 1980s, and has produced a substantial number of studies on the period "after the boom" (Lutz Raphael/Anselm DoeringManteuffel). By contrast, the history of the (West) German historical profession is still lagging behind and remains by and large confined to the first two postwar decades. What makes this gap even more problematic is the fact that most of the existing historiographical texts have been written by historians at the very center of the new developments during the 1970s, most notably Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, or by sympathetic observers such as Georg Iggers. Thus the critical evaluation of these decades remains a historiographical desideratum. The present volume, a Gedenkschrift for the late Wolfgang J. Mommsen, constitutes a step in the right direction. ...
With Architecture Since 1400 another volume has been added to the list of authoritative surveys of architectural history published in recent years. With 30 bit-like chapters and some 300 illustrations, this book is an ambitious attempt to write a global history of architecture that focuses on the arrival of modernity. The central idea of this survey is the shift away from the Weberian approach that views modernization as emanating from the West. Instead, in this book modern architecture is rewritten according to a global approach that allows for multiple perspectives in a multipolar world. This decentring approach is also pivotal for other parts of the book. For example, there is the much-needed effort to include women in the canon. In addition, the author exchanges a stylistic history for a social history and combines this with a narrative that maps the agents of the built environment, thus complementing the narrative of the genius-architect with that of the role played by clients, patrons and critics. In this way, Lina Bo Bardi or Zaha Hadid not only take their place next to Le Corbusier or Brunelleschi, but in addition Eleanor of Toledo is mentioned as an influential sixteenth-century ruler next to her husband Cosimo I, and Hardwick Hall in England is now considered the outcome of the cooperation between the architect Robert Smythson and the landowner Bess of Hardwick.
In this review, I argue that this textbook edited by BENNETT and CHECKEL is exceptionally valuable in at least four aspects. First, with regards to form, the editors provide a paragon of how an edited volume should look: well-connected articles "speak to" and build on each other. The contributors refer to and grapple with the theoretical framework of the editors who, in turn, give heed to the conclusions of the contributors. Second, the book is packed with examples from research practice. These are not only named but thoroughly discussed and evaluated for their methodological potential in all chapters. Third, the book aims at improving and popularizing process tracing, but does not shy away from systematically considering the potential weaknesses of the approach. Fourth, the book combines and bridges various approaches to (mostly) qualitative methods and still manages to provide abstract and easily accessible standards for making "good" process tracing. As such, it is a must-read for scholars working with qualitative methods. However, BENNETT and CHECKEL struggle with fulfilling their promise of bridging positivist and interpretive approaches, for while they do indeed take the latter into account, their general research framework remains largely unchanged by these considerations. On these grounds, I argue that, especially for scholars in the positivist camp, the book can function as a "how-to" guide for designing and implementing research. Although this may not apply equally to interpretive researchers, the book is still a treasure chest for them, providing countless conceptual clarifications and potential pitfalls of process tracing practice.
Rezension zu: H.-M. von Kaenel and F. Kemmers (eds.). 2009. Coins in Context I: New Perspectives for the Interpretation of Coin Finds. Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 23 (Mainz: von Zabern).
Rezension zu: Fabian Schuppert, Freedom, Recognition and Non-Domination: A Republican Theory of (Global) Justice (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014).
Rezension zu:
Margaret Moore, A Political Theory of Territory (New York: Oxford, 2015).
Rezension zu:
Frank Vogl, Waging War on Corruption (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012).
Shaazka Beyerle, Curtailing Corruption, People Power for Accountability and Justice (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014)
Rezension zu:
Ruben Andersson, Illegality, Inc. (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2014)
Amy Nethery and Stephanie J. Silverman (eds.), Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and its Human Impact. (London and New York: Routledge, 2015)
Responding to studies on prejudice in the Greco-Roman world, E. Gruen argues that Greeks and Romans had more nuanced and complex opinions about foreigners than often recognized. G. observes that the Greek and Romans could discover or invent links with these other societies through cultural appropriations of the past. These connections, G. contends, show that the Greeks and Romans cannot be ‘blanketed’ with xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and “let alone racism” (p. 3). G. argues that the Greeks and Romans were more interested in drawing connections with the other through cultural appropriation. G. contends that this approach reveals a positive outlook which does not reject or degrade the foreign other.
For faunistic research on a certain animal group, knowledge of the situation in surrounding countries is a necessity. The presence of certain species in neighbouring regions, together with notes on their distribution and trends, offers valuable information for the interpretation of the status of these species in one’s own study area. Changes in the national fauna – e.g. the discovery of a new species – can often better be explained when integrating information on the status of species in nearby countries. Distribution atlases are therefore not only valuable publications for the country of concern, but also for other countries in the same region.