This volume presents the first pan-Mediterranean panorama of Late Antique mortuary practices, combining and contextualizing an abundant dataset of archaeological and epigraphic evidence. In 17 contributions, a group of international specialists discusses funerary evidence from 14 Late Antique landscapes, in order to show the high diversity of microregional and local customs in funerary cultures as well as the significance of global trends. In this volume various new methodological approaches are applied: the materiality of epitaphs and tombs, their visibility, their accessibility, their perception, their setting within shifting spatial environments, as well as their crucial role within social practices. Therefore, this book fundamentally reshapes our understanding of mortuary habits and the commemoration of the dead during the transitional phase of the Long Late Antiquity.

This book deals with a neglected area of the judicial reappraisal of the Nazi regime: the handling of the crimes against the Central and Eastern European Roma minority in West German NSG trials. It provides a comprehensive insight and overview, informs about the legal prerequisites of the West German judicial special path, and presents the course of proceedings and the roles of the defendants, witnesses and judicial personnel for a number of proceedings. The focus is on the joint trial on the “Zigeunerkomplex” (“Gypsy Complex”, 1958–1970), which was planned as a major trial alongside the first Auschwitz trial and which, contrary to its goal, had little impact and is now forgotten.

Il presente volume esamina la vecchiaia e l’invecchiamento come appaiono nelle epoche premoderne e, in particolare, nel medioevo. Combinando prospettive provenienti dalla gerontologia da una parte e dalle discipline umanistiche, in particolare la ricerca storica, dall’altra, si cerca di aprire la strada a nuove conoscenze. I contributi gerontologici propongono teorie e metodi che sono fondamentali per analizzare gli sviluppi storici, mentre quelli umanistici offrono evidenza storica attraverso casi di studio.

This book investigates old age and ageing in premodern times, with a special focus on the Middle Ages. Perspectives from gerontology and the humanities, and above all from history, are combined to provide novel insights. The gerontological articles explain key theories and methods that are relevant for the analysis of historical developments, while the contributions from the humanities offer historical evidence complementary to these inputs.

Pubblicato in occasione del 70° compleanno di Hubert Houben, questo volume si concentra sull’oltrepassare dei confini come uno dei temi cari al festeggiato. Prendendo come punto di partenza un concetto di confine come costruzione sociale, le autrici e gli autori affrontano casi selezionati di scavalcamento di confini spaziali, culturali e legali durante il Medioevo. La complessità e la multiperspettività che ne derivano riflettono metodi e tradizioni di ricerca diversi, che insieme rivelano un ampio spettro di approcci possibili al tema dell’attraversamento dei confini.

Published on the occasion of Hubert Houben’s 70^th birthday, this volume focuses on border crossings as one of the topics dear to the jubilarian. By starting from a concept of borders as a social construct, the authors look at selected cases of transcending spatial, cultural and legal boundaries in the Middle Ages. The resulting complexity and multi-perspectivity reflects different research methods and traditions, revealing a broad spectrum of possible approaches to the topic of border crossings.

Thinking about language contact and language mixture has been part of the European-Western preoccupation with language from the very beginning. Starting with Plato in the fourth century B.C., it is for a long time an unexcited reflection, until the perspective changes radically in the 19th century: the normality is suddenly gone, contact and mixture become first a research taboo and only a little later a serious research focus, from which a separate discipline, contact linguistics, emerges. This book tells for the first time the history of the study of language contact up to the threshold of the 20th century and shows how critical-historiographical studies can help to classify and advance current debates (e.g. in creole studies).

Carl Stamitz (1745-1801), Johann Stamitz's eldest son, is well known for his works, as his compositions can be found on numerous recordings and concert programmes in today's music scene. Musicologists though do not pay the same attention to this composer, who came from the ranks of the court musicians of the Electoral Palatinate. The dissertation by Friedrich Carl Kaiser (1931-2008), submitted in 1962, is still the only monograph that systematically deals with his life and his orchestral music, which was a major part of his creative work. It is a standard work that rightly appears in every bibliography on the subject. Up to now it has only been possible to view the compulsory typescript copies of the dissertation, which are distributed among a few libraries and which differ in detail from one another. The reason for this is the somewhat unusual genesis of the text, as Kaiser repeatedly made changes and additions to his Stamitz monograph over a long period of time. The present edition, which also includes Kaiser's personal copy from his estate, now provides musicology researchers with a reliable edition of this fundamental text.

The long history of cosmology did not simply end in the specialised discipline of the physical study of the universe. Rather, the times we live in are characterised by a "cosmological restlessness", which indicates that today central questions about the world and our position in it demand new answers. A look at the history and diversity of cosmology reveals a "form of expression" that is not limited to the function of a worldview (a picture of the world), but can pursue many other purposes and inscribes itself in complicated ways in the intellectual, theoretical, but also political, ethical and practical contexts of its time. This volume portrays this in many case studies, ranging from prehistory to present-day Earth system science.

This volume presents the religious, architectural, and textual background of Vãbāhā, one of the 16 main monasteries of Patan, located in one of the three royal cities of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The history of the Buddhist monastic courtyard and its objects is presented along with 42 inscriptions, dating from 1596 CE to 2021.

Representations of female Israeli soldiers are a popular subject in photography. However, a notable controversial imparting exists concerning gender and identity: heroic depictions of female Israeli soldiers as shown by the Israeli military in their official representations are in contrast to portraits which are either sexualized or appear as a form of criticism on military service as such and the responsibility of young women soldiers towards the state and the people.

This analysis focusses on aspects of the visual language and aesthetics in the context of the cultural history discourse of Zionism, as well as on stereotypes such as the ›beautiful Jewess‹ in European painting since the 18th century. The results offer a unique contribution to Jewish studies by combining methods of gender studies and art history, as well as visual studies.

General relativity is the theory of the structure and dynamics of spacetime. These lecture notes provide an introduction into the concepts of differential geometry, in particular pseudo-Riemannian geometry, and discusses the ideas behind the construction of a gravitational field equation. Exact solutions to the field equation for highly symmetric spacetimes, i.e. black holes, FLRW cosmologies and gravitational waves, are worked out. Advanced topics that are covered include Lie derivatives and the Killing equation, the derivation of the field equations from variational principles, and the formulation of field theories on curved spacetimes.

The lecture notes give an overview of modern cosmology: After introducing the necessary concepts from general relativity, the FLRW-class of cosmological models is discussed, with emphasis on dark energy. Cosmic structure formation, the necessity of dark matter and the interplay between statistics and nonlinear fluid mechanics are treated in detail. The physics behind cosmological observations that have led to the standard model of cosmology is explained, in particular supernovae, the cosmic microwave background and gravitational lensing.

Statistical physics provides the microscopic theory for thermodynamic macroscopic properties of a physical system. These lecture notes introduce the necessary concepts of statistics and analytical mechanics for equilibrium thermodynamics with partition functions. They cover classical and quantum statistics, and treat advanced topics such as Langevin dynamics, the Fokker-Planck equation and phase transitions. Many systems like ideal classical and relativistic gases are worked out in detail.

Theoretical physics is commonly taught in separate lectures, illustrating the physics behind the great constants of Nature: Electrodynamics and the speed of light, quantum mechanics and Planck’s constant, thermodynamics and Boltzmann’s constant, and finally relativity with Newton’s constant as well as the cosmological constant. In these lecture notes, the concepts of theoretical physics are illustrated with their commonalities, and phenomena are traced back to their origin in fundamental concepts.

À l’époque augustéenne (1694–1763), la ville de Dresde, résidence saxonne, devient un centre culturel du Saint-Empire. De nouveaux réseaux de personnes et de nouvelles voies commerciales mettent en place des transferts de connaissances, parmi lesquels les liens avec la France jouent un rôle prépondérant. Cette étude se penche donc sur le grand nombre de Françaises et de Français qui, à cette époque, séjournent dans la capitale saxonne pour des périodes plus ou moins longues. Les conditions préalables en France, les modalités sociales et enfin l’action française à la cour et dans la ville sont examinées à l’aide de nombreuses sources issues d’archives françaises et allemandes. Il en résulte un portrait centré sur les acteurs et à multiples facettes du transfert culturel franco-saxon.

In the Augustan era (1694–1763), the Saxon residence city of Dresden developed into a cultural centre of the Holy Roman Empire. New networks and trade routes set knowledge transfers in motion, with connections to France taking on a prominent role. This study therefore focuses on the large number of French people who came to the Saxon capital for short or long periods of time. The study includes an examination of the French prerequisites of these journeys, the social modalities and finally the French activities at court and in the city based on numerous sources from German and French archives. In this way, Christian Gründig draws a multifaceted, actor-centred picture of Franco-Saxon cultural transfer.

Louis XIV's absolutist rule, which began in 1661, was preceded by a period of intensive building activity of ascended state and financial elites in France. Among the most important of these estates, which were mostly located in the Parisian countryside, was the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte (built for Nicolas Fouquet), which serves as a case study for the interaction between social mobility and art. This volume focuses on the decoration of the château and garden, created under the direction of Charles Le Brun between 1657 and 1661, and places it in the context of comparable decoration projects of the time.

The topic of slavery is largely under-represented in the historiography of Nepal. This source book, aware of this disparity and wishing to encourage future studies on the topic, provides the reader with editions, translations and a study of selected documents and legal texts of Nepal from the period of the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. These sources are concerned with such different aspects of slavery as donations, transactions, bondservitude, forced labour, emancipation, and law.

“The four elements”: earth, fire, water, and air are on the one hand essential for life, on the other hand they can become life-threatening. Various natural disasters make our dependence on the elements tangible: e.g. we need water to live (drought causes us and other creatures to die of thirst), too much water is also not good (floods). Similarly for fire (we need warmth but fear fires), for air (we need clean air to breathe but fear air pollution), and for earth (we need solid ground under our feet but fear erosion and earthquakes). Hope and fear: times four!

In the volume “The Four Elements” edited by Joachim Funke and Michael Wink, scientists from different disciplines – theology, biology, medicine, geology, and psychology – deal with the topic and describe their respective specialist perspectives. 

La mitizzazione di Federico II e del nipote Corradino, iniziata quando erano ancora in vita ad opera dei loro sostenitori e aderenti, si è mantenuta inalterata nel corso del tempo sia in Germania sia Italia meridionale, e qui con esiti sorprendenti. Corradino era infatti ricordato nei primi decenni del Novecento nel piccolo centro di Aliano in provincia di Matera, dove Carlo Levi visse durante il Fascismo da confinato politico e dove dell’ultimo Svevo si parlava come di un eroe nazionale e si piangeva la morte.

A prescindere dalla pietà umana, che scatta soprattutto quando la morte colpisce un adolescente, lo sfortunato tentativo di Corradino di far valere i suoi diritti ereditari sul Regno di Sicilia continua ad alimentare il dibattito storiografico, perché fornisce uno spiraglio di intelligibilità sui processi politici allora in corso non solo nell’area dell’Impero romano-germanico, di cui faceva parte l’Italia centro-settentrionale, ma anche in quella delle formazioni politiche che con esso si trovarono di volta in volta ad interagire, tra cui il Regno di Sicilia. Il volume è frutto del convegno tenutosi nel 2018 presso l’Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in occasione del 750° anniversario dell’esecuzione di Corradino e dei suoi nobili compagni.

Many contemporary periodisation schemes have their roots in Europe, reflecting particular national religious or historiographical traditions and teleologies. As part of the colonial encounter they have been translated into new temporal authenticities in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Culturally determined as they are, these periodisation schemes are begging for systematic comparison in order to identify their contextual specificity and contingency. An interdisciplinary and transregional approach allows to work out categories of historical analysis that go beyond nation-bound interpretative patterns. In considering case studies from different parts of the world, the aim of this volume is to uncover some of the dynamics behind particular uses of periodisation schemes, as concepts for ordering the past.

Issue de la Révolution, la garde nationale a durablement marqué l’opinion publique et les institutions françaises. Pour la monarchie, restaurée en 1814, elle était une force d’ordre indispensable et occupait une place centrale dans la représentation politique des Bourbons. En même temps, elle était devenue symbole de maturité politique et de distinction sociale. Elle conférait une identité bourgeoise et un certain statut social. Axel Dröber se penche sur l’histoire de la garde nationale de Rennes, de Lyon et de Paris sous la Restauration et la monarchie de Juillet. Il étudie les différentes formes d’organisation des citoyens armés et leurs relations avec l’administration et le gouvernement. L’accent est mis sur l’héritage de la Révolution française, qui a marqué la société jusque tard dans le xix^e siècle et a eu une influence durable sur la discipline et l’obéissance au sein des troupes d’ordre du pays.

The National Guard, which emerged from the Revolution, left a lasting mark on French public life and institutions. For the monarchy restored in 1814, it was an indispensable upholder of order and occupied a central place in the Bourbons' external political representation. At the same time, it had become a sign of political maturity and social distinction. It conveyed bourgeois identity and social status, on which the following regime of Louis-Philippe was also built. Axel Dröber traces the history of the National Guard of Rennes, Lyon and Paris during the Restoration and the July Monarchy. He examines the organisational forms of the armed citizens and their relationship to the administration and government. The focus is on the legacy of the French Revolution, which shaped society well into the 19^th century and had a lasting influence on discipline and obedience within the country's forces tasked with upholding order.