The “Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien français” (DEAF) is a fundamental dictionary of Old French, encompassing the timespan between 842 (date of the Strasbourg Oath between Louis the German and Charles the Bald against Lothair I transmitted in the Old High German and Old French languages) until the mid-14th century (the epochal boundary with Middle French on philological and social grounds).
Ceiling and mural paintings are constitutive elements in the design of baroque interiors. Unlike all other forms of pictorial art, these truly three-dimensional artistic media define early modern architecture literally from above, through colourful and complex iconographic programmes: in ecclesiastical as well as secular environments, in residential palaces and ceremonial halls, churches and…
In light of the rapid decline of the dialectal linguistic competence especially in the north of the German language area it is the goal of the DMW, by means of a first systematic survey of current data, to document and analyse the still tangible stocks of the dialects or the manner of speaking with the maximal variation from standard of two generations of speakers in the Midwest of Germany.…
The decrees of the Frankish rulers are known as capitularies because of their subdivision into chapters (lat. capitula). They are amongst the most important sources for the history of the Frankish kingdoms. They are instructions similar to laws, ordinances or provisions, regulating political, military, ecclesiastical, social, economic and cultural matters.
Written sources are – like art and buildings – integral parts of the cultural heritage, whose preservation, indexing and provision are central social duties. The knowledge of the past is principally based on texts, that more or less accidentally escaped destruction. These records preserve the knowledge, the faith, the tales, the visions and dreams of the people. They give testimony of past…
The foundation of modern Nepal, which until 2007 was styled as the 'only Hindu kingdom (of the world)', goes back to the middle of the 18th century when Pṛthvīnārāyaṇa Śāha, King of Gorkha, started expanding his dominion. Conquering many petty states, such as the rich Malla kingdoms of Kathmandu Valley in 1768/69, the Shah kings soon ruled over a large territory, which subsequently developed into…
The research project “Runische Schriftlichkeit in den germanischen Sprachen / Runic Writing in the Germanic Languages (RuneS)” investigates the oldest writing system in the Germanic languages, the runic script. As a means of communication this script was used in different variants in large regions of Europe (with centres in what is now Germany and the Netherlands, in Great Britain and…
The project “Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM)” is funded with 5,42 Million Euros and is set to run for 15 years. It is located at the institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology of the University Bonn. The project manager is Professor Dr. Nikolai Grube, who is an internationally renowned expert in the field of Maya research and a member of the North…
The staff of the project “Turfanforschung” edits central Iranian and old Turkic texts from the Turfanian text corpus (Turfansammlung). The texts of the “Turfansammlung” originated from the Central Asian oases along the silk road and date from the 7th to the 14th century CE. In the year 1902, the former Prussian Academy of Sciences received a considerable amount of texts from an expedition to East…
Uwe Johnson (1934-1984) is one of the most important authors of German in the era of two-state identity. His novels tell of German history in a context far beyond Germany. With his essays and articles, Johnson developed the position of a “public intellectual”. His highly literary correspondence is on an equal footing with the literary work, commenting critically on post-war history in an…