For some years now, research has turned increasingly to the history of the European monarchy. Only recently, the theory of a continuous decline of the monarchy since the French Revolution of 1789 was fundamentally challenged. The monarchies had been a historical phenomenon of previously underestimated flexibility and efficiency, which was able to assert itself in the age of constitutionalism and…
The Aristotle annotations of Ibn Rušd or Averroes (1126–1198) form a total of the Arabic reception of the Greek philosophy and from the Late Antiquity. As such, they have had a formative influence on the respective discourses of knowledge, especially in their Latin and Hebrew translations over the centuries. The project deals with an yet unexplored part of Ibn Rušd’s natural philosophy, which at…
With its scope and diverse subject matter, Arabic literature is one of the richest in the world. Beginning in the 7th century CE, it blossomed within a civilization characterized by a vast network of cultural traditions and ties that were shaped by Islam. Like the Akkadian and Chinese literatures, Arabic literature is an ancient and erudite archive of knowledge. Until well into the 19th century,…
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…
The Coptic-Sahidic Bible is one of the most important literary witnesses of Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean. The Coptic Old Testament, which essentially dates back to the 4th century, is one of the earliest and most extensive versions of the Greek Septuagint (LXX). The translation of the Bible into Coptic was source and inspiration for the entire Coptic-Christian literature of Egypt. In…
Over a period of three centuries - from the first half of the 16th century until 1806 - the imperial Aulic Council was one of the most important institutions of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. As high court, supreme feudal house, administration institution of the imperial privileges and as political advisory body of the emperor the institution shaped the destiny of Central Europe in…
The project “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach –Online” (www.blumenbach-online.de) aims at making the rise of German science within the European context visible, and at supplying a missing part in accessible primary source material on the cultural history of the time: the publications of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. This is particularly significant with regard to an essential aspect of this period: the…
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…
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…