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…
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 objective of the project is to remedy two of the most serious desiderata from the long history of the research of the German language:
The German dialects have been investigated intensively for 180 years (Schmeller 1821). For the “modern regional languages”, i.e. the linguistic variation areas, which present the spoken everyday language of most of the members of the linguistic community in…
Human evolution is a story of expansions. During the last two million years the genus Homo spread from Africa into Asia and Europe in several waves of migration. New species developed and old groups became extinct (range expansions). As early as three million years ago, hominins had established new ways of dealing with their specific environment through culture. Stone tools produced with the help…