With “The Tempest” from 1611, Shakespeare dedicated an entire play to a violent storm conjured up by magic. And the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age at the beginning of the 14th century was named after the Italian poet Dante Alighieri – the so-called Dante anomaly.
Today, in the 21st century, climate change is considered one of humanity’s most fundamental challenges, with heat waves, lack of rainfall, burning forests, hurricanes, floods, torrential rains and rising sea levels. But can we learn from history? Can models for overcoming current and future crises even be derived from the cultural history of the climate?
The “Middle Ages and Early Modern Age” college at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg is offering a public lecture series in the current winter semester under the motto “Weather, Climate, Culture, History,” which deals with the historical effects of weather and climate events Storms, volcanic eruptions and climate changes have always had a significant influence on society, culture and politics. Accordingly, climate has now become a field of research in the humanities and social sciences.
In the current semester, geographers, but also historians, archaeologists and literary scholars will talk about climate influences in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. It will be about climate influences in landscape painting, historical climate theories or weather phenomena in literature from Shakespeare to science fiction novels. Current issues such as climate protection and international human rights or the consequences of climate change in Lower Franconia are also discussed.
Various specialist disciplines that deal with the period from the early Middle Ages to the Baroque era have come together under the umbrella of the Medieval and Early Modern College. Historians and art historians, literary and linguistic scholars, folklorists, Slavic scholars, museologists, musicologists, legal, church and medical historians, philologists and Latinists, among others, can be found on the membership list. Previous lecture series have revolved around the declaration of human rights, the moon and magic or “cultures of loneliness”.
The series will start on Tuesday, October 17th. The Kiel geographer Hans-Rudolf Bork wants to look at the consequences of extreme weather on land use and society in the Middle Ages and early modern times. The lecture series takes place every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Toscana Hall of the Würzburg Residence (south wing, Residenzplatz 2). Admission to the events is free.
Background: The lecture series at a glance
• October 17th: The consequences of extreme weather on land use and society (?): On the resilience of societies during the Middle Ages and early modern times. Hans Rudolf Bork (Kiel)
• October 24: “The rivers of Egypt have dried up”: New research on the influence of climate change on ancient Egyptian society in the 3rd millennium BC. BC Eva Lange Athinodorou (Würzburg)
• November 7th: Rome didn’t die because of the climate (nor because of the weather). Rene Pfeilschifter (Würzburg)
• November 14th: One man’s joy, another man’s sorrow: The “Little Ice Age” in Dutch landscape painting of the 17th century. Uta Neidhardt (Dresden)
• November 21: Coloniality and Climate Change: Controversies about the Origin of the Little Ice Age. Gesa Mackenthun (Rostock)
• November 28th: “Puts of the Air”. Climate theory around 1800 and its end. Eva Horn (Vienna)
• December 5th: Shakespeare’s Tempests. Kirsten Sandrock (Würzburg)
• December 19th: “medieval futures” in science fiction novels, series and films. Christian Buhr (Würzburg)
• January 9th: North Africa, Egypt and the Levant: Society, history and climate as portrayed by Ibn Khaldun (14th century) Stefan Leder (Halle)
• January 23: Climate protection and international human rights. Stefanie Schmahl (Würzburg)
• January 30th: Climate change in Lower Franconia – a challenge for society as a whole. Heiko Paeth (Würzburg) ()
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