(People in the Middle Ages, collage of pictures from Verona, Lüneburg, Lübeck, Graz;
Recording: Professor Dr. Stephan Selzer)
Welcome to the website of the Professorship for Medieval History!
When intolerable conditions of any kind are to be described in everyday language, the cipher of the “medieval conditions” is often used. This term has a history that begins in the Age of Enlightenment. Since then, the Middle Ages have served as a dark background against which the conditions and achievements of modernity stand out all the more brightly. But especially in the last few years this dark picture of the Middle Ages has also mixed with lighter colours. For a still growing festival culture, the Middle Ages evidently possessed the fascination of the fantastic and the allure of a crude, plump joie de vivre.
But this “divided image of the Middle Ages” (O.G. Oexle) has to do with the character of the epoch. The Middle Ages are the prehistory of our present, to which it leads and which it explains. And of course the Middle Ages are also present in our own living environment – in institutions, festivals and names of cities, streets and people, but of course also in material remains. But it is precisely the otherness of the medieval world that has been highlighted more clearly by research in recent decades. Because the rules of the game in politics and social action in the Middle Ages were sometimes completely different from those we know from European modernity. And because it is always necessary to perceive these anew, the images from the Middle Ages are also exposed to constant change, the decoding of which provides important insights into the time of their creation.
In this sub-subject, however, the sources and their tradition are completely different. What may seem daunting to some students at first, but it is precisely the special opportunity for knowledge of the sub-subject. Because whoever gets involved in events on medieval history will learn both methodical tools that will also be useful when studying other epochs and cultures, as well as get to know modern medieval studies that work in an interdisciplinary manner and argue in European contexts.