The history of cities and rivers is inextricably linked. As suppliers of water and energy, transport and traffic routes or waste disposal method, waterways were often the starting point and an indispensable prerequisite for the development of urban communities. In recent years, historians have therefore been focusing more intensively on the relevance of rivers for pre-modern cities. This research has shown that the relationship between cities and rivers cannot be understood as a dichotomous opposition of nature and culture. Instead, both are symbiotically intertwined as socio-natural sites.

The conference draws on these considerations by addressing the opportunities and challenges arising from the symbiosis of river and pre-modern city. To provide new research impulses, floodplains will also be taken into consideration. Despite their frequently emphasized importance, they remain an important desideratum, especially from the perspective of urban history. In the context of this conference, floodplains can be understood as a fluvial anthroposphere, i.e. as spaces in which, due to their intensive fluvial dynamics, a special concentration of socio-natural processes takes place. This causes far-reaching changes in the environment as well as the emergence of special patterns of human behavior and subsequently fluvial cultures.

The conference approaches the relationship between cities and rivers as well as floodplains from a transregional, comparative and cross-epochal perspective. Case studies from Western and Eastern-Central Europe will be discussed, covering the time period from the Middle Ages to the epochal threshold around 1800. Where possible, cities situated upon smaller waterways will also be included to broaden the focus of research, which is usually centered on large river metropolises.

Programme :

WEDNESDAY, March 12

13.00 : Welcome

13.15 : Erik Liebscher, Niels Lohse & Julia Schmidt-Funke, Leipzig – Introduction

14.00 : Michael Ruprecht, Leipzig – Von Fluten, Kälte und Hitze: Wetterereignisse in alten Chroniken Mitteldeutschlands

14.45 : Coffee break

15.15 : Briony McDonagh, Hull – tba

16.00 : Andrea Kiss, Wien – Large River, Small River – and the Medieval-Early Modern Hungarian Town

16.45 : Sylwia Lech, Wrocław – The Urbanistic Evolution of the Riverside Areas of Wrocław and Prague in the Medieval and Modern Periods (13th-18th Centuries)

17.30 : Coffee break

18.00 Keynote : Petra van Dam, Amsterdam – Blue Diversity. Drinking Water in the Netherlands, 1500-1850

THURSDAY, March 13

09.00 : Alexander Sembdner, Leipzig – Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser – Mühleninspektion im Raum Leipzig am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts

09.45 : Matthias Hardt, Leipzig – Hochmittelalterlicher Mühlenbau an Elbe, Havel und Spree

10.30 : Coffee break

11.00 : Severin Hohensinner, Wien – Genug Holz für Stadt und Fluss? Wiens Holzressourcen in dynamischen Donau-Auen

11.45 : Sophie Lindemann, Leipzig – Die Bedeutung der Flurnamen für die mittelalterliche Auengeschichte

12.30 : Lunch

13.45 : Excursion

16.45 : Coffee break

17.15 : Johannes Schmidt, Leipzig – Leipzig‘s Urban Fluvial Dynamics – Multi Methodological Geoscientific Approaches and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

18.00 Keynote : Theo Spek, Groningen – Moving Mosaics: Landscape Biographies of River and Brook Systems in The Netherlands

FRIDAY, March 14

09.00 : Niels Lohse, Leipzig – Aquarum explorandum utilitas et necessitas – On the Informative Value of Early Modern Chemical Analysis of Water

09.45 : Davide Martino, Bern – The Emergence of Hydraulic Experts and Bureaucracies in Early Modern European Cities

10.30 : Coffee break

11.00 : Erik Liebscher, Leipzig – Urban Water Management in Times of War

11.45 : Marius Mutz, Dresden – A hydraulic technocracy? Dealing with water in early modern Dresden

12.30 : Martin Bauch, Leipzig – Conclusion and Discussion

Informations pratiques :

International Conference, Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), 12–13 March 2024

The conference takes place at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Reichsstraße 4-6 (Entrance A), 04109 Leipzig.

Source : Universität Leipzig