Klaus Oschema

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Klaus Peter Oschema (born June 29, 1972 in Bamberg ) is a German historian who researches the history of the high and late Middle Ages .

Oschema has been Professor of Medieval History at the Ruhr University Bochum since 2017 . He focuses on the aristocratic culture in Burgundy, social and political notions of order in the Middle Ages (friendship, kinship), the term and concept of "Europe" in the Middle Ages, symbolic communication and the role of astrologers as experts in the late Middle Ages.

Life

Klaus Oschema passed the Abitur in July 1991 at the Clavius-Gymnasium in Bamberg. From 1993 to 2000 he studied medieval history, philosophy, English linguistics and medieval studies at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg and the Université de Paris X - Nanterre . His teachers and sponsors include Bernd Schneidmüller , Klaus van Eickels , Gert Melville , Michel Pastoureau and Jean-Claude Schmitt . In March 2000, he completed his master's degree in Bamberg with the work between worldview and worldview , supervised by Bernd Schneidmüller . Studies on the concept of Europe from the 12th to 15th centuries .

From November 2002 to October 2007 he was assistant for medieval history with Rainer Christoph Schwinges at the University of Bern . In April 2004, Oschema received his doctorate with the work, Friendship and Proximity in Late Medieval Burgundy , supervised by Gert Melville and Michel Pastoureau . For his dissertation he was awarded the 2007 Bern Medieval Center Prize for Young Medievalists. From October 2007 to February 2012 Oschema was assistant for medieval history at the University of Heidelberg. From March 2012, Oschema was an academic advisor at Heidelberg University. In April 2012, he completed his habilitation there at Schneidmüller for Medieval History and Basic Historical Sciences with the thesis Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages .

From March to September 2014, Oschema was a substitute professor for Medieval History at the Goethe University in Frankfurt . In November 2015 he was appointed adjunct professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. From September 2016 to April 2017, he was a Gerda Henkel Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . Oschema has turned down a call to the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald for a W3 professorship for Medieval History and accepted a call to the Ruhr-University Bochum . Since May 2017 he has been teaching there as a professor for the history of the Middle Ages (especially the late Middle Ages). There he gave his inaugural lecture in May 2018 on the topic of “End times or optimism? On the Future of the Late Middle Ages ”.

He is a member of the Association of Historians in Germany , the Medievalist Association , the Swiss Society for History and the Konstanz Working Group for Medieval History (since 2019).

Research priorities

His research focuses on questions of the high and late medieval intellectual and cultural history, ideas of Europe in the Middle Ages and modern times, and the role of astrologers as experts in the late Middle Ages. His dissertation deals with friendship and gestures of friendship at the court of the Dukes of Burgundy . This was the first time that the topic of friendship in the Middle Ages was treated from the perspective of the late Middle Ages. Oschema sees the Burgundy of the Valois dukes as particularly suitable as an object of investigation , since it shows “a strong interaction between literature and life practice” and it is also “on the threshold of that upheaval towards modernity” with the accompanying “individualizing tendencies” ". In the first main chapter, Oschema deals with the forms and structures of friendships (249–385). In his conclusion, he interprets the numerous mentions of friendship in the Middle Ages in the Burgundian chronicles of the 15th century as personal ties "that obeyed a predominantly pragmatic-functional logic". According to Oschema, friendship means “loyalty and solidarity that had to be achieved in the long term and that grew out of a bond as obligations”. In the second main part of the work, Oschema dedicates himself to the gestures of closeness (387–608.) In doing so, he examines various hand gestures, hugs, kisses, riding a horse together or sleeping together in the same bed. Oschema notes that in a “culture of the gesture”, various aspects appear in the gestures, such as social order, legal liability or emotions.

The eight lectures at a Bern conference in May 2005 on the subject of friendship or 'amitié'? In 2007, Oschema published a political-social concept of the premodern in an inter-lingual comparison (15th – 17th century) as an anthology. The question is whether friendship in the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern period was an independent “concept of personal bond” or whether “instead, for the different cultures of premodern Europe, it is just a cipher with which certain aspects of the are actually addressed through relationships or relationships determined by rule ”. As a basic assumption, Oschema formulated that in the late Middle Ages different "conceptual and thus perhaps also conceptual differences" emerged, which can be traced back to the different cultural areas as linguistic communities. Eight contributions examine the political and social concept of “friendship” or “amitié” between the 15th and 17th centuries in France, the Empire and the Confederation . The contributions from a lecture series from the winter semester 2005/06 at the Bern Medieval Center on rites, gestures and ceremonies were published by Oschema in 2008 together with Edgar Bierende and Sven Bretfeld . The aim of the anthology is to bring together interdisciplinarity in ritual research. In spring 2008, Oschema and Rainer Christoph Schwinges organized a conference on the life and work of the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold in collaboration with the Historical Museum in Bern . The occasion was the exhibition Charles the Bold (1433–1477). Art, war and court culture in the Historisches Museum Bern. Two years after the international event, the 18 contributions were published. In July 2008 a conference was held in Bern on the occasion of Rainer Christoph Schwinges' retirement. Her goal was to “question the idea of ​​the Middle Ages as a time of stagnation”. Oschema and Christian Hesse published the contributions to the conference in 2010.

In 2015, Oschema published an anthology with Cristina Andenna, Gert Melville and Jörg Peltzer on hierarchy and idoneity in courtly societies in the Middle Ages. According to the foreword, the editors and authors pursue the goal of "using the concept of 'performance' to test and explore a specific approach to the historical-scientific approach to central phenomena and aspects of the (European) Middle Ages." The case studies ask about the possibilities and limits of the performance concept . In the introduction, Oschema dealt with the theoretical fundamentals, whereby the difficulties with the concept of performance begin with its delimitation from the concept of ritual . According to Oschema, the essential feature of performance lies in the individualized, concrete action, "which, despite the repeatability of action patterns and structures, represents the irretrievable 'real substrate' of the historical level of knowledge". In its own contribution, Oschema honors performative qualities as an analysis category using the example of medieval generals' speeches.

Another focus of Oschema are concepts of Europe in the Middle Ages and in medieval research. Since the fundamental study by Jürgen Fischer in 1957, the view has been that the concept of Europe has been flattened to a purely geographical name since the 11th to the 15th century. Oschema contradicted this view with numerous documents from the 12th to 15th centuries in a study published in 2001. With his habilitation in Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages , Oschema pursues the goal of "promoting a new, critical debate on the European topic in the narrower sense, but also on the methodological pitfalls of the close connection between historical analysis and the world of historians" . Since Jürgen Fischer's work on the history of concepts, no more comprehensive reviews of the medieval concept of Europe have appeared. With his work, Oschema wants to explore not only the political imprints of the concept of Europe, but also the "cultural charges and interpretations of the concept of Europe in the Middle Ages". Oschema's work not only bundles numerous recent research on the concept of Europe in the Middle Ages in 17 chapters, but also takes into account a comprehensive collection of material. For the first time, the late Middle Ages are taken into account in detail. In his investigation, Oschema comes to the conclusion that, contrary to popular research opinion, Europe cannot be described as a rare word for the Latin Middle Ages. Oschema refuted the view of a long low phase of the concept of Europe between the Carolingian era and the Turkish wars . Rather, he speaks of a "more finely differentiated development that can record striking advances in the 9th and 10th centuries, in the 13th century and again in the 15th century". Oschema's work is considered a standard work on the history of Europe. The concept of Europe in the Middle Ages was not used for a political ideal or as a goal of utopian unification plans, but as a synonym for “home of Christianity”. Therefore, the term was often used when a military confrontation with the "pagan" world was imminent, such as at the time of the Crusades or in the defense of the Mongols.

In autumn 2018, Oschema and Bernd Schneidmüller organized a Reichenau conference of the Konstanz working group on the topic of “Future in the Middle Ages. Time concepts and planning strategies ".

Fonts

Monographs

  • Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages (= Middle Ages Research. Vol. 43). Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2013, ISBN 978-3-7995-4362-0 ( digitized version ).
  • Friendship and closeness in late medieval Burgundy. Studies on the area of ​​tension between emotion and institution (= norm and structure. Studies on social change in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Vol. 26). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-36505-X .

Editorships

  • with Ludger Lieb , Johannes Heil : Abrahams Erbe. Competition, conflict and coexistence of religions in the European Middle Ages (= The Middle Ages. Perspectives of Medieval Research. Vol. 2). De Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2015, ISBN 3-11-040567-9 .
  • with Jörg Peltzer , Christina Andenna, Gert Melville: The performance of the mighty. Ranking and idoneity in courtly societies of the late Middle Ages (= RANK. Political-social orders in medieval Europe. Vol. 5). Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2015, ISBN 978-3-7995-9125-6 .
  • with Rainer C. Schwinges: Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Prince between the European nobility and the Swiss Confederation. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2010, ISBN 3-03-823542-3 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ See the review by Heribert Müller in: Journal for historical research . 35 (2008) pp. 98f.
  2. ↑ Margaret Bridges: BMZ Prize for Young Medievalists, awarded on June 14, 2007 Laudation for Dr. Klaus Oschema
  3. ↑ Klaus Oschema: Friendship and closeness in late medieval Burgundy. Studies on the tension between emotion and institution Cologne et al. 2006, p. 27.
  4. ↑ Klaus Oschema: Friendship and closeness in late medieval Burgundy. Studies on the tension between emotion and institution Cologne et al. 2006, p. 380.
  5. ↑ Klaus Oschema: Friendship and closeness in late medieval Burgundy. Studies on the tension between emotion and institution Cologne et al. 2006, p. 382.
  6. ↑ Klaus Oschema: Friendship and closeness in late medieval Burgundy. Studies on the tension between emotion and the institution Cologne et al. 2006, p. 602ff.
  7. ^ Klaus Oschema: Introduction. In: Ders .: (Ed.): Friendship or "amitié"? A political-social concept of the premodern in an inter-lingual comparison (15th – 17th centuries). Berlin 2007, pp. 7–21, here: p. 13.
  8. ^ Klaus Oschema: Introduction. In: Ders .: (Ed.): Friendship or "amitié"? A political-social concept of the premodern in an inter-lingual comparison (15th – 17th centuries). Berlin 2007, pp. 7–21, here: p. 15.
  9. ↑ Karl-Heinz Spieß : Innovation in power generation and technology in the Middle Ages. In: Christian Hesse, Klaus Oschema (Hrsg.): Awakening in the Middle Ages - Innovation in pre-modern society. Studies in honor of Rainer C. Schwinges. Ostfildern 2010, pp. 87–124, here: p. 102.
  10. ↑ Klaus Oschema, Cristina Andenna, Gert Melville, Jörg Peltzer (eds.): The performance of the mighty. Rank and Idoneity in Courtly Societies of the Late Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2015, p. 7.
  11. ↑ Klaus Oschema: 'That' and 'how'. Performance and performative quality as categories of historical analysis. In: Klaus Oschema, Cristina Andenna, Gert Melville, Jörg Peltzer (eds.): The performance of the mighty. Rank and Idoneity in Courtly Societies of the Late Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2015, pp. 9–31, here: p. 11.
  12. ↑ Klaus Oschema: 'That' and 'how'. Performance and performative quality as categories of historical analysis. In: Klaus Oschema, Cristina Andenna, Gert Melville, Jörg Peltzer (eds.): The performance of the mighty. Rank and Idoneity in Courtly Societies of the Late Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2015, pp. 9–31, here: p. 20.
  13. ↑ Klaus Oschema: Performance and War Success: Performative Qualities as an Analysis Category Using the Example of Medieval General Speeches. In: Klaus Oschema, Cristina Andenna, Gert Melville, Jörg Peltzer (eds.): The performance of the mighty. Rank and Idoneity in Courtly Societies of the Late Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2015, pp. 73–101.
  14. ^ Jürgen Fischer: Oriens - Occidens - Europa. Concept and thought “Europe” in late antiquity and in the early Middle Ages. Wiesbaden 1957, p. 115.
  15. ↑ Klaus Oschema: The concept of Europe in the high and late Middle Ages. Between geographical worldview and cultural connotation. In: Yearbook for European History , Vol. 2 (2001), pp. 191–235.
  16. ^ Klaus Oschema: Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2013, foreword p. 5.
  17. ^ Jürgen Fischer: Oriens - Occidens - Europa. Concept and thought “Europe” in late antiquity and in the early Middle Ages. Wiesbaden 1957.
  18. ↑ See the reviews of Hans-Werner Goetz in: Das Mittelalter Perspektiven Mediävistischer Forschung . 21 (2016), pp. 226-228, here: p. 226; Wolfgang Kaufmann in: Das Historisch-Politische Buch 62nd vol. (2014), p. 482f.
  19. ^ Klaus Oschema: Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2013, p. 79.
  20. ^ Klaus Oschema: Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2013, p. 512.
  21. ^ Klaus Oschema: Pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages. Ostfildern 2013, p. 513.
  22. ^ See the review by Klaus Herbers in: Journal for historical research . 43 (2016) p. 77f.
  23. ↑ See the discussion by Wolfgang Kaufmann in: Das Historisch-Politische Buch 62. Jg. (2014), p. 482f.
personal data
SURNAME Oschema, Klaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oschema, Klaus Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Bamberg