Benjamin Scheller

Benjamin Scheller (* 1969 ) is a German historian .

Benjamin Scheller studied Medieval and Modern History, Social Sciences and Italian from 1990 to 1995 at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main, the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin. The Magister Artium followed in 1995 at the Humboldt University in Berlin . He received his doctorate in 2002 under Michael Borgolte at the Humboldt University in Berlin with a thesis on the Jakob Fugger des Reichen foundations before and during the Reformation (approx. 1505 to 1555). From 1999 to 2002 he was a research fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin. From 2002 to 2010 he was a research assistant at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2006/2007 he was a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Pisa . In 2009 he qualified as a professor for Medieval History at the HU Berlin. In the 2010/11 winter semester he was visiting professor for the history of the Middle Ages at the Institute for Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna .

Since the summer semester 2011 he has been teaching as professor for history of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period at the University of Duisburg-Essen . He was a research fellow at the Historisches Kolleg in 2016/2017 . The research project “The Birth of Risk: Contingency, Calculation and Commercial Practice in the Mediterranean Area of ​​the High and Late Middle Ages” was funded. He published the first results of this research project on marine insurance in the Middle Ages in the historical journal . Since the winter semester 2013 he has been the deputy spokesman for the Graduate School 1919 of the German Research Foundation (DFG) “Prevention, Foresight, Prediction: Coping with Contingency through Future Action”. Since the winter semester in 2018 he has been the spokesman for the DFG research group 2600 “Ambiguity and Differentiation. Historical-cultural dynamics ”.

His main research interests are the history of interreligious and transcultural relationships in the Middle Ages, religious conversions in the Middle Ages, the history of southern Italy in the late Middle Ages, the history of risk, the history of European expansion in the late Middle Ages, the history of the city, the history of the foundation system. In his dissertation he dealt with the history of the three major Augsburg foundations, Jakob Fugger the Rich. In his habilitation, he examined the consequences of the mass conversion of over 20 Jewish communities to Christianity in mainland southern Italy around 1292. The mass conversion in the Kingdom of Naples in 1292 is the only medieval mass conversion of Jews to Christianity in the history of Europe outside of the Iberian Peninsula and other Spanish domains. Scheller was able to show that this did not go back to the deliberate implementation of the King of Sicily (Naples) or the inquisitors, but was the “result of an inquisitorial persecution of the Jews” that “had cumulatively radicalized” and “that it took place in the Kingdom of Naples [. ..] because it was embedded in a political constellation that brought with it a specific elective affinity ”. This "elective affinity between the interests of the monarchy and those of the inquisitors from the Dominican order " consisted in the fact that the Jews in southern Italy were legally and fiscally not subject to the monarchy, but to the episcopate.

Fonts

Monographs

• The city of the new Christians. Converted Jews and their descendants in the Trani of the late Middle Ages between inclusion and exclusion (= Europe in the Middle Ages. Vol. 22). Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-05-005977-8 .
• Memoria at the turning point. The Jakob Fugger des Reichen foundations before and during the Reformation (approx. 1505–1555) (= Foundation Stories . Vol. 3). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-004095-5 .

Editorships

• Cultures of Risk in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Age (= Writings of the Historical College. Vol. 99). De Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-061891-4 .
• with Christian Hoffarth: Ambiguity and the order of the social in the Middle Ages (= The Middle Ages. Supplements. Vol. 10). De Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 3-11-060587-2 .
• with Tillmann Lohse: Europe in the world of the Middle Ages. A colloquium for and with Michael Borgolte. De Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035096-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Benjamin Scheller in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by Benjamin Scheller in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii
• Page from Scheller at the University of Duisburg − Essen

Remarks

1. ↑ Benjamin Scheller: The Birth of Risk. Contingency and commercial practice in Mediterranean sea trade in the High and Late Middle Ages. In: Historische Zeitschrift 304 (2017), pp. 305–331.
2. ↑ See the reviews by Gregor Rohmann in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 53 (2005), pp. 556–557; Andreas Zajic in: Sehepunkte 6 (2006), No. 6 [15. June 2006], ( online ); Christof Paulus in: Journal of the Historical Association for Swabia 99 (2006), pp. 509–510 ( online )
3. ↑ See the reviews by Kristjan Toomaspoeg in: Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 71 (2015), pp. 862–864 ( online ); Hubert Houben in: Journal for Historical Research 43 (2016), pp. 547–549 ( online ); Hans-Martin Kirn in: Sehepunkte 16 (2016), No. 3 [15. March 2016], ( online ); Arno Widmann Benjamin Scheller: The City of the New Christians Invent themselves. In: Berliner Zeitung October 16, 2014 ( online ); David Abulafia in: The English Historical Review 130 (2015), pp. 706-707; Wolfgang Gruber in: H-Soz-Kult , December 19, 2014, ( online ).
4. ↑ Benjamin Scheller: The city of the new Christians. Converted Jews and their descendants in the Trani of the late Middle Ages between inclusion and exclusion. Berlin 2013, p. 11.
5. ↑ Benjamin Scheller: The city of the new Christians. Converted Jews and their descendants in the Trani of the late Middle Ages between inclusion and exclusion. Berlin 2013, p. 39.
6. ↑ Benjamin Scheller: The city of the new Christians. Converted Jews and their descendants in the Trani of the late Middle Ages between inclusion and exclusion. Berlin 2013, p. 76.