Christian Pfister

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Christian Pfister (born August 23, 1944 in Bern ) is a Swiss historian .

Life

Pfister studied history and geography at the University of Bern from 1966 to 1970 , where he received his doctorate in 1974. This was followed by study visits to the University of Rochester and Norwich . In 1982 he received his habilitation. From 1990 to 1996 Pfister was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for his research on climate history . From 1997 until his retirement in 2009 he was a full professor for economic, social and environmental history at the Historical Institute of the University of Bern. Since then he has worked as a freelance researcher at the Oeschger Center for Climate Research at the University of Bern. His successor at the University of Bern in 2010 was Christian Rohr , who is a full professor of environmental and climate history. Pfister was founding president of the European Society for Environmental History (eseh). In addition to climate history, it has made a name for itself in agricultural history, population history, regional history, the history of natural disasters and the history of energy.

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Climate history

Pfister is considered one of the pioneers and most important researchers in the field of historical climatology . His research focuses on the social dimension of climate changes and natural disasters and the reconstruction of climate changes and natural disasters from historical documents for the time before instrumental measurements were made. He is known for the further development of the Pfister climate indices named after him into a powerful instrument for the reconstruction of approximate values ​​for temperatures and precipitation from historical documents. “With this, Pfister has created the link between climate history and quantitative climate science. His historical results, especially with regard to extreme events, are important supports for the assessment of risks and enable the expansion of statistics ”. The European Palaeoclimate and Man since the Last Glaciation project of the European Science Foundation (1989) became significant in the long term for historical climate research . In this context, Pfister led a research group that gathered document data from all over Europe in order to reconstruct maps of the monthly weather for the time window 1675–1715. In this context, he expanded the CLIMHIST software package developed for the documentation of the “Climate History of Switzerland” (1984) to create a European database, EURO-CLIMHIST. Since the 1990s, Pfister has gradually expanded and methodologically refined the database. Today (as of 2019) EURO-CLIMHIST is probably the largest climate history database with over 200,000 records.

Agricultural history

Agricultural- historical topics occupy a large space in Pfister's writings, as they are closely linked to the history of the climate and the history of the population. Pfister differentiates between four agricultural use zones in old Switzerland: the grain-growing area in the Central Plateau, the shepherd's land in the mountain area, a zone of field grass management in the hilly area and a zone of intensive viticulture, the wine country. The focus of his analysis and his models is on grain production in the corn country. Above all, Pfister worked out the importance of the nitrogen cycle for productivity development. The system of the old grain economy was characterized by low productivity because the lack of fertilizer could not be remedied.The improvement of the nitrogen supply through recycling and the cultivation of clover-like forage plants allowed an increase in grain yields, the field cultivation of potatoes and an upswing in milk production from early 19th century.

Population history

Since Erich Keyser's Population History of Germany (Leipzig 1938) no synthesis has been written for the early modern period. Christian Pfister, who had written a number of articles on this topic and offered a corresponding lecture, took on the task at the beginning of the 1990s of collecting, assembling and analyzing an almost unmanageable number of small-scale, at best regional and heterogeneous studies of half a century to squeeze the frame of a volume of the Encyclopedia of German History . Although new findings could not be fully discussed and complex problems could only be hinted at, the volume Population History and Historical Demography 1500–1800 (Munich 1994, 2nd edition 2007) met with a positive response. It has not been replaced to this day.

Regional history

Both the dissertation (1974) and the habilitation (1984) by Christian Pfister were, in addition to the climate history, committed to the histoire totale of the Annales school . With the focus on the canton of Bern and the economic patriots, a field of regional history opened up that continued to occupy him in the years that followed. Thanks to the fine chambers, Switzerland forms a patchwork of rooms of the most varied of characteristics. In the canton of Bern , too , the areas followed different paths in their development. Christian Pfister's monograph Im Strom der Modernisierung (Bern 1995). implements the methodical postulate of a histoire totale with extraordinary precision and spatiotemporal differentiation; and can be regarded as material history in the best sense of the word, in which energy sources and food, agricultural production methods and their modernization appear as well as the “people who procreate and give birth, eat, work, argue, invent, try, age and die, and not just to statistical series of numbers are processed ».

At the same time as ClimHist, Christian Pfister built up the BernHist database from 1984. It was of great importance for the monograph mentioned above, as well as for the associated historical-statistical atlas of the canton of Bern 1750-1995 (Bern 1998). In 2009 the database contained around 1.5 million individual data from the areas of population, economy, environment and politics for the period from 1700 to the present. A modernized version of BernHist was launched in 2019.

Energy and environmental history

Pfister divides economic and environmental history on the basis of its energy base ( biomass ; coal, oil and gas) into three fundamental social periods: agricultural societies, industrial society and consumer society. His thesis that the urgency of the climate problem and the glut of plastic waste was due to the flooding of the markets with cheap oil from the late 1950s onwards caused a stir. In environmental history, Pfister's thesis of the 1950s syndrome is largely undisputed. The corresponding anthology (Pfister 1995b) saw a second edition in 1996. A further synthesis in English was published in 2010.

History of natural disasters

From 1882 to 1976, Switzerland was largely spared from natural disasters . Pfister proves that this "disaster gap" contributed to natural risks being underestimated until the 1990s. The topic was also discovered late in historical research. In his weather forecast (1999), Pfister links the climatic variations of the last five hundred years with severe natural disasters. He carried the topic into teaching, which bore fruit with an abundance of student research work. In the anthology the day after. Some of them are summarized for dealing with natural disasters in Switzerland 1500–2000 (Bern 2002). Christian Pfister postulates that natural disasters can be seen as a pacemaker for modernization and, at least in Switzerland, were fundamental for building nationwide solidarity between the poor mountain areas and the affluent areas in the Central Plateau. With these theses, he succeeded in lending a new depth to the primarily cultural-historical discussion about the interpretation and perception of catastrophes. He also made the value of the historical processing of disasters for modern modeling and numerical simulation of the climate clear. He has written several articles on natural disasters and, together with Christof Mauch, published an anthology on this topic in 2009.

Awards

Pfister received the following awards:

  • Theodor Kocher Prize of the University of Bern (1986)
  • Honorary Member of the Romanian Scientists' Academy (1997)
  • Eduard Brückner Prize for “Outstanding Interdisciplinary Achievements in Climate Research” (2000)
  • Bronze Medal of the Faculty of Sciences at Masaryk University in Brno "for his valuable contribution to the development of scientific cooperation and to the progress of historical climate research" (2009)
  • Doctor honoris causa of the Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima "en reconocimiento a su destacada trayectoria profesional y por sus aportes en el camp de la Historia del Clima" (2010)

Publications (selection)

A complete list of his writings can be found on the website of the Historical Institute of the University of Bern. Most of the articles can be downloaded there.

As an author:

  • Agricultural economy and weather conditions in the western Swiss Plateau at the time of the Economic Patriots 1755–1797. A contribution to the environmental and economic history of the 18th century. Geographical Institute of the University of Bern, Bern 1975.
  • Climate history of Switzerland 1525–1860. The climate in Switzerland from 1525 to 1860 and its importance in the history of population and agriculture. 2 volumes. Haupt, Bern 1984, ISBN 3-258-03319-6 (3rd edition, 1988).
  • Population history and historical demography 1500–1800 (= Encyclopedia of German History . Volume 28). Oldenbourg, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-486-58157-0 .
  • In the stream of modernization. Population, economy and environment in the canton of Bern (1700–1914) (= history of the canton of Bern since 1798. Volume 4). Bern 1995 (full text) .
  • Weather forecast. 500 years of climatic variations and natural disasters (1496–1995). Haupt, Bern 1999, ISBN 3-258-05696-X .
  • Together with Christian Rohr and Antoine Jover: Euro-Climhist. A data platform from the University of Bern on weather, climate and disaster history. «Water, energy, air» 109, 2017, pp. 45–48.
  • The "Black Swan" of 1540. Aspects of a European Megadrought. In: Claus Leggewie and Franz Mauelshagen (Eds.): Climatic Change and Cultural Transition in Europe. Brill, Leiden 2018, pp. 156-196.

As editor:

  • with Peter Brimblecombe: The silent countdown. Essays in European Environmental History. Springer, Berlin / New York 1990.
  • with Hans-Rudolf Egli: Historical-Statistical Atlas of the Canton of Bern 1750–1995. Environment, population, economy, politics. Historical Association of the Canton of Bern, Bern 1998.
  • The day after. For dealing with natural disasters in Switzerland 1500–2000. Haupt, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-258-06436-9 .
  • with Daniel Di Falco and Peter Bär: Pictures of a better life. How advertising tells history. Haupt, Bern 2002.
  • with Wolfgang Behringer , Hartmut Lehmann : Cultural Consequences of the “Little Ice Age”. Cultural Consequences of the "Little Ice Age". Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-35864-4 .
  • with Christof Mauch: Natural disasters, cultural responses: case studies toward a global environmental history . Lexington Books, Lanham 2009.
  • with Martin Stuber, Peter Moser and Gerrendina Gerber-Visser: potatoes, clover and clever minds. The Oekonomische und Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft des Kantons Bern OGG (1759–2009) . Haupt, Bern 2009.
  • with Daniel Krämer and Daniel Marc Segesser: “New surcharges every week”. Food, energy and resource conflicts in Switzerland during the First World War. Schwabe, Basel 2016.
  • with Sam White and Franz Mauelshagen: The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-137-43019-9 .

literature

  • André Kirchhofer, Daniel Krämer, Christof Maria Merki, Guido Poliwoda, Martin Stuber and Stephanie Summermatter (eds.): Sustainable history. Festschrift for Christian Pfister . Chronos, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-0340-0992-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Mauelshagen: Climate history of the modern age . wbg , Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-21024-4 , p. 27 .
  2. ^ Foreword by Thomas Stocker to the interview by Hans von Storch and Heinz Wanner with Christian Pfister, December 2018 (PDF) .
  3. ^ Franz Mauelshagen: Climate history of the modern age . wbg , Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-21024-4 , p. 1, 27 f., 55-58 .
  4. ↑ BERNHIST - Historical-Statistical Database of the Canton of Bern. Retrieved June 17, 2019 .
  5. ^ Christian Pfister: The "1950s Syndrome" and the transition from a slow-going to a rapid loss of global sustainability. In: Frank Uekötter (Ed.): Turning Points in Environmental History , University of Pittsburgh Press 2010, pp. 90–117.
  6. ↑ Christian Pfister: The disaster gap of the 20th century and the loss of traditional risk awareness. In: GAIA Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 3/18 (2009), pp. 239–246.
  7. ↑ Christian Pfister . University of Bern. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Pfister, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern