Mischa Meier

Mischa Meier (born June 13, 1971 in Dortmund ) is a German ancient historian . Meier teaches as a professor of ancient history at the University of Tübingen . He is internationally recognized as a recognized connoisseur of late antiquity .

Live and act

After graduating from high school, Mischa Meier studied classical philology, history and education at the Ruhr University in Bochum in 1990 at the Burggymnasium in Essen . In 1998 he was there with Karl-Wilhelm Welwei with a thesis on aristocrats and Damods. Investigations into the inner development of Sparta in the 7th century BC And did his doctorate on the political function of the poetry of Tyrtaios . At the end of 2002 he completed his habilitation at Bielefeld University ; The topic was late antiquity , more precisely: the time of Justinian . The name of the habilitation thesis The Other Age of Justinian , published in 2003 , was based on the classic work of Berthold Rubin ( The Age of Justinian , 1960), but interpreted the rule of this "last Roman emperor", who was at a turning point, much more negatively: The The turning point, which represented the years 540–42 for Justinian's reign, was already known in principle, but was specially worked out by Meier. The core topic of the work is the fear of catastrophes and even end-of-life expectations of the population, triggered among other things by the so-called Justinian plague , natural disasters and atrocities of war. As a result, the population turned increasingly to religion, and thus indirectly the character of the late Roman Empire also changed; In 2004 a synthesis of the extensive work in the Beck Wissen series followed . In the same year Meier was honored for his reinterpretation of Justinian at the German Historians' Day in Kiel.

From 1999 to 2004 Meier worked as a research assistant at the University of Bielefeld , since 2004 he was initially C3 and is now W3 professor at the University of Tübingen . From October 2006 to September 2008 he was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History. Since 2016 Meier has been the spokesman for the Collaborative Research Center 923 “Threatened Orders” . Meier has written numerous articles on other topics. Late antiquity historiography (including the historian Prokopios ) played a major role in this ; Meier is also the editor of an anthology on the subject of the plague . In 2009 a monograph on the Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius was published , and in 2019 a very comprehensive overview of the migration period . His further research areas are archaic and early classical Greece (especially the history of Sparta ), the Roman principle and the reception history of antiquity in music and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and in historical film . Meier has been co-editor of the online review journal sehepunkte since 2008 ; since 2014 also one of the editors of the internationally renowned specialist journal Historia . Meier is a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . He declined calls to the Ruhr University Bochum (2007), the University of Freiburg im Breisgau (2009) and the University of Potsdam (2016). For 2012 he was awarded the Aby Warburg Foundation Prize, and in 2015 he was awarded the Karl Christ Prize for Ancient History .

Meier also wrote the article " Apopudobalia ", published in the first volume of the New Pauly in 1996 , which elaborates the origins of the game of football in Roman antiquity, which was popular in the author's location at the time (Bochum). A "Festschrift M. Sammer " is referred to as a reference. Due to considerable deadline pressure on the part of the editors, the joke article went to print and is today one of the most famous " submarines " of modern lexicography.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

• Aristocrats and Damods. Investigations into the inner development of Sparta in the 7th century BC And on the political function of the poetry of Tyrtaios. Steiner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-515-07430-9 (also: dissertation, University of Bochum 1998).
• The other age of Justinian. Experience of contingency and coping with contingency in the 6th century AD (= Hypomnemata. Investigations into antiquity and its afterlife . Volume 147). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-25246-3 (at the same time: habilitation paper, Bielefeld University 2002; review at H-Soz-u-Kult ; review (Plekos) ; review ( see points ) ).
• Justinian. Rule, empire and religion. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-50832-4 ( review (sehepunkte) ; review (H-Soz-u-Kult) ).
• Anastasios I. The emergence of the Byzantine Empire. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-608-94377-1 .
• with Steffen Patzold : August 410 - A fight for Rome. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-94646-8 .
• Caesar and the problem of the monarchy in Rome (= writings of the philosophical-historical class of the Heidelberg Academy of Science. Volume 52.). Winter, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 3-8253-6248-5 .
• The work of art of the future and the ancient world. Concept - contexts - effects (= Wagner in discussion, Volume 18). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2019
• History of the Great Migration. Europe, Asia and Africa from the 3rd to the 8th centuries AD Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73959-0 .

Editorships

• with Steffen Patzold: Clovis's world. Organization of rule around 500 (= Roma aeterna. Volume 3). Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-515-10853-9 .
• Pest. The story of a human trauma. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94359-5 ( review (see points) ).
• They made Europe. Historical portraits from Constantine to Charlemagne. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55500-8 .
• with Christine Radtki, Fabian Schulz: The world chronicle of Johannes Malalas. Author - work - tradition (= Malalas studies. Writings on the Chronicle of John Malalas. Volume 1). Steiner, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 3-515-11099-2

literature

• Inaugural address by Mr. Mischa Meier at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences on January 22, 2011. In: Yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for the year 2011. Heidelberg 2012, pp. 181-185 ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Mischa Meier in the catalog of the German National Library
• Page from Meier at the University of Tübingen

Remarks

1. ↑ uni'leben: The newspaper of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 01/2010 ( online ( Memento from September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ))
2. ↑ , apopudobalia 'or: Football in antiquity . In: mediaevum.de. Retrieved October 8, 2017.