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This paper argues that the judicial ordeal was the subject of a lively debate in the ninth century. Research on the medieval ordeal has mainly focused on opposition to the practice in the twelfth century, attaching little significance to earlier controversy. When Carolingian-era opinions of the ordeal are discussed, they are usually seen in terms of the later ordeal debate. Using as a case study the anonymous mid ninth-century Bavarian poem, the Song of Count Timo, this paper argues that the ninth-century ordeal debate revolved around Carolingian-era concerns, rather than twelfth-century ones. Thus, the Song of Count Timo opposed the ordeal because it saw it as undermining royal control of justice in the context of the political turbulence of the 830s. Examining the Carolingian-era ordeal debate on its own terms allows us to better understand the medieval ordeal, and also the law, politics and religious thought of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within this paper, a case study on the application of drone photogrammetry at the Second World War armament bunker Weingut I is presented. The aim of the project was the mapping of the preserved remains in advance to the installation of a memorial site. In particular, the preserved concrete arch and one of the ventilation shafts were mapped by this method in high quality. Therefore, even small details of the building structure as well as several damage spots needing remediation became visible. One important advantage of drone prospecting is an enhanced occupational safety and a cost and time reduction as no further manual resources are necessary. In areas without finalized clearing for Unexploded Ordnance, other manual survey method would be especially dangerous. By comparing the photogrammetric model of the bunker Weingut I with corresponding ALS Digital Surface Models (DSM) of varying resolution, the increase in information is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed a shift to spatial perspectives in flood risk management. It is recognized that flood protection has substantial implications for land-use plans and requires attention to the functional geographies of river basins, catchments and floodplains. It is against this background that managed retreat is increasingly identified as a viable cost-effective response to flood risk. Yet managed retreat is also a political act, involving the displacement of coastal and riverine communities. In this paper, we examine the spatial imaginaries underlying managed retreat and flood risk management through an in-depth case study of a displaced village on the Danube in Upper Bavaria, Germany. The paper provides insights into the challenges posed by diverging functional, administrative and political spatial imaginaries and how this divergence contributes to perceptions of injustice. We suggest that a shift to a more relational form of communicative planning may help to address this dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The available skid resistance, or friction, in a pavement surface is a vital parameter for functional evaluations of roads due to its relation with crashes. Therefore, highway administrations must collect friction data on their road network to provide safe roads to users. Additionally, a prediction model that can forecast the available skid resistance in each road segment is necessary for an efficient pavement management system (PMS). The aim of this paper is to develop a skid resistance prediction model for the bituminous pavements of the motorway network of federal state of Bavaria, in Germany, with information that is typically available in a PMS: the Annual Average Daily Traffic , the Annual Average Daily Heavy Traffic , and the number of lanes in each segment. Despite its simplicity, with 6410 road segments of 2 and 3 lanes of the Bavarian motorway network, the model achieves a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.405. If information about the surface layer material is added, R2 increases to 0.480. Consequently, apart from predicting the minimum available friction in each lane in a motorway, the study underlines the necessity that a PMS should contain the recommended elements and additional surface layer material, because the quality of the prediction improves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper publishes the sixty-nine surviving very personal letters that Reichsgraf von Rumford wrote to Viscountess Palmerston after they met in Milan in 1793. The letters draw attention to the private domestic spaces of science and the critical importance of the aristocracy in scientific developments, topics that have both received some discussion recently. They were, however, not written with the purpose of providing historical evidence, but as part of a decade-long friendship which the letters trace, revealing, among other things, Rumford's other amours. They also describe in some detail his thoughts about his activities as a member of the governing elite in Bavaria, his scientific and engineering researches (especially the writing and publication of his Essays), as well as what he would have termed his philanthropic efforts in Bavaria, Northern Italy, Britain, and Ireland. All this is framed within the context of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that in so many ways, directly and indirectly, affected Palmerston's and Rumford's lives and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper deals with new hyaenid material from the locality of Hammerschmiede (Bavaria, Germany). The described specimens are attributed to two forms: most of the specimens belong to the species Thalassictis montadai, whereas one I3 is attributed to a large bone-cracking hyena. The material comes from the layers HAM 5 (11.62 Ma) and HAM 6 (slightly younger than 11.44 Ma) of Hammerschmiede (base of Late Miocene). The species Thalassictis montadai is well-known from late Aragonian and early Vallesian localities of central and southern Europe and west Asia. The presented material enables us to make a short review of the state-of-the-art about the fossil record of this species and to discuss its intraspecific variability. A gradual replacement of Thalassictis montadai, Thalassictis robusta and Hyaenictitherium wongii in Europe is demonstrated, until the arrival of canids during the latest Miocene. Additionally, the upper incisor of the large hyaenid creates some interesting questions concerning the first appearance of the crocutoid hyenas in the fossil record and their dominance over the percrocutoids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the swabian and franconian karsts of southern Germany have yielded rich and important neogene vertebrate faunas, the middle to late Miocene transition is still extremely underrepresented. This period is however key for the understanding of the European mammal evolution. A microtoid rodent Microtocricetus M2 is described and commented in this paper. The fossil discovered in the karst filling Petersbuch 69 is regarded herein such as derived and might be thus the youngest fossil of the genus in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in the distribution and availability of images for personal use in the late Middle Ages raises the question of their potential historical value for understanding the societies that produced and made use of them. This paper exposes the effects and the historical meanings of some woodcut illustrations of disputations between Jews and Christians: the woodcuts were widespread during the 1470s and 1480s in Swabia and Bavaria and surrounding areas, and they are still familiar and continue to play a role in shaping perceptions of Jewish-Christian relations of that period. These images do not reflect actual events: rather they are misrepresentations of polemical anti-Jewish sermons, designed as fictitious scholarly discourses. Their historical value is not limited to their ability to expose hidden angles. They can guide us to a better understanding of the written sources and to find new meanings there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary urban research, classical notions of differences in mentality between the urban and rural population as known since the writings of Cicero have once again become en vogue. The concept of ‘metropolitan habitus’, elaborated by British Sociologist Tim Butler, is the most influential revival of mental differentiation in this context. With the help of the concept of metropolitan habitus, Butler is able to differentiate between distinct gentrified neighbourhoods in London. The paper takes up this discussion of urban attitudes and lifestyles and presents a slightly different concept of habitual urbanity and residential capital, derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The main aim of these theoretical ideas is the investigation of urban-rural differences and differences within rural areas in relation to urbanity, which is not possible with Butler's urban-focused concept. Therefore, the paper defines urbanity as the contingency of a city, which means its broad range of possible coincidences due to social density. Urbanity manifests itself in the greater scope of action of its inhabitants. Habitual urbanity and residential capital are instrumental in helping people to deal with the broad range of possibilities that urban life offers. After introducing this theoretical conceptualisation, the paper presents empirical results of a visual study concerning urban-rural differences carried out in South Bavaria using the reflexive photography method. The study reveals indications that habitual differences between urbanites and the rural population in terms of urbanity and contingency still exist. These seem to be just a matter of how to respond to the challenges of strangeness and otherness. The study thus demonstrates the empirical potential of the concept of habitual urbanity and residential capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This empirical study investigates the environmental awareness of school children in Bavaria and Asturias. The analysis was based on a data-set (Bavaria, 900 students; Asturias, 182 students) that was collected in spring 2007. Students aged between 14 and 15 years responded to a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. The theoretical concept follows the premise that environmental awareness could be divided into three dimensions: environmental knowledge, attitudes and actions. The results show that there are cultural influences in the scales of knowledge, attitudes and actions. Also, different independent variables have a significant bearing on the Bavarian and Asturian students' levels of environmental knowledge, readiness to act and personal environmental action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a critical overview of school reform measures in the German state of Bavaria in the aftermath of the OECD's PISA 2000 and 2003 studies. While the highly selective Bavarian school system has provided the best test results among the German federal states, its overall performance in an international context has been less impressive. In order to improve the Bavarian education system a range of initiatives has been introduced in recent years. While following pedagogically sound ideas in most cases, however, the projects have been hampered by fiscal restraints, ideological reservations against breaking up the traditional three-tier system of secondary education, prevailing bureaucratic restrictions, and a lack of improvements in incentives for teachers' involvement in reform. As a consequence, genuine, fundamental changes in the traditional system have not so far been initiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Bavaria is far inland, at least 20 logboats are known, but only recently have some been properly recorded. This paper deals with two vessels discovered in the early 1990s. The remains at Laufen-Pfaffing represent a semi-manufactured logboat, which was purposely sunk as was the custom in Austria until the mid-20th century. The vessel from Wessobrunn-Blaik is also unfinished and shows several tool-marks. It is too narrow to float on its own: therefore it is part of a paired logboat. There is plenty of archaeological evidence for this kind of craft, but no ethnographic evidence. Apart from use as ferries, other uses are discussed. © 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of human fertility that occurred in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and elsewhere in the twentieth, remains a topic of debate largely because there is no accepted explanation for the event. This paper uses district-level data from Bavaria to study the correlates of the decline of fertility in that German kingdom in the nineteenth century, Bavaria's fertility transition was later and less dramatic than in other parts of Germany. Our results for Bavaria indicate that the European Fertility Project was right about the role of religion and secularization, but missed an important role for the economic and structural effects stressed by economic historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]