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This article is an English translation by Anna-Grethe Rischel of Julius von Wiesner’s pioneering study of the oldest specimens of rag paper of Central Asian origin conducted soon after the discovery of large collections of manuscripts found in Dunhuang. This work, impor­tant for philology, codicology and paper history was fundamental to studies of paper as writing support of old manuscripts carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. The text written in German is little known and is therefore offered here in English.

We normally hardly notice the mass-produced paper products that pass through our hands on a daily basis, which we then recycle. In fact it has recently been predicted that books printed on paper will be replaced by digital formats. However, paper endures and specialist craft papers are now being produced in increasing quantities, especially valued by artists and conservators, but also by tourists visiting paper-producing areas around the world. Paper is therefore flourishing even in our computer and mobile-phone focused world. One of the areas benefiting from this revival is the Himalayas. As well as serving the tourist trade these products are now exported world-wide, as they were when paper first arrived in Europe in the eleventh century. There are even organisations that run Tibetan-style paper making workshops in Amer­ica. This paper focuses on the papermaking revival in Tibet (China), Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim (India). Using information gained from visits to producers, middle men, as well as retail and export operations, it seeks to compare the economic and social factors influencing the revival, including conservation issues. The conclusion highlights the fact that, even in the twenty first century, hand-crafted items still play an important rôle in our lives.

The essay analyses several ways and forms of 'writing philosophy' in the view of a history of practices which seems still to be a derivate in the emerging fields of writing and science studies. Jean Paul, the writer, and his philosophical mentor Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi discuss contemporary philosophy, namely the works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a philosophical writer who refused first to publish his ideas, in a specific way of exchange of marginalia, notes, papers and writing tools. It is so to be shown how such aspects are at work in the kind of a 'philosophy as writing'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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When Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, it brought many social and cultural changes. One of them was suppressing the widespread culture of holding and carrying arms that existed in Ottoman Bosnia. Holding arms was still possible but under strict control. Firearm holders were, therefore, a very tiny, privileged group inside society. In this paper, we analyze the ethnic/religious and social structure of this group in the case of the Tuzla Circle in 1904. How large was this group? Were there differences along ethnic and social lines in terms of firearm holding rates? These are the key questions we are seeking answers to in this paper, with an aim to get the first insight into the broader picture of firearm holding in the entire province under the Monarchy’s control.

This article explores the intersection of 19th-century philosophy with historical events, spotlighting Nietzsche, Bentham, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer and their distinct perspectives on suffering as a positive element, reflective of the era's cultural and historical nuances. The first part of the paper is a summary of the 19th century and its noteworthy events. The second part argues that suffering is a constant element of human existence by highlighting conceptual similarities between all four philosophers when they describe the challenges that humans must face. The third part of the paper analyzes the relationship between suffering and self-knowledge. The fourth and last part of the paper explores the mechanism of suffering as an epiphenomenon.

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The paper focuses on longer poems by the court poet Claudian that depict a State ruined by evil forces or the state of harmony. This poet from late Antiquity uses a vocabulary related to death and destruction. Evil, above all barbarians and political opponents, is also presented appropriately by the poet. Their characters function in the poems as disaster, ruin and ignominy. To depict these evil forces, their repeatability and how they are overcome on different levels, the poet uses the motive of the upward and downward movement, describing a dead character's way up to heaven and down to the underworld. Destruction rises from this movement of evil to the upper world, while the movement down to the underworld carries liberation and peace. Nevertheless, the poet implies, that the state of harmony is never definitive. Destruction and ruin repeat and recur in different forms in the poems, from the mythological past up to the present. In this sense, the characters in these poems function within a time loop and the story world presents the poet's view on history and how it works on the divine and human level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper aims to bring a hidden "metaphysical" horizon in Husserl's famous text "The Origin of Geometry" to light. This will be achieved in three steps: first, by analyzing the two essential manners in which the problem of history is thematized in this text, namely, both as a "basic problem" and as a "limit problem"; second, by highlighting the direct connection of this twofold problematization of history to Husserl's own concept of metaphysics; and third, by exploring the relation between the "metaphysical" limit-problem of history implicit in the "Geometry" text and the explicit historical reflections in the Crisis itself. In so doing, Husserl's concept of metaphysics, which remains largely unknown, and the thematization of history as a "limit problem" in phenomenology, which gives expression to the fundamental engagement of phenomenology in history, can be illuminated through each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines continuities and discontinuities in the Federal Republic of Germany’s foreign labor policies in the early 1950s. The aim is to establish the consequences that facing the Nazi past had for policy formulation in West German labor administration. To that end, this paper focuses particularly on the 1933 foreign worker’s ordinance (Verordnung über ausländische Arbeitnehmer vom 23.1.1933, VOüAA) and post-1945 debates surrounding its reinstatement. VOüAA formed the foundation of Nazi-era foreign labor policy, but it was brought back into force in the early 1950s without careful consideration of the significance of this fact. The backdrop for this re-enactment was the post-war alignment of the interests of the military government and German labor administrators. The other contributing factor was the stature of Friedrich Syrup, who enacted VOüAA. Despite his involvement in the Nazi regime as president of its labor administration, Syrup was held in high regard even after his death in 1945. This was due to his former subordinates lauding his administrative achievements as a way of self-justification. The reinstatement of VOüAA can thus be considered a result of these post-1945 labor administrators finding a way to reconcile with the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors studied the publications written by the staff of the University Department of Urology in Budapest, Hungary between 1946 and 1956. The collection was contributed on the occasion of Professor Babics's 10-year-long chairmanship. Over a period of 10 years, 214 papers were published by 15 urologists, including 3 books and 3 PhD theses; 16 papers were published in German, 22 in English, 2 in French, and 1 in Italian. The most frequent topic of the papers (26) was basic science (e.g., ureter motility, lymph circulation, intrarenal pressure condition). Other papers dealt with nephrology, artificial kidneys, TURP, and nephron-sparing renal surgery. Some articles examined various types of malignant tumors and benign prostatic hyperplasia, while 17 publications focused on the topic of andrology. Tuberculosis was also discussed by the authors. Despite political isolation, the communist dictatorship, poverty, the lack of health equipment, physicians educated before WWII with their work morality and hard work managed to perform contemporary clinical and basic scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fortbildungsveranstaltungen zur Dokumentation wurden vom Lehrinstitut für Dokumentation (LID) in der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Dokumentation (DGD) von 1974 bis 1991 angeboten. Themen waren u. a. die dokumentarische Methodik, Arbeitsabläufe, Dienstleistungsangebote, Produkte und neuesten Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien sowie der Umgang mit den dadurch ausgelösten Veränderungen ggf. auch aus Leitungsperspektive. Die Strukturen, Entwicklungsphasen, Themenschwerpunkte, Kooperationen – insbesondere mit Partnereinrichtungen aus der Mediendokumentation, aber auch mit regionalen Organisationen von Informationsspezialist*innen innerhalb und außerhalb der DGD – und der Stellenwert der LID-Fortbildung im Rahmen der Qualifizierungsangebote der DGD werden in diesem Beitrag beschrieben und analysiert. Training courses on documentation were offered by the Lehrinstitut für Dokumentation (LID) in the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Dokumentation (German Society for Documentation, DGD) from 1974 to 1991. Topics included documentary methodology, work processes, service offerings, products and the latest information and communication technologies, as well as dealing with change caused by these developments, if necessary also from a management perspective. The structures, development phases, main topics, cooperations – especially with partners from media documentation, but also with regional organizations of information specialists within and outside the DGD – and the significance of LID training within the framework of the DGD's qualification lines are described and analyzed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a fresh look at the sources of Leo the Deacon and comments on what has been written about them by other Byzantinists. It will also study Leo the Deacon’s style of writing, which is certainly innovative, since the History he authored stands apart from the historiographical works that preceded it, as it seeks to meld the new historiography that had emerged from the circle of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos with the classical tradition. And Leo blazes new trails by praising specific individuals, the vast majority of them military men, around whose actions and achievements - on the field of battle, in the main - his narrative near exclusively revolves. The paper then goes on to indicate that one of the most important texts that has been identified as a source of Leo’s History is the Pophyrogennetos’ vast collection conventionally labelled the Excerpta Constantiniana; the Excerpta are then re-evaluated, particularly in terms of their links to Leo, which turn out to be close, as a number of examples illustrate.

This paper presents the composition of the city councils in the Vilayet of Bosnia between 1866 and 1875, from the provincial administration reform until the Herzegovinian uprising. An additional reason for choosing the year 1866 as the initial year is the fact that the yearbooks for the Vilayet of Bosnia started to be published in that year.The central questions of the paper are the religious and social affiliation of the city councils members, as well as the rate of implementation of the principle of electoral equality. Additionally, this paper aims to answer whether, and at what rate, the composition of the city councils in the Vilayet of Bosnia was in line with the 1871 law regulations.

In this paper, the author presents the overview of articles corresponding to the Ottoman era of Bosnia-Herzegovina's history, published in the Institute of History's journal Contributions.Given that the main goal was to collect articles from the mentioned period,this paper contains an overview and brief references to the same, not a critical analysis. In order to clarify certain events or contexts, the author used other relevant works.

Queer Temporality, international assemblages and transfeminism for historians: (Post-)queer discourses revisited. Closely intertwined with political activism, queer studies have evolved as a vast feld of knowledge, and offering an overview of the literature -- as is presented here -- poses considerable challenges. Addressing concepts of time, place, and subjectivity, the author highlights some of the more recent "turns" within queer theories and reflects upon their impact on historical research. One key trend is the way in which embodied and affective temporalities figure prominently among new queer concepts. One of the self-reflexive conclusions that have been formulated by and for historians deals with the question of what kind of relations scholars are supposed to cultivate with 'queers' of the past. A second development within queer theories emerged in the aftermath of 9/11, when national(ist) productions of racialized and sexualized others moved to the centre of queer analysis; the term "homonationalism" widely gained authority. In relation to the history and presence of international asymmetries, the paper raises questions about queer perspectives on geopolitical power relations and the ongoing challenges of doing justice to post-colonial criticism. A third "turn" originates from transgender activism and trans theory, particularly trans*feminism, as promoted by French, Spanish and other "non-US" authors. In this regard, the paper discusses consequences of a queer trans*feminist approach to subject formations, border theories, and embodied reading in historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper argues for a revision of the textual history of the Old Russian Skazanie o Drakulě. According to its editor Lur'e (1963) the text had been produced by Fedor Kuricyn in 1485 and transcribed by well-known copyist Efrosin in 1486 and in 1490. Lur'e characterises the Skazanie as a politically motivated description of a "cruel but righteous sovereign", produced by the diplomate Kuricyn and comparable to Western Renaissance political treatises. Lur'e's statements only argue ex negativo and fail to match the textual evidences. 1: Our paper shows in detail, that the two main redactions of the text, both datable in the 90's of the 15th c., display mutual dependencies and require a protograph as their common ancestor which needed much more time to develop than is left between Kuricyn's assumed return from Moldavia to Moscow in the middle or at the end of 1485 and Efrosin's first transcription in February 1486. While the textual history of the Skazanie cannot be historically aligned with Kuricyn's mission to Moldavia and his return to Moscow in 1485, there is no argument left to attach the name Kuricyn to the text at all. 2: The reception of the Skazanie until today is based on the assumption that the text would characterise the reign of 'cruel' Ivan IV. There is no objective argument for this suggestion, but numerous counterarguments. 3: The paper characterises rhetoric strategies in the narratives about Drakula, showing, among others, a connection with a South German (Bavarian) episode, and pointing to the possible origin of a historically relevant question (the "sister" of the Hungarian King). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines practices of hostage-taking and -giving in the early-modern Russian Empire as practiced since the late 16th century in the regions of Siberia, the Far East and on the Russian Steppe frontier. The paper investigates the origins of this practice, its cross-cultural meanings and its symbolical and practical issues. The political, legal and cultural situation of indigenous hostages in the Russian frontier fortresses is discussed. The Russian hostage system is compared with practices of hostage-taking and-giving in other pre-modern cultures, such as in Ancient Rome, pre-modern China and the European Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents disputations held at the Faculty of Theology in the early days of the University of Vienna as part of public graduation ceremonies. Disputations are described according to the normative sources – the statutes and the faculty records – and on the basis of manuscripts at the Austrian National Library concerned with the few extant vesperial disputations. The paper highlights the basic, sometimes antithetic, characteristics of Viennese theological disputations and their proximity to the Parisian practice. It also includes two charts offering a detailed overview of the practice of disputing during the ritual of inception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many contributions to the history of the automobile focus on production. Instead, this paper explores various kinds of services that support automobile drivers to use their vehicles. The service network consists of automobile dealers, the automobile workshops, fueling stations, tire dealers and garage stations as well as service centers. The mass production of automobiles was supplemented by mass distribution. Automobile producers had to establish a special structure of automobile dealers. The paper explores the conflicts between producers and dealers. The service network in Germany of the 1920s consisted of a new field of small scale entrepreneurs that laid the ground for the expanding service economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the links between business, diplomacy and humanistic culture in the first half of the 16th century by reconstructing the connections that one of the largest merchant houses of the age, the Welsher Company of UASBR, maintained with councillors, courtiers and envoys at the Spanish court of Emperor Charles V. On the evidence of recently edited fragmentary business papers of the Welsher Company, the paper shows that a number of influential men in the emperor’s entourage drew on the credit and financial services of the German merchant house, while gifts, favours and outright bribes helped to stabilize these relationships. Apart from financial rewards, individual members of the Welsher firm also received royal privileges. The article argues that the business relationships described here were sustained by a social strategy of networking and by the culture of humanism, which provided a common language of conversation and negotiation between urban elites, diplomats and noble courtiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to now, research on the three chronicles written by Jakob Unrest has focussed almost exclusively on aspects of the text relating to present world, but ignored the central position of the other-world in Unrest's mind as a cleric and a child of his time. This paper intends to show how closely the concept of God's grace and pious conduct are connected to just and legitimate rule as presented in the chronicles: The established political order is ultimately derived from God, thus furthering a basically conservative world-view. This order is threatened by servants of the devil, such as Turks or heretics. Unrest perceives the workings of God and the devil in the world as something real and tangible, with the foremost characteristic of God's agency being justice. God is the judge who rewards appropriate behaviour already in this world, but with certainty in the afterlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to determine the category of locutions recognized by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española in the general academic dictionary, the Diccionario de la lengua española (DRAE). The research proves that throughout history the types of locutions established by the Academy have not been the same. On the contrary, classification changed over the years especially from the 19th edition dated 1970 up to the 23rd dated 2014, including the Diccionario esencial de la lengua española, dated 2006 (as it is indicated in the annex). The edition of 1970 was the first to establish a list of the types of locutions, with only five: adjectival, adverbial, conjunctive, prepositional, and interjective locutions. The edition of 2001 determines nine types of locutions: nominal, pronominal, verbal, adjectival, adverbial, conjunctive, prepositional, quantifier, and interjective locutions. The latest edition (2014) establishes eight types: nominal, pronominal, verbal, adjectival, adverbial, conjunctive, prepositional, and interjective locutions (the quantifier type is deleted). These hesitations are due to the unstable definition of "locution" given by the Academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Illegal American Cocaine Commodity Chain, 1970-2000. This paper provides a historical analysis of the development of the illegal cocaine commodity chain in the Americas. Its geographical focus lies on the Andean region as the prime production area for coca and cocaine between 1970 and 2000. A brief history of cocaine in the Americas serves as an introduction to situate the illegal cocaine commodity chain within the broader historical context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thereafter, I explore how political, social and economic circumstances at the global, national and regional level have influenced the geographic and quantitative development of coca and cocaine production in the Andean region. Thirdly, I examine the impact of illegality on the characteristics of the cocaine commodity chain in terms of value added, forms of organization and the constant process of adaption along the commodity chain in reaction to repressive anti-drug policies. Finally, the main nodes along the chain (such as the cocaine production process), the division of labour along the chain and the role of the USA as the largest consumer market for cocaine are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyze good practice in teaching about the Holocaust, comparing the use of pedagogical resources in Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and England (United Kingdom). The paper compares the use of three types of pedagogical resources used in history classes: fictional films, documentaries, and photographs of Holocaust atrocities. Comparison is drawn between a developing and post-conflict society (Republika Srpska) and the well-established and reputable English educational system. By cross-referencing teachers’ and students’ answers, the paper attempts to identify good practice of notable value to be shared and exchanged. The research method firstly incorporated questionnaires, followed by interviews and then lesson observation. Data revealed that teachers in both education systems do not appear to consider all the educational benefits of film screening. The way teachers from England use pictures of Holocaust atrocities and organization of school trips seem to be applicable to the context of Republika Srpska, as well as being useful for classroom practitioners beyond these two education systems.

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Today literary criticism contests the 'Volksbuch' as a genre since its criteria seem under-defined. This paper aims, from a functional point of view, to explain its historical success by tracing four histories of this genre. The under-definition of the genre turns out as the precondition of its manifold employments. What the different histories have in common is the imagination of the 'Volksbuch', which could unify the German nation. The 'Volksbuch', the paper will argue, is a virtual modern genre which imagines an anti-modern state of society and literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper focuses on poor relief in Göttingen in the late 19th century. It provides insight into the practical cooperation of different actors in a "mixed economy of welfare". Different actors played an important role in providing help to the poor: the municipal poor relief, as well as various philanthropic associations and congregations, built up assistance programs for indigents, and in addition, the University of Göttingen and other foundations rendered support. How did these various actors work together? And what was their motivation in supporting the poor? In answering these questions, the paper focuses on the structure of the different systems of poor relief, the interactions of the various actors in a "mixed economy of welfare" and also on the work of the most influential people. The many overlaps and the form of cooperation achieved between poor relief and society as a whole make clear that a fundamental opposition between the authority of municipal poor relief on the one hand, and voluntary action on the other, did not exist in the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the concluding part of Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Jan Patočka thematizes the 20th century and claims that this entire period is a century of war. This paper identifies the main arguments supporting this thesis and examines Patočka’s reflections on how this essential character of the 20th century can be overcome. The article primarily focuses on revealing the ontological-anthropological framework that underlies Patočka’s argumentation, including the idea that polemos is the law of the world. More concrete analyses then demonstrate the problematic elements of Patočka’s concept.

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The paper investigates the significance of things and material culture in the study of early modern history. The first part reconstructs the history of a model of a winch and shows that the object's meaning stemmed from its materialisation of memories and emotions for its owner, from the representation of technological change, and from the way it functioned for emerging new knowledge of mechanics in the early seventeenth century. Histories of objects, as this section shows, cross-connect diverse research fields and produce narratives that reveal multi-layered realities. The middle part of the paper discusses the theoretical catalysts for the history of material culture, explores the existing fields of research, and inquires about the value of things as historical sources and the related methodological consequences. The last part argues that both the change of material culture and the way early modern men and women used, exchanged, and interpreted the things that surrounded them belong to the fundamental characteristics of the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that Ernst Mach's conception of the thought experiment from 1897/1905 holds a singular position in the lively discussions and repeated theorizations that have continued up to the present in relation to this procedure. Mach derives the thought experiment from scientific practice, and does not oppose it to the physical experiment, but, on the contrary, endows it with a robust relation to the facts. For Mach, the thought experiment is a reliable means of determining empiricism, and at the same time a real, because open and unbiased, experimenting. To shed light on this approach, the paper carries out a close reading of the relevant texts in Mach's body of writings (in their different stages of revision) and proceeds in three steps: first, Mach's processual understanding of science will be presented, which also characterizes his research and publication practice (I. 'Aperçu' and 'Sketch'. Science as Process and Projection); then in a second step the physiological and biological justification and valorization of memory and association will be examined with which Mach limits the relevance of categories such as consciousness and will (II. The Biology of Consciousness. Or The Polyp Colony); against this background, thirdly, the specific empiricism can be revealed that Mach inscribes into the thought experiment by on the one hand founding it in the memory and association, and on the other by tracing it back to geometry, which he deploys as an experimenting oriented to experience (III. Thinking and Experience. The Thought Experiment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, I intend to study the contribution of Aby Warburg, a cultural theorist and an art historian, especially his concern with the relations between memory and history, relations that have been theorized in the late 20th century, but which Warburg anticipated, to a certain degree. In his writings, there can be identified those relations that make memory a metahistorical category or an anti-historical discourse (Pierre Nora, Yosef Yerushalmi); then, his writings can be connected with those of Maurice Halbwachs, the first who approached memory as a social phenomenon. Thus, according to Warburg, collective memory can be regarded as a medium for art, which ensures the survival of images and pathos formulas even when the violence of historical development leads to a decline of the creative spirit. One might say that via a detour through the archaic (Pueblo Indian culture), Warburg managed to reduce the distances which the historical method had established to the Antiquity's vestiges (process that started in the Renaissance). His hypothesis was that the employment in the historical development of Western civilization leads to the atrophy of certain potentialities of the human spirit, which can be addressed in the anti-historicist discourse, specific to postmodernity. In the last part of the paper, I propose to dwell on The Mnemosyne Atlas, Warburg’s last project, as a visual synthesis of the research that he conducted throughout his life.