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In 1981, German medievalist and cultural historian Arno Borst provided an early case study of an extraordinary natural disaster in his essay “The earthquake of 1348” (published in German in the renowned “Historische Zeitschrift”). In this article, he put forward the thesis that today’s societies in Europe have largely eliminated dealing with natural disasters from their everyday lives, and that they have become a “society of banished memory” (in German: “Katastrophenverdrängungsgesellschaft”). This is in contrast to pre-modern societies, which have integrated the risk of fires, natural disasters, weather anomalies, etc. far more into their everyday lives. Indeed, in many societies that are exposed to recurring natural risk, “cultures of disaster” (Greg Bankoff) can be identified, be it “flood cultures” on the rivers of Central Europe and on the North Sea coast in the pre-modern era or “earthquake cultures” in the Mediterranean area. Numerous forms of memory were omnipresent in these cultures as a form of “mental prevention”, from clearly visible flood marks to house chronicles about avalanches. With the “taming” of natural hazards through river straightening and protective structures of all kinds, especially since the 19th century, small and medium-sized events have generally been avoided, but then serious events occurred even more surprising by hitting the population unpreparedly. A prolonged absence of extreme events, a “disaster gap” (Christian Pfister), could thus significantly increase the catastrophic nature of a new event. The belief that technical precautions could be used to get a grip on natural hazards was shaken in many places towards the end of the 20th century. This keynote lecture analyses selected flood, avalanche, storm and earthquake events from Europe and North America (late 19th century to present) to show, which factors might have contributed to a reshaping of memory cultures after catastrophic events and which even strengthened a behaviour of banishing memory against better judgement.

This paper discusses what is, to our knowledge, the oldest subdaily measurement series of humidity taken over several years. Louis Morin performed the measurements in Paris, three times a day, between May 1701 and June 1711. A correlation analysis of Morin’s humidity measurements with various meteorological variables yields results comparable to those of a parallel analysis of the relative humidity measurements of the E-OBS data: the Spearman correlation coefficient between the humidity and the daily minimum temperature is -0.43 (p < 0.01); with the mean temperature, it is -0.54 (p < 0.01); with the maximum temperature, it is -0.59 (p < 0.01); with the diurnal temperature range, it is -0.65 (p < 0.01); and with the total cloud cover, 0.33 (p < 0.01). However, with a Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.11 (p < 0.01), no correlation is found with the precipitation data. Further evidence for the plausibility of the measurements is shown by a day-by-day analysis of the first half-year of 1709. Here, abrupt changes in the humidity measurements of Morin can be explained by the other measurements/observations of Morin. According to the correlation analysis, indirect notes in his journal, and others, we argue that Morin used the hygrometer developed by Vincenzo Viviani. However, the conversion of the data to common units is not performed and is subject to further research.

In 1981, the German medievalist Arno Borst put forward the thesis that today's societies in Europe have largely eliminated the handling of natural disasters from their everyday life and that we have become a “disaster repression society”, so to speak. This is in contrast to pre-modern societies, which integrated the risk of fires, natural disasters or weather anomalies into their everyday life. The article explores the question of to what extent and why pre-modern risk cultures with their specific cultures of memory have been lost. It shows that although the technical disaster protection developed in the nineteenth century was able to prevent minor and moderate events, severe ones took the population even more by surprise. This concept of protection was shaken in many places towards the end of the 20th century. Floods like the one in 2002 in large parts of Central Europe or avalanche events like the one in Galtür (Tyrol) in 1999 partly became a wake-up call for a change in the way people dealt with risks that had often been suppressed for decades., Der deutsche Mediävist Arno Borst stellte schon 1981 die These auf, dass heutige Gesellschaften in Europa den Umgang mit Naturkatastrophen weitgehend aus ihrem Alltag gestrichen hätten und wir gleichsam zu einer „Katastrophenverdrängungsgesellschaft“ geworden seien. Dies stehe im Gegensatz zu vormodernen Gesellschaften, welchen das Risiko von Bränden, Naturkatastrophen oder Witterungsanomalien weit eher in ihren Alltag integriert hätten. Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, inwiefern und warum Risikokulturen der Vormoderne mit ihren spezifischen Erinnerungskulturen verloren gingen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass zwar durch den im 19. Jahrhundert ausgebauten technischen Katastrophenschutz kleinere und mittelschwere Ereignisse vermieden werden konnten, doch schwere die Bevölkerung umso überraschender trafen. Dieses Schutzkonzept wurde gegen Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts vielerorts erschüttert: Hochwasser wie 2002 in weiten Teilen Mitteleuropas oder Lawinenereignisse wie 1999 in Galtür (Tirol) wurden teilweise zum Weckruf für einen veränderten Umgang mit den oft über Jahrzehnte verdrängten Risiken., En 1981 déjà, le médiéviste allemand Arno Borst avait émis la thèse selon laquelle les sociétés européennes actuelles avaient largement éliminé de leur quotidien la gestion des catastrophes naturelles et que nous étions devenus en quelque sorte une « société de refoulement de catastrophes ». Cela contraste avec les sociétés prémodernes, qui avaient plutôt intégré le risque d’incendies, de catastrophes naturelles ou d’anomalies météorologiques dans leur quotidien. L’article se penche sur la question de savoir dans quelle mesure et pourquoi les cultures du risque de l’époque prémoderne, avec leurs cultures de la commémoration spécifiques, se sont perdues. Il en ressort que si la protection technique contre les catastrophes, développée au XIXe siècle, a permis d’éviter des événements de petite et moyenne ampleur, les événements graves ont frappé la population de manière d’autant plus inattendue. Ce concept de protection a été ébranlé en de nombreux endroits vers la fin du 20e siècle : des inondations comme celles de 2002 dans de grandes parties de l’Europe centrale ou des avalanches comme celles de 1999 à Galtür (Tyrol) ont parfois servi de réveil pour une nouvelle approche des risques, souvent refoulés pendant des décennies.