Project Details
Projekt
Leipzig, city in a state of flux - Urban-fluvial symbiosis in a long-term perspective
Subject Area
Prehistory and World Archaeology
Early Modern History
Medieval History
Physical Geography
Early Modern History
Medieval History
Physical Geography
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 509898957
In its 2nd phase, the project "Leipzig, city in a state of flux" will combine the analysis of the urban-fluvial symbiosis with research on urban-hinterland relations. Having examined the urban and adjacent suburban areas of Leipzig during the 1st funding phase, the focus will widen to encompass more distant areas, i.e. the wider surroundings and the fluvial hinterland of the city. We conceive our research area as quasi-concentrically structured by (1) the inner urban (intra muros) and suburban spaces (extra muros, or the so-called “Weichbild”), (2) the Leipzig district (“Amt Leipzig”) and neighbouring districts (particularly the Merseburg territories that stretched to the western Weiße Elster floodplain in the immediate vicinity to the city) and (3) the fluvial hinterland that covers the lower catchments of the Weiße Elster, Pleiße and Parthe rivers. Data from urban and suburban Leipzig have already been or will be collected systematically during the 1st funding period (e.g. mills, water bodies, oxbow sediments). The surroundings of Leipzig will be the subject of systematic data collection through geoscientific and historical research during the 2nd funding phase, while the fluvial hinterland will be occasionally considered in terms of entanglement and exchange (e.g. the weir at Crossen/Weiße Elster, which was a notorious source of conflict regarding water use). Addressing urban-hinterland relations as a key issue in urban history will allow us to advance our research on the fluvial anthroposphere and urban-fluvial symbiosis conceptually and empirically. We will proceed from the hypothesis that floodplains and watercourses were constitutive to inner and extra-urban spaces, in both physical and cultural terms. Floodplains and watercourses defined and connected cities, suburbs and hinterlands. As key areas of human-nature relations, they were fundamental to the material flows of urban metabolism, including e.g. fresh water and wood supply, food and fodder provision or the spread of hazardous substances and pathogens. Focusing on urban-hinterland relations will enable us to discuss the “fluvio-social metabolism” , a recently developed concept that operationalizes the socio-natural site approach of the Vienna School of Ecology , before the backdrop of current urban and environmental history research. In this context, we will also consider trans-epochal spatial approaches to public health and disease history which - under the term “healthscapes/healthscaping” - have only recently advanced into urban-hinterland relations. Taking an interdisciplinary approach based on the archives of both culture and nature, we have thus identified three prolific research fields: (1) fluvial healthscapes, (2) the fluvial coexistence of humans, plants and animals, and (3) hinterland and hydrosphere.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 2361:
On the Way to the Fluvial Anthroposphere
Co-Investigator
Professor Dr. Matthias Hardt
