Taxpayers, households, streets. On the spatial order of social networks in Mühlhausen in Thuringia in the 15th. century.

• Applicant: Xenia Miller
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 511463776

Medieval municipal documents such as tax and cadastral registers, account books, and citizen directories contain information on tax payments, persons and their social and civic status, as well as their assignment to streets, properties and buildings in the urban area. The imperial city of Mühlhausen is distinguished by an excellent serial and parallel preservation of these sources. Furthermore, the medieval property dimensions of the inner city showed remarkably little change, which allows an assignment of the data to the oldest preserved town maps from the 19th century in coordination with archeological features. The aim of the planned study is to create a differentiated view of the strongly structured medieval urban society and its political and administrative structures with its topographical allocation from various points of view for the imperial city of Mühlhausen from such records. In previous studies of other cities these aspects have only been considered individually and not systematically with their associations. Central German cities have not yet been examined in terms of social topography in this period. This new approach should enable an analysis of the composition and use of spaces correlated with social relations and their dynamics, which takes up the concept of space as a social construct. Corresponding correlations could exist, for example, between the levels of tax revenue of certain inner-city residential areas and the land parcel size and development structure prevailing there, as well as the social and civic status of the residents. Suitable statistical indices of a longer period of time are to be recorded in a database system and evaluated in their associations. The applicant's comprehensive knowledge of these sources ensures the greatest possible recognition and evaluation of such correlations. Using a geoinformation software controlled by these data, a social topographical classification and allocation of persons and spaces will be made, followed and interpreted in their temporal development. Thus, a contribution to the research of the social topography of the city of Mühlhausen with the interactions of its different components and their changes in the 15th century shall be achieved.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants