Project Details
Projekt
A region in urban take-off: Rungholt and the North Frisian coast in the 14th century based on the North Frisian Wadden Sea Landscape Archive
Applicant
Professor Dr. Oliver Auge
Subject Area
Medieval History
Prehistory and World Archaeology
Prehistory and World Archaeology
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541064351
The history of medieval urbanisation has developed into an important field of research in recent decades. However, it has mostly been understood as a one-sided success story of urban growth and prosperity. However, medieval urbanisation was also characterised by opposing phenomena: a city could develop back into a settlement, which must consequently be described as post-urban. Or it could even disappear completely. A bundle of different factors contributed to the negative transformation process. North Friesland's coastal region, with the prominent example of the lost parish of Rungholt, offers a particularly vivid example for research into urbanisation and deurbanisation processes in the Middle Ages. The area, which was recognisably densely populated and undergoing an urban take-off, fell victim to the Marcellus Flood or ‘Great Mandränke’ of 1362. Many of the preceding factors that accompanied its demise were home-made by the people living here, particularly with regard to the unsustainable extraction of peat as a resource. The regional history project applied for here can make an essential contribution to the key questions of the TORF network in its outstanding suitability as a transmitter between the disciplines involved in the network. It is intended to provide information on the nature and extent of human influence on the coastal region through settlement, cultivation and land use practices and to examine the existing written and material sources to determine how people were organised in their economic work processes and social structures and how human influences affected the coastal region. Overall, there is the prospect of gaining more detailed insights into the process of (de)urbanisation. Conversely, it would hardly be conceivable to meaningfully clarify the key questions of the network without the inclusion of historical methods and findings. With the help of the historiographical project, the network will be better able to reconstruct the history of the cultivation and transformation of the North Frisian coastal area and to better understand the people living and working here in the temporary urban take-off. Funding is requested for a 48-month period for a research assistant with a 75 per cent position in the category ‘doctoral candidate and comparable’ and a supporting assistant. The results of the project, which will be developed in close co-operation, will be presented in a monograph and at least two journal articles. The data collected will also be made permanently and transparently available to an interested public. A specialised workshop will be held to facilitate further networking with the scientific community.
DFG Programme
Research Units
