Fürsten und Finanzen im Mittelalter“ als Veröffentlichung in der Reihe „Vorträge und Forschungen“ des Konstanzer Arbeitskreises für Mittelalterliche Geschichte

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Oliver Auge
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 516755777

“Fürsten und Herren [...] können nichts erreichen, wenn sie kein Geld haben.” Hardly any sentence sums up the motivation and justification for dealing with “Fürsten und Finanzen im Mittelalter” as succinctly as this remark by Levold of Northof in his mirror of princes of 1357/58. In fact, the financial capacity of a prince decided the weal and woe of his socio political scopes of action. In apparent contradiction, finances did not take an absolute place in the assertion of princely rank. In any case, all princely actions in the political, familial-dynastic, or religious-cultural spheres had a financial dimension. This fundamental insight into the central dimension of finances for the princely rule, fed by numerous individual publications, is strikingly disproportionate to the generally rather meagre state of research. Although recent publications and conferences show that the topic of finance seems to be gaining in popularity and that more and more attention is being paid to the loans, debts, pledge policies, etc. of kings and princes, Uwe Schirmerʼs observation still holds true that financial history does withstand “keinem Vergleich mit dem Ausstoß an Büchern und Aufsätzen der anderen Sparten des Faches”. The conference volume, for which a publication subsidy is requested here, addresses this research desideratum in a wide-ranging way for the first time. It does not only address the sources of finance and debts of secular princes but also extends the view to ecclesiastical princes, princesses, and princely widowers, to mirrors of princes and to the literature of the time in general, as well as to the Chinese emperor. Financial history in consideration of gender studies using an interdisciplinary approach and an intercultural comparison – this has never been done before besides the treatment of “classical” fields of princely history. Including the introduction and the summary, there are 13 contributions, all written by proven experts. The conference volume, which will undoubtedly become a standard work of outstanding scholarly importance because of its breadth, emerged from a Reichenau conference of the “Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte”. This was the working group’s first hybrid conference, and because of the corona pandemic, the proportion of young academics was particularly high. Publishing in the prestigious series of “Vorträge und Forschungen” is an excellent opportunity for these young colleagues. The volumes are traditionally first published as print publications in the programme of the Thorbecke-Verlag. The Moving Wall is then precisely two years from the date of publication. After that, the contents are freely accessible on the internet.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants