Department for "Early modern History and Rhenish Regional History"
The department of Early Modern History and Rhenish Regional History is characterised by a double profile in research and teaching. In period-specific terms, the "Early Modern Period" is treated as a sub-period of modern history in an open perspective from the late 15th to the early 19th century, i.e. in the period between the Renaissance, Humanism and Reformation on the one hand and the political, social, economic and scientific changes in the Age of Revolution around 1800 on the other hand. In addition to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and its territories, European history with its international interdependence forms a focus of research and teaching. The staff dedicates itself to the Rhineland as a core area of European history on a trans-periodical basis. The spatial focus allows a content-related and periodical expansion of the view on politics and constitution, church, society, economy, culture, everyday life and environments from the early Middle Ages to contemporary history.
Research and Teaching at the department
Both focal points of the professorship have the diversity of thematic approaches in common, ranging from problems of political history to questions of historical anthropology, as well as particularly source-based research and teaching. Affiliated with the department are, on the one hand, the Library for Historical Regional Studies of the Rhineland, which offers excellent opportunities for comparing research results on Rhenish history with findings from other regions and neighbouring countries in Western Europe, and, on the other hand, the collections of the Centre for Historical Peace Studies with printed works and reproductions of archival records from almost 160 European archives on early modern peace history. These collections form excellent instruments for research and teaching. Therefore, the teaching offered by the department is conceptually oriented towards research, so that students are introduced at an early stage to problems in the field of history and ways of solving them.
Cooperation partners of the department
Both areas of work also share an intensive interdisciplinary exchange with other subjects, in the case of regional history traditionally Rhenish language research and folklore studies/cultural anthropology. The work of the department is supported in particular by the Verein für geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande (Association for Historical Regional Studies of the Rhineland) as well as a number of national and international cooperation partners (including the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (Regional Association of the Rhineland), the interdisciplinary Institute for Cultural History of the Early Modern Age at the University of Osnabrück, the Institute for European Cultural History at the University of Augsburg, the Université de La Rochelle, the German Historical Institute in Paris).
