GRK 2337:  Pre-modern Metropolitansim

• Subject Area: History
• Term: since 2017
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 321183165

Metropolises bundle meanings. In the pre-modern era, they take the stage – mostly with referenceto metropolitan models – via a great diversity of media as places of elevated urbanity, centrality,and historicity. Their perceptions of themselves and others as a metropolis, from which they derivecurrent claims to validity and rule, are based on empirical experiences that can be described as thematerial basis of the pre-modern concept of the metropolis: their size and beauty, the range of thepolitical-economic networks of their elites, the amount of long-distance trade and migrationmovements, the diversity of social groups, the density of communication, the rank of theirchurches and places of worship, the presence of rulers, or their long and illustrious history. The linguistic, iconographic, performative or material stagings of metropolitanism not only providereflections and interpretations of a particular city’s specific array of experience. At the same time,they also strengthen the growth dynamics inherent in the process of metropolitanisation and, lastbut not least, contribute to the establishment of a contemporary canon of values for the urbanway of life. The claim to metropolitan status is a cultural construction based on urban reality andhaving a wide range of effects on the urban environment as a whole.This research perspective is not merely linked to a clearer understanding of what a metropolis wasin the pre-modern era, as well as to the opportunity to discuss modern metropolitan studies.Rather, it opens up a broad, innovative, and transdisciplinary programme for researching cultural,socio-economic, political, religious, or technological dynamics in pre-modern cities. Theimplications of pre-modern metropolitanism listed here help to embed the respective studies onindividual factors or short periods of time that dominate urban research in the longue durée andthe complex network of metropolitan processes, into which historical experiences, currentmeanings, and visionary proposals can be incorporated.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Regensburg
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Jörg Oberste
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Harald Buchinger; Professor Dr. Albert Dietl; Professorin Dr. Babett Edelmann-Singer; Professorin Dr. Angela Ganter; Professor Dr. Martin Löhnig; Professor Dr. Andreas Merkt; Professorin Dr. Maria Selig; Professor Dr. Mark Spoerer; Professor Dr. Dirk Steuernagel; Professorin Dr. Anne-Julia Zwierlein