Bavaria is by far the most popular destination in Germany for both international and domestic tourists. This is no real surprise since it includes such a wide range of attractions, from historical sights to natural beauty, high culture, relaxation in world-class spas, and hiking, cycling, mountain climbing, and skiing. Castles, palaces, monasteries, churches, and historical towns abound. Its rivers offer great opportunities for watersports as well as easy cycling and hiking routes. The Alps are famous for winter sports while forested mountain ranges are scattered through Bavaria. Munich is the central attraction, with an astonishing range of excellent museums, pleasant beer gardens and beer halls, as well as numerous restaurants ranging from international fast-food chains to haute cuisine. There are classical music concerts and the original Oktoberfest is held here. Nuremberg, with its Nazi history, is also in Bavaria, as are the idyllic Alpine villages of Berchtesgaden and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, not to mention the Romantic Road, with Dinkelsbühl, Augsburg and Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We visit all the best castles (including Neuschwanstein, home of Mad King Ludwig), the museums, churches and historic sites. Cruises, concerts, town and country walks, kayaking, cycling – it's all detailed here.
The fourteenth, seventeenth and twentieth centuries in European history were marked by exceptionally intense experiences of power, violence and mass death. Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times undertakes the ambitious and entirely new task of analyzing, through comparison, the importance of power, violence and mass death in these centuries. Death and the excesses of power were characteristics of the twentieth century, but this volume teaches about the causes and possible consequences of this oppressive individual and collective experience. We now have a more established historical perspective for understanding the importance of power and the causes and results of the rapid increase in mortality in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this way, this volume makes progress towards reaching new perceptions of all three 'crisis' epochs. Appealing to a wide readership, Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times will be of interest to scholars not only of the three centuries highlighted, but also to anyone with an historical and sociological interest in the larger questions raised about the nature of power, violence and mass death on European society.
Die historische Forschung erachtet die hof- und staatsnahe Historiographie der frühen Neuzeit als parteiisch, methodisch veralteten Modellen verpflichtet und im Bereich der Öffentlichkeit als dysfunktional und ineffizient. Zurecht? Die europäischen Höfe erzeugten in der Genealogie und im Zeremoniell für die Geschichtsschreibung systemrelevantes historisches Wissen. Über Hof- und Staatshistoriker konnten "Geschichtsbilder" entworfen werden, die im nationalen wie übernationalen Rahmen durchaus Erfolg hatten. Gerade die offiziöse Geschichtsschreibung erweist sich als präzises Meßinstrument für die Verfaßtheit der jeweiligen Öffentlichkeit. Aufschlußreich sind zudem die Strategien und Investitionen der Regierungen im Bereich der historischen Repräsentation. Es wird deutlich, daß die Geschichtsschreibung auch eine vielseitige Vermittlerin von politischen, ästhetischen und wissenschaftlichen Programmen war. Somit wirkt sie nicht nur bei der Artikulation eines gesamteuropäischen Geschichtsraumes mit, sie fordert auch zur Suche nach Parallelphänomenen in außereuropäischen Gesellschaften auf.
