Cologne City Archive Collapses

Cologne's six-story city archive building rumbled and then collapsed into a pile of rubble Tuesday. Many people inside were able to flee to safety, but authorities said they were searching for two to four people missing from nearby buildings.

Cracks and groaning noises had alerted staff and visitors at the archive, all of whom escaped before it collapsed.

Some of Germany's most valuable documentary treasures may have been destroyed, wiped out in the three minutes it took for a six-storey building to become a pile of smouldering brickwork on Tuesday afternoon. If they are ever recovered, the documents will almost certainly be irretrievably damaged.



"We are talking here about 18 kilometres of extremely valuable archival material, of absolute importance to European culture," Eberhard Illner, the head of the city archives, said. "Now the memory of a European city has been destroyed. I can only hope, but cannot believe, that some of these fragile documents survived under tonnes of concrete and steel."

The archives included the minutes of all town council meetings held since 1376. Not a single session had been missed, making the collection a remarkable resource for legal historians.

The earliest document stored in the building dated back to 922, and there were hundreds of thousands of documents spread over six floors, some of them written on thin parchment. A total of 780 complete private collections and half a million photographs were being stored.

"Even if there isn't something that hasn't been pulverised or destroyed by water, it will take decades of restoration work," said the historian Joachim Oepen.

When the building was constructed, a small nuclear-bomb proof chamber was included in the cellar to protect the most precious pieces. But in recent years, the chamber has been used only to store cleaning material.

There was even less warning of the collapse of the building than would have been given during a nuclear attack. Workers on the rooftop heard a cracking noise and immediately alerted the 26 people using the archives at the time. Less than three minutes later later, the building was flat.

If there are human victims, they are entombed under an amusement arcade that adjoined the archives. The fire brigade said today that there might be two or three people crushed under the tangled girders, but that their chances of being found alive were diminishing by the hour.

Staff at the archives first noticed cracks in the cellar early last year, but the building was deemed safe. Preliminary blame is being laid on the construction nearby of a new underground railway station.

Gregor Timmer, a spokesman for the city of Cologne, said rescuers needed to stabilise the remains of the structures before moving into the rubble to determine whether anyone was trapped inside. "The buildings to the left and right of the collapse site are severely damaged and are in danger of partly falling down. That is why rescuers are currently unable to step onto the rubble," he added.

On Tuesday evening, concrete was pumped into the ground to firm it up. Two hundred rescue workers are still at the scene.

The six-storey building collapsed at about 1400 local time (1300 GMT), bringing down two other neighbouring buildings. One witness said the scene resembled a Hollywood movie as cracks slowly spread up the building's facade before it collapsed in a cloud of dust.

Authorities in Cologne have evacuated buildings within a 150m radius around the site, including two schools and a retirement home.

Christian Hillen, who has been at the site of the disaster to help rescue the documents, reports that 40 of the 65 medieval charters have been found so far.

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies

The Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies has launched its inaugural issue. Published by Routledge, it covers archaeology, art and architecture, music, philosophy and religious studies, as well as history, codicology, manuscript studies and the multiple Arabic, Latin, Romance, and Hebrew linguistic and literary traditions of Iberia, over the period from the fourth century to 1492. It will be published twice a year.

The articles in Volume 1, Issue 1 are:

The future of postcolonial approaches to medieval Iberian studies, by Nadia R. Altschul

Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain, by Maya Soifer

New directions in the study of medieval Andalusi music, by Dwight F. Reynolds

Saint Rosendo, Cardinal Hyacinth and the Almohads, by Damian J. Smith

Espacio jurisdiccional y espacio econmico en el Sureste Peninsular en la Baja Edad Media, by Jorge Ortuo Molina and Juan Leonardo Soler Milla

The verse inscription from the deposition relief at Santo Domingo de Silos: word, image, and act in medieval art, by Peter Scott Brown

The online database Informaworld publishes the journal online.  Click here to access its website.

Preserving the Medieval Heritage of Herat

The Afghanistan city of Herat, an important medieval center in Central Asia and capital of Timurid Empire, is now being restored by the Aga Khan Trust. Meanwhile, a construction boom is threatening to destroy other historic buildings.

Artisans in Imperial China and Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes

UCSB HISTORIANS RECEIVE BOOK AWARDS FROM COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION AND AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
19 February 2009
States News Service


The following information was released by the University of California - Santa Barbara:

Anthony Barbieri-Low, an assistant professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, has received the prestigious Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association (CAA), and the James Henry Breasted Prize from the American Historical Association (AHA) for his book "Artisans in Imperial China" (University of Washington Press, 2007).

In addition, Carol Lansing, a professor of history at UCSB, has received the AHA's Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History for her book, "Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes" (Cornell University Press, 2007).

In "Artisans in Imperial China," Barbieri-Low, a specialist in early Chinese history, studies the social history of early Chinese artisans. Early China is best known for the dazzling terracotta figures, gilt-bronze lamps, and other material remnants of the past unearthed during archaeological excavations. Often, however, these artifacts are viewed without regard to the social context in which they were created. Barbieri-Low examines the position of artisans within early Chinese society and analyzes their social status, social mobility, and the role they played in the early Chinese economy. Further, he steps into their workshops to understand their training, their tools, and the workplace hazards they faced. Following their wares to the marketplace, he investigates some of the marketing techniques employed by artisans and merchants, including such startlingly modern practices as family trademarks, rhyming jingles, and knockoffs of royal products.

An expert in the society, politics and culture of medieval Italy, Lansing examines the conscious effort among residents of these communes to change what was considered the appropriate public reaction to death. Driven by politics and understood in terms of gender, this shift threw into sharp relief connections among urban politics, gender expectations, and understandings of emotionality.

The Marraro Prize was established by Howard R. Marraro, a scholar of Italian culture, with bequests to the American Historical Association, the American Catholic Historical Association, and the Society for Italian Historical Studies. Every year, a committee that includes representatives from each association selects a single book in Italian history, Italian cultural history, or Italian American relations to receive the award.

The Breasted Prize is named for the pioneer in Egyptian and Near Eastern history who served as president of the AHA in 1928. It is awarded for the best book in English on any field of history prior to the year A.D 1000.

The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award is named in honor of one of the founding members of College Art Association and first teachers of art history in the United States. Established in 1953, the annual award recognizes an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in the English language.

The Breasted and Marraro prizes were presented at the American Historical Association's annual meeting in New York earlier last month, and the Morey Book Award will be presented at the College Art Association's annual conference in Los Angeles later this month.

Medieval Papal Legation and the Canonical Concept of Office

LANDER UNIVERSITY HISTORY PROFESSOR PARTICIPATES IN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
28 February 2009
US Fed News

Lander University issued the following press release:

Dr. Robert C. Figueira, professor of history at Lander University, recently took part in an international colloquium in Paris that was dedicated to the history of papal legates from the 11th through 16th centuries. As a research scholar in medieval history, Figueira was invited to address the first session of the conference.

"I am honored to have been recognized by my colleagues as an expert on this subject," said Figueira. "These legates - valuable assistants to the medieval popes - have been the object of my study for nearly four decades."

According to Figueira, legates were and are deputies of the Roman pontiff who are empowered to exercise some of the pope's authority in the various local districts or missions that they are assigned. In a pre-technological era they served as the pope's eyes, ears, voice and strong right arm in projecting papal power throughout Latin Christendom and beyond. In matters of diplomacy, the legates represented the pope in negotiations with kings, princes and secular governments.

"My paper outlined how legal doctrine regarding legates changed during the 13th century," said Figueira. "Legation went from being an 'occasion' to becoming a fixed 'office' whose incumbent's jurisdiction could continue even after the pope who empowered him died. In that case, only a future pope could decide whether to recall him."

The academic conference was sponsored by the Paris Workshop for Western Medieval Studies (LAMOP), which is headquartered at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. Twenty-three other scholars from France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Spain, Hungary and the Czech Republic presented public lectures on a variety of topics related to the colloquium's theme. Figueira was the only non-European speaker. His lecture was titled "Medieval Papal Legation and the Canonical Concept of Office."

The conference met Feb. 12-14 at two venues: the Institut de France/ Foundation del Duca, near the Arc de Triomphe, and the recently renovated College des Bernardins, in the Latin Quarter.

Figueira's participation was funded in part by LAMOP and by the Lander Faculty Development Fund. Work is under way to publish many of the lectures from the conference in a book.

Obituary: Michael Adams, founder of Four Courts Press

Four Courts Press founder who was 'a model of publishing integrity'
21 February 2009
Irish Times

Michael Adams, who has died aged 71, was the founder and managing director of Four Courts Press.

He set up the publishing house in 1970, initially to publish religious books, in particular the scripture commentary known as the Navarre Bible, an interest arising from his long-standing membership of Opus Dei.

From small beginnings in theology, Four Courts Press expanded into Celtic and medieval studies, history, art, literature and law, and today has more than 500 titles in print.

“The key to successful publishing is specialisation,” he said. “It’s all a matter of reputation. A successful publishing house is one which has a name and a following.”

The cultural historian WJ McCormack, two of whose books were published by Michael Adams, this week described him as “a model of publishing integrity”. He never encountered any attempt to censor or modify what he had written, he said, notwithstanding differences of opinion on matters of ideology.

Jeremy Addis, editor ofBooks Ireland, described what Michael brought to publishing: “An academic publisher . . . must love and understand books and must also be a careful business manager. He must motivate staff, communicate enthusiasm and new ideas to them and to potential buyers, and at the same time exercise the banker’s qualities of caution and restraint. He must bow to the expertise of scholars, but at the same time have the knowledge and confidence to impose his own standards upon their work.”

Born in Dublin in 1937, he was the son of Francis J Adams and his wife Mary. He grew up in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, where he attended St Michael’s College. He read economics and political science at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he took a PhD in 1963. He later studied journalism at the University of Navarre and for a time edited an Irish inter-university review. A founder member of the Censorship Reform Society, he published in 1969 Censorship: the Irish Experience, which was based on his PhD thesis.

He entered the world of publishing, first with US-based Opus Dei publishers Scepter Press, and then became marketing manager of Irish University Press. When the company went into receivership in 1974, Michael was one of a consortium who bought IUP’s stock and formed Irish Academic Press (IAP) to continue its sale, and complete some of the firm’s unfinished projects.

He retired as managing director from IAP in 1995 to devote himself full-time to Four Courts Press. He joined Opus Dei in 1956. In addition to translating many works of theology, he also published two books of spirituality.