Archive | Vol. 2/2009 | No. 2. Die Steppe

Hardt, Matthias; Lübke, Christian [Publishing editor]

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Content

Scientific article

Editorial / Franke, Kathrin [Autor:in] – 2009

Franke, Kathrin

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Pages: 1-4

Scientific article

Ostmitteleuropa und die Steppe. Annotationen zu einer ungewöhnlichen Beziehungsgeschichte / Lübke, Christian [Autor:in] – 2009

Lübke, Christian

Abstract:

The concept of research on East Central Europe does not refer to a geographical or political entity. Instead, it focuses on specific structural features of that region which have evolved over the course of history since the early Middle Ages and includes, for example, multi-ethnicity which arose from the openness of the region towards settlement by foreigners, such as Germans, Jews, Armenians. Amidst the influences shaping East Central Europe from the outside, the role of the Steppe has been underestimated by comparison. On the surface, this lack of serious consideration of the Steppe as a central feature in historical accounts of East Central Europe (and of East Europe as well) may be rooted in the experience of violent conflicts originating from lands even further to the east, but could also be understood as grounded in a subconscious or open rejection of the unknown, strange forms of life which totally differ from the culture of settled Europeans. As such, this essay attempts a more complex examination of this problem and reveals some different aspects of the relationship, for example, the charter of warriors and guards by East Central European rulers, who, like painters and poets in modern times, might succumb to the fascination of the alterity of the Steppe.

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Pages: 5-18

Scientific article

Attila – Atli – Etzel. Über den Wandel der Erinnerung an einen Hunnenkönig im europäischen Mittelalter / Hardt, Matthias [Autor:in] – 2009

Hardt, Matthias

Abstract:

During the European early and high Middle Ages the memory of the Migration period Hun ruler Attila was different and in flux. While Eastern Germanic groups in heroic poetry and historiography draw the picture of a noble and gift-giving king, Western Germanic tribes made him responsible for the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom in the Middle Rhine area. For Latin authors of Late Antiquity he was a flagel-lum dei and an enemy of Christianity. In medieval Cologne Attila was said to have been the murderer of 11,000 virgins. This article shall analyse these representations equally on the basis of historiography, he-roic poetry and archaeological material as sources of the nomadic influence on the history of the Migra-tion period.

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Pages: 19-28

Scientific article

Ein Kampf um Ordnung. Europa, die Steppe, die Leinwand und das Nichts / Kliems, Alfrun [Autor:in] … – 2009

Kliems, Alfrun; Mesenhöller, Mathias

Abstract:

Analysing five Eastern European History films that in one way or another are set in the steppe, this essay suggests that there is an intricate connection between setting and narrative structure. The historical “Steppe” appears as a projection screen that invites a conversion of the historical material into myths of utopian, or dystopian, content. Thus, the steppe movies under scrutiny deal with “struggles for order” in a very basal sense: that is, for order as such versus existential nothingness. This mythopoetic potential of the steppe topos appears to rely on the established and densely connoted meta-narrative of East vs. West, while its actualisation seems to be provoked by an encompassing consciousness of historical discontinu-ity. In this, the historical steppe film shows a certain congruency with the emplotment of the American Western, albeit in a more radical, or existential, fashion. This holds true for all the films under considera-tion, notwithstanding the specific differences of message due to their context of production.

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Pages: 29-44

Scientific article

Skythen, Amazonen und Futuristen. Der Steppendiskurs der 1910-1920er Jahre und seine heutigen Implikationen / Dmitrieva, Marina [Autor:in] – 2009

Dmitrieva, Marina

Abstract:

Due to the archaeological discovery of Greek and Scythian culture in the south of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century and the scientific exploration of Russia’s own Orient – i.e. the non-European peoples of Siberia, Central Asia, Caucasus and middle-Volga – the Eurasian paradigm became more and more influential among Russian intellectuals and artists. Eurasia was conceived as a specific area with common economic, cultural and political development, framed by the interaction of the Finno-Ugric and Turkic-Mongol nomadic steppe peoples. For the adherents of Eurasianism, the steppe, broadly considered as a crossroad between Orient and Occident, embodied their concept of the ‘multiethnic imaginary cultural imperial entity’ as its ultimate legitimation. This article investigates the impact of the perception of the steppe on theorists and artists during the decades of the 1910 and 1920, with the special emphasis on the “Scythian theme” in the geopolitical visions of “Eurasians” from the 1920s to the present day and on the artistic concepts of the Russian Futurists.

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Pages: 45-62

Scientific article

Acker oder Weide? Die Zivilisation der Steppe und die Administration der Nomaden / Hofmann, Gunther O. [Autor:in] – 2009

Hofmann, Gunther O.

Abstract:

The article is about the interactions between the Russian Empire and the nomadic tribes in the steppes of Central Asia. Nomadic economies and culture were well integrated into the surrounding environments but were urged by the Russian colonial administration to change to the sedentary lifestyle of an agrarian soci-ety. With this step Russian colonial politics hoped to solve the problems arising in its Central regions fol-lowing the abolition of serfdom and the ensuing problem of scarcity of common land. The answer to these problems was contained in the sedentarisation of the nomads. This is why the Russian colonial admini-stration oriented its general education of the nomads towards farming and agriculture. The aim was to in-troduce the advantages of agrarian economies through agrarian schooling. This experiment failed how-ever, and the permanent settlement of the Steppes was only successful after the education of Russian set-tlers. The article follows the implementation of the school models through the debate on sedentarisation.

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Pages: 63-82

Scientific article

Sehnsuchtsort, Risikolebensraum, Nomaden-Highway. Die Steppe als Ort der Erkenntnis / Hipp, Sylvia [Autor:in] – 2009

Hipp, Sylvia

Abstract:

The handling of space and landscape1 among individuals and groups with diverse academic backgrounds produces specific views of the same reality. As far as the techniques, formulas and images of space are concerned, the new disciplines (affected by the spatial turn) differ in some extent from the conventional geographical ways of constructing spaces. Here the characteristics of the physio-geographical approach with its two techniques of classification and localisation of natural criteria are presented to demonstrate the way in which this field of geography refers to “the material reality”. The theoretical background of the second part of the article is the geographical perspective – as one possible view of a landscape – which generally presents the ecological characteristics of the steppe in order to access an account of the steppe via its natural conditions and factors. Forms of nomadism as a “socio-ecological mode of culture” and spatial mobility as a “strategy of human existence” (Scholz 1995, 7) can be seen as ideas immanent to this region. In this context the difficulties associated with historical placement and the detection of spatial mobility and temporary or seasonal settlement in the archaeological record should be discussed in con-nection with questions concerning the origin of that very old life form.

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Pages: 83.98