Agenda
Public Lecture Beat Kümin: Managing Memory through Tower Ball Deposits in the German Lands
A day before Professor Beat Kümin’s Masterclass at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Professor Kümin will deliver a public lecture there, entitled ‘”To dear posterity”: Managing Memory through Tower Ball Deposits in the German Lands’.
About the lecture
Since the late Middle Ages, urban and rural communities of different confessions have marked the completion of prominent buildings by placing chronicles and objects into golden spheres located on top of towers. In this liminal position between earth and heaven, the archives remain inaccessible and sometimes forgotten until the next major repairs, when new items are often added by successive generations. How can we make sense of this peculiar, ‘bottom-up’ and regionally circumscribed custom and what can it tell us about local memory cultures more generally? A public lecture, just ahead of an important day of remembrance in Belgium and many other countries, investigates.
About the speaker
Beat Kümin is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Warwick and author of e.g. Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe and The Communal Age in Western Europe c. 1100-1800 , as well as ‘Nachrichten für die Nachwelt. Turmkugelarchive in der Erinnerungskultur des deutschsprachigen Europa’. He serves as an academic lead of Warwick’s interdisciplinary Global Research Priority on Food and coordinates the Warwick Network for Parish Research.
How to participate
This public lecture is open to all and free of charge. No prior reservation is required.
