Since the 12th century, a central feature of Buddhism in Tibet was its harmonizing of tantric practice with the moral codes of monastic discipline and Bodhisattva altruism. All masters maintained the vajrayana or tantric path to be superior to the two „lower“ codes, but they described this superiority differently. In the present study, Jan-Ulrich Sobisch explores for the first time in detail the three main strategies maintained by the oldest Tibetan schools for explaining the relations of the three codes.

For Palestinians, the term nakba (catastrophe) subsumes the events within the context of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, immediately after the foundation of the state of Israel. To this day, the nakba is referred to continuously − not only within the context of politics, but also in literature and popular and everyday culture. Using interviews with Palestinian refugees in Jordan and a wide range of written sources, this volume for the first time approaches the forms and functions of nakba memories from the perspective of memory theory, demonstrating how the various events are assigned significance through narrative structures.

With the rediscovery of Mariano Taccola’s technical manuscripts, a primary source has been found for drawings and texts in treatises and sketchbooks of Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Taccola first conceived a new subject in Renaissance literature: rational descriptions and illustrations of utilitarian structures built by master masons, carpenters, millwrights, and artisans in the service of military lords. Taccola’s complex and fascinating manuscript is being published fully in facsimile. It was a gift to Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter who studied law (1533-1542) in Siena, probably at the Studio or University where Taccola had been secretary while writing in the building arts. The volume that Taccola entitled “Liber primus leonis” and “Liber secundis draconis” was modified into a “Notebook” when he, in 1435-1438, added many small sketches around each main drawing existing on a folio, and added quires of paper after Book II for additional and later drawings. This edition includes, in the editors’ introduction, a short biography of Mariano Taccola, a history of his “Notebook”, a description of its sections, an account of Taccola’s contribution to the history of thechnology, and a study of his influencce. Each of Taccola’s several hundred drawings is identified, his Latin texts and notes are all transcribed an then translated into English. In one Appendix, the editors illustrate and interpret eight drawings identified as copies of Taccola’s originals lost from his “Notebook”, and a second Appendix concerns the desings of mills, pile-drivers, and water-supply devices of a Machine Complex that other engineers developed from prototypes in Taccola’s “Notebook”.

In the Hellenistic and particularly the Roman Imperial period the Acropolis of Athens embodied the greatness of the “polis” in Classical times and must to an extent have attained a museum-like status. This volume represents the results of an International Colloquium at Bonn University which took place in June 2006. In their contributions scholars of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History treat subjects such as: buildings, votive offerings and honorific statues of the Hellenistic and Roman periods (and up to Late Antiquity), as well as the historical and political context and the well documented references to Athens’ glorious past in the development of democracy and in the age of Perikles.

Die Erforschung statuarischer Bildwerke steht im Schnittpunkt verschiedener altertumswissenschaftlicher Disziplinen. Statuen im öffentlichen Raum bilden einen wichtigen Gradmesser für die Kontinuität städtischer Ausstattungspraxis in der Spätantike. Sie belegen, sofern es sich um Bildwerke im privaten Lebensbereich handelt, die Langlebigkeit klassisch-mythologischer Sujets. Die Inschriften auf Statuenbasen wiederum entwerfen in ihrer Intellektualität das Bild einer bildungsfreudigen Oberschicht, während gerade Verstümmelungen und Zerstörungen von Bildnissen die Furcht vor Statuen bezeugen. In dem vorliegenden Band werden am Beispiel ausgewählter Befunde und Kontexte nicht nur Probleme der Chronologie und der Entstehung von Statuensammlungen thematisiert, sondern auch Fragen der Kontextualisierung sowohl im privaten wie im öffentlichen Raum behandelt. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt ferner der inhaltlichen Deutung einzelner Statuen und Statuensammlungen, den Gründen für das Ende der Statuenproduktion und der Frage, welche Repräsentationsformen an die Stelle der Statuenausstattung traten.

Im Projekt „Deutsche Wortfeldetymologie in europäischem Kontext“ wird der auf den Menschen bezogene Substantiv-Wortschatz des Deutschen vom Althochdeutschen bis zur Gegenwartssprache nach Wortfeldern gegliedert in semantischer und etymologischer Hinsicht untersucht und in seinen europäischen Bezügen dargestellt.