The Hamburg Flood in Public Memory Culture
Today, the Storm Flood of 1962 forms an integral part of local and national memory culture. Public commemoration events, monuments, and media coverage assure that the disaster is not forgotten.
Today, the Storm Flood of 1962 forms an integral part of local and national memory culture. Public commemoration events, monuments, and media coverage assure that the disaster is not forgotten.
Research on climatic variations in the sixteenth century has stressed the exceptionality of extreme events, but the case of the lower Po basin, where lack of instrumental data renders the concept of exceptionality complex and relative, shows that this is not necessarily valid.
This essay explores the progression of theoretical models and empirical research linked to the understanding of the capacity of forested systems to regulate the hydrological regimes of a given area.
By re-visiting the sources for the 1348 earthquake following the studies of Borst (1981) and Hammerl (1992) and looking at aspects of its perception, management and explanation, this article calls into question the supposed ‘medieval’ equation of natural disaster and divine punishment.
Different interpretations of the biblical deluge give us an idea of various modes of perceptions of natural disasters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In analysing these interpretations we learn much about early modern European ways of thinking about nature, mankind and the relationship between both.
The present investigation examines the resonance of such catastrophes in the correspondence network of the universal scholar Albrecht von Haller (1708–77).
The main hypothesis is that the metaphorical discourse about the disaster and nature in general serves as a metaphorical reservoir for illustrating and legitimising the abstract political process of the German Reunification.
On October 9, 1963, a landslide above the Vajont Dam created a wave that destroyed several villages in the valley, killing about 2,000 people. Opinion as to whether to interpret the disaster as natural or one caused by human error remains divided.
Only in recent times have serious historical studies been published about floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storm tides, forest-fires, and other natural disasters and their effects on human life.
Istvan Praet, Carson Fellow from July to December 2011, talks about the perception of catastrophes among the Chachi, the Amerindian inhabitants of Esmeraldas, a lowland region on the Pacific coast.