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Tower ball deposits and urban space in the German lands
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Kümin, Beat (2023) Tower ball deposits and urban space in the German lands. Religion and Urbanity Online . doi:10.1515/urbrel.22603017 ISSN 2750-8080.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/urbrel.22603017
Abstract
Drawing on an extensive survey of known sites, this article focuses on the spatial implications of tower ball deposits in Austrian, German and Swiss cities. From the late Middle Ages up to the present, representatives of user communities have deposited chronicles and objects in Turmkugeln overlooking major buildings such as churches, town halls and city gates. The evidence can date back to their original construction, with further items added during subsequent repairs, usually with the explicit intention to inform posterity and invoke divine protection. In many cases, therefore, the spheres contain segments of materials stretching over several centuries.
The overarching theme of co-spatiality raises a series of complex questions in relation to this material: given that tower balls occupied liminal positions between earth and heaven, should they be seen as belonging to the secular or religious domain? Were their functions mainly apotropaic, comparable to ‘construction sacrifices’ (Bauopfer), or akin to those of Erinnerungsorte aimed at the evocation of the ‘right’ kinds of collective memories? Given the existence of multiple, contrasting and sometimes covert deposits, who was actually in charge of these communications – individual scribes, social elites or entire localities? The paper conceptualises tower balls filled with contents as ‘generation sites’, with each layer of deposits acting as a ‘booster point’ for the communicative memory of successive user communities, allowing horizons to stretch well beyond their regular extent of less than a century.
Given that the phenomenon can also be found in the countryside, a final section identifies the greater likelihood of multiple and typologically varied tower ball archives as distinctive ‘urban’ features. Each repository, and indeed each set of deposits within it, affords a different view and topography of the city. Juxtaposition of all evidence across sites and periods thus uncovers a (chronologically) multi-layered and (socially) diverse range of spatial constitutions of the respective cities.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DD Germany G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Time-signals -- History -- Germany, Geospatial data -- Collection and preservation, Collective memory -- Germany, Collective memory and city planning -- Germany | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Religion and Urbanity Online | ||||||
| Publisher: | De Gruyter | ||||||
| ISSN: | 2750-8080 | ||||||
| Book Title: | Tower Ball Deposits and Urban Space in the German Lands | ||||||
| Official Date: | 6 February 2023 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| DOI: | 10.1515/urbrel.22603017 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 7 February 2023 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 8 February 2023 |
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