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Alles Mythos!
Dem Mittelalter auf der Spur War das Mittelalter wirklich finster? Ritter immer ritterlich? Waren Burgen uneinnehmbar und die Menschen damals einfältig-dumm? Um kaum eine historische Epoche ranken sich derart viele und widersprüchliche Mythen wie um das Mittelalter. Es gilt als Inbegriff einer finsteren Zeit voll abergläubischer Intoleranz und grausamer Verschwenderische Fürsten unterdrückten rücksichtslos das darbende Volk, an jeder Ecke standen Galgen, brannten Scheiterhaufen und schon ein fauler Zahn konnte den Tod bedeuten. Gleichzeitig wird das Reich der Ritter oft auch als ein harmonisches Zeitalter verklärt, in dem wohlgeordnete soziale Verhältnisse herrschten und der Mensch im Einklang mit Gott und der Natur ein sinnerfülltes, einfaches Leben führte. Doch wo liegt die historische Wahrheit? Dieses Buch greift die häufigsten Irrtümer über das Mittelalter auf und zeigt unterhaltsam und kurzweilig anhand aktueller wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse, dass damals vieles ganz anders war, als man es sich heute gemeinhin vorstellt.
Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 26, 2011
War das Mittelalter eine dunkle Zeit? War es grausam, waren Ritter die edlen Herren? Das Mittelalter, hier in die 1.000 Jahre von 500 bis 1500 eingeordnet, wird durch die Autorin in 20 Kapiteln beleuchtet. So werden die oben erwähnten Ritter, von ihrem Aufstieg als bewaffnete Reiter bis zu ihrem Niedergang zum sprichwörtlichen Raubritter, kurz angerissen. Burgen waren nicht im Stile Neuschwansteins errichtet, die Verklärung setzte erst in der Neuzeit ein, genauso gab es die Technikfeindlichkeit so nicht. Auch die berühmte Erde als Scheibe ist eine neuzeitliche Phantasieproduktion.
Sicherlich kann in einem Buch dieser Stärke (256 Seiten) kein abschließendes Kompendium über das Mittelalter erwartet werden, doch sind einige Stellen etwas zu "reißerisch" abgehandelt. Die Freiheit der Frauen sollte einmal, auf die gesamte Bevölkerung gesehen, hinterfragt werden. Dennoch bildet das Buch eine gute Gelegenheit sich einmal mit "dem" Mittelalter zu beschäftigen. Jedenfalls ist es ein kurzweiliger Lesespaß.
Sicherlich kann in einem Buch dieser Stärke (256 Seiten) kein abschließendes Kompendium über das Mittelalter erwartet werden, doch sind einige Stellen etwas zu "reißerisch" abgehandelt. Die Freiheit der Frauen sollte einmal, auf die gesamte Bevölkerung gesehen, hinterfragt werden. Dennoch bildet das Buch eine gute Gelegenheit sich einmal mit "dem" Mittelalter zu beschäftigen. Jedenfalls ist es ein kurzweiliger Lesespaß.
July 19, 2011
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And this book must cover quite a lot of ground in it. It's not that it's completely uninteresting or even badly written, it's just firmly set in the "not fish not flesh" category and in the end does suffer from it.
E.g. do half the points not really meet the chapter title (said 20 popular mistakes we all do when thinking about "the middle ages" but only tell "it was not so for ALL the middle ages. D'uh! what a revelation. We're talking about 1000 years and they were not an amorphous mass of uniform happenings? Whow. And even WHEN they manage to write their essays in the way that it's almost convincing that e.g. the people were not completely religious they often manage to come up with the counter argument just a few paragraphs into the next chapter...
Secondly most of the really digging happens to stretch only from around 1100 to the end of the dark ages about the time when Columbus mislanded a whole continent too early from his destination... that's at least 60% of the proposed span of the book simply missing or missing in around 17 of the 20 chapters... (okay given that the Crusades or the witch stuff truly happened later there are a few more chapters which couldn't include all of the millienium hinted at in the title... but that's not really soothing seeing that most of the other chapters would have had great opportunitties to view at all of the development, not just the last higher evolved incarnations of the DA...)
And honestly... when i'm reading 25 pages about how the witches hunt in the middle ages wasn't that cruel and stuff i feel a little bit cheated when the next but coming around the edge is .... "but in the next few centuries after those middle ages ended... whooo you would not have liked being called a witch".
Then a good point of the other "revelations" is truly pointless... it's not really an eye opener when you get an explanation why the crusades were not all religiously motivated or if or if not SOME cloisters were horts of perversion while others were chaste and strong in their believes...
In the end the point where the book loses it's capacity to be great or a must read is that it's never clearly deciding whether to be a popular text explaining stuff to laymen in the amusing tones of a professional entertainer or if it wants to be hardass science in the tones of a professional analyst of historical events. The first lacks a lot of esprit, humor and probably annecdotal examples too the latter one dies with the absolute missing of sources in the main text and the often blurry research work... bordering on hear-say.
When you're generally interested in the middle ages and don't really know a lot of hard facts about how the everyday life you could enjoy this book. If you're searching for explicit details in depth analysis of the time or even are well versed in your medieval knowledge you should look for something else to read.
And this book must cover quite a lot of ground in it. It's not that it's completely uninteresting or even badly written, it's just firmly set in the "not fish not flesh" category and in the end does suffer from it.
E.g. do half the points not really meet the chapter title (said 20 popular mistakes we all do when thinking about "the middle ages" but only tell "it was not so for ALL the middle ages. D'uh! what a revelation. We're talking about 1000 years and they were not an amorphous mass of uniform happenings? Whow. And even WHEN they manage to write their essays in the way that it's almost convincing that e.g. the people were not completely religious they often manage to come up with the counter argument just a few paragraphs into the next chapter...
Secondly most of the really digging happens to stretch only from around 1100 to the end of the dark ages about the time when Columbus mislanded a whole continent too early from his destination... that's at least 60% of the proposed span of the book simply missing or missing in around 17 of the 20 chapters... (okay given that the Crusades or the witch stuff truly happened later there are a few more chapters which couldn't include all of the millienium hinted at in the title... but that's not really soothing seeing that most of the other chapters would have had great opportunitties to view at all of the development, not just the last higher evolved incarnations of the DA...)
And honestly... when i'm reading 25 pages about how the witches hunt in the middle ages wasn't that cruel and stuff i feel a little bit cheated when the next but coming around the edge is .... "but in the next few centuries after those middle ages ended... whooo you would not have liked being called a witch".
Then a good point of the other "revelations" is truly pointless... it's not really an eye opener when you get an explanation why the crusades were not all religiously motivated or if or if not SOME cloisters were horts of perversion while others were chaste and strong in their believes...
In the end the point where the book loses it's capacity to be great or a must read is that it's never clearly deciding whether to be a popular text explaining stuff to laymen in the amusing tones of a professional entertainer or if it wants to be hardass science in the tones of a professional analyst of historical events. The first lacks a lot of esprit, humor and probably annecdotal examples too the latter one dies with the absolute missing of sources in the main text and the often blurry research work... bordering on hear-say.
When you're generally interested in the middle ages and don't really know a lot of hard facts about how the everyday life you could enjoy this book. If you're searching for explicit details in depth analysis of the time or even are well versed in your medieval knowledge you should look for something else to read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews