Abstract
The paper summarizes the history of collecting and evaluating information on earthquakes in Germany. A rich literature mentioning historical and contemporary earthquakes has existed since the 16th century. Early earthquake catalogues began to appear in the middle of the 16th century, some of which report earthquakes in Germany dating back to the 9th century. Modern seismological views were introduced in connection with intense philosophical analysis of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which was largely observed in Central Europe. The 19th century was characterized by a tremendous increase in detailed earthquake studies as well as earthquake compilations in the form of catalogues. The most comprehensive non-parametric catalogues were created in the middle of the 20th century, while the first digital parametric catalogues were published in the 1980s. This was also the time when critical studies on the re-interpretation of historical earthquakes began. Only in the 1990s was such analysis made in a systematic manner resulting in numerous publications and the current development of a modern earthquake catalogue.
Highlights
Key words historical earthquakes – fake quakes – Germany – historical earthquake research – earthquake catalogues. This is a short treatise on the meta-history of earthquakes in Germany, i.e. on the history of collecting and evaluating information on earthquakes
The Lisbon earthquake on 1 November 1755 gained so much attention in Central Europe, not least in Germany, that it can be regarded as the starting point to an early seismological science there, connected with the abandoning of many previous myths associated with this natural phenomenon
An early attempt to squeeze the verbal data into a parametric format is the catalogue by Rothé and Schneider (1968) for the Rhine Graben area, which belongs both to Germany and France
Summary
This is a short treatise on the meta-history of earthquakes in Germany, i.e. on the history of collecting and evaluating information on earthquakes. Another subregional seismicity concentration occurs in a narrow source zone south of Stuttgart. This zone released the largest earthquakes in Germany in the 20th century. The rapid and effective distribution of news, including information on earthquakes, was to a large extent connected with the advent of printed books, illustrated broadsheets or «new tidings», especially in Germany. These new developments have a strong link to the dramatic expansion of trade and commerce in Central and Northern Europe since the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern times. This concerns cases where the «earthquake epicentres» are associated with towns where the reports originate (Grünthal and Fischer, 2000; Grünthal and Fischer, 2001)
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