Ego-Documents: The Last Word?

This article examines the concept of ‘egocuments' from a historiographical perspective. It looks at its origins in the 1950s in the work of the Dutch historian Jacob Presser, at its revival in the work of Rudolf Dekker and his group from the 1970s onwards, and at the considerable expansion the notion was subjected to in the early 1990s by Winfried Schulze. The article argues that we should be aware of the noticeable differences between using the concept in twentieth-century history, as Presser did, and its usage in the context of early modern histor

"Oswald Myconius: Briefwechsel 1515-15522: Eine Würdigung

This short article surveys the recently published correspondence of Oswald Myconius (in the form of detailed regestae) from 1515 to the year of his death in 1552, edited by Rainer Henrich. Like the publications of Amy Nelson Burnett of the last three decades, it offers a view of Myconius’ activities at the head of Basel’s Reformed church from 1532, that differs from the older Basel historiography which portrayed him chiefly as the faithful custodian of Oecolampadius’ theological heritage. Instead, like Burnett, it shows that it was Myconius rather than his successor Simon Sulzer, who brought Basel’s official theology of the eucharist in line with Martin Bucer’s attempt to find a compromise between the Lutheran and Reformed positions. At the same time, it goes beyond Burnett in offering more detail, and in demonstrating the complexity of the struggle with Basel’s city council during the late 1530’s and early 1540’s about controlling the local church, not least due to highlighting the depth of the conflict between Myconius and Karlstadt that was entangled with this struggle

A large share of climate impacts of beef and dairy can be attributed to ecosystem services other than food production

Domesticated ruminants supply nutrient-dense foods but at a large environmental cost. However, many ruminant production systems are multi-functional, providing ecosystem services (ES) other than direct provision of food. When quantifying the climate impact of ruminant products using life cycle assessment (LCA), provisioning ES (i. e. beef and milk) are generally considered the only valuable outputs and other ES provided are ignored, which risks overlooking positive contributions associated with ruminant production. Non-provisioning ES can be included in LCA by economic allocation, using compensatory payments (through agri-environmental schemes) as a proxy for the economic value of ES. For example, farmers can receive payments for maintenance of pastures, which supports e.g. pollination. However, the association between different payment schemes, the ES provided, and livestock production is not always straightforward and it can be difficult to determine which payment schemes to include in the allocation. This study examined how accounting for ES in quantification of climate impact for beef and milk production on Swedish farms was affected by different ways of coupling ES to livestock production through payment schemes. Quantification was done using LCA, attributing the climate impact to beef, milk, and other ES by economic allocation. This resulted in <1-48% and 11-31% of climate impacts being allocated to other ES, instead of beef and milk, respectively, affecting suckler farms most. The results were influenced by which payment schemes, representing different ES, that were included; when only payments directly related to livestock rearing were included, the difference in the climate impact was still large between farm types, while the difference decreased considerably when all environmental schemes were included. While emissions do not disappear, ES-corrected climate impact can potentially be useful as part of consumer communication or in decision-making, reducing the risk of overlooking ES provided by ruminant production in a simpler way than using separate indicators