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‘Mind the Next Flood!’ Memories of Natural Disasters in Northern Germany from the Sixteenth Century to the Present

Michael Kempe Geschichte, Kulturwisenschaftliche Abteilung, University of St. Gallen. E-mail: Michael.Kempe{at}unisg.ch.

Floods and storm-tides have been—and continue to be—a regular feature of the daily life of small rural communities on the coasts of the North Sea in Northern Germany and the Low Countries. This article examines the cultural strategies evolved within these communities as part of their response to catastrophe and ever-present danger. Practices of communication and memorialising are one important way of coping—for they transport a specific memoria of disaster experiences, that has a stabilising function. The article takes a longue durée perspective, extending from the sixteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century, in order to grasp the dynamics by which collective memories crystallise into a ‘culture of disaster’. It examines the strategies of different media in the creation of a cultural memory unique to ‘amphibian societies’ in North Germany.

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