Wolfgang Ernst – författare

Monetary law is essential to the functioning of private transactions and international dealings by the state: nearly every legal transaction has a monetary aspect. Money in the Western Legal Tradition presents the first comprehensive analysis of Western monetary law, covering the civil law and Anglo-American common law legal systems from the High Middle Ages up to the middle of the 20th century. Weaving a detailed tapestry of the changing concepts of money and private transactions throughout the ages, the contributors investigate the special contribution made by legal scholars and practitioners to our understanding of money and the laws that govern it. Divided in five parts, the book begins with the coin currency of the Middle Ages, moving through the invention of nominalism in the early modern period to cashless payment and the rise of the banking system and paper money, then charting the progression to fiat money in the modern era. Each part commences with an overview of the monetary environment for the historical period written by an economic historian or numismatist. These are followed by chapters describing the legal doctrines of each period in civil and common law. Each section contains examples of contemporary litigation or statute law which engages with the distinctive issues affecting the monetary law of the period. This interdisciplinary approach reveals the distinctive conception of money prevalent in each period, which either facilitated or hampered the implementation of economic policy and the operation of private transactions.

In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites.In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theories of Wolfgang Ernst are particularly relevant. Digital Memory and the Archive, the first English-language collection of the German media theorist’s work, brings together essays that present Ernst’s controversial materialist approach to media theory and history. His insights are central to the emerging field of media archaeology, which uncovers the role of specific technologies and mechanisms, rather than content, in shaping contemporary culture and society.Ernst’s interrelated ideas on the archive, machine time and microtemporality, and the new regimes of memory offer a new perspective on both current digital culture and the infrastructure of media historical knowledge. For Ernst, different forms of media systems-from library catalogs to sound recordings-have influenced the content and understanding of the archive and other institutions of memory. At the same time, digital archiving has become a contested site that is highly resistant to curation, thus complicating the creation and preservation of cultural memory and history.

Our studies of aesthetics and knowledge have long tended to privilege the visual - at the expense, Wolfgang Ernst argues, of the aural. Sonic Time Machines aims to correct that, presenting a striking new approach to theorising sound that investigates its split existence: as a temporal effect in a techno-cultural context and as a source of knowledge and information. Ernst creates a new term for the concept at the heart of the book, sonicity, a flexible and powerful term that allows him to consider sound with all its many physical, philosophical, and cultural valences.

Rail and road accidents are examples of new sources of harm, particularly personal injury, which arose almost simultaneously across Western Europe. The area of rail accidents provides early examples of a move away from fault liability in certain countries, but not in others. Although statutory regulation and extra-statutory standards form part of the context of liability, private law actions for damages and the plasticity of fault ideas remain central to the law's response. Insurance determines the relative importance of private law actions. Traffic liability is a field in which different solutions have been developed by different legal systems. For example, while France developed strict liability in the 1920s and 1930s and no-fault liability in 1985, English law has remained wedded to fault. The stability of each legal solution suggests that the background insurance position has been settled in the different countries, albeit in differing ways.

Like most of Wolfgang Ernst’s work, Das Rumoren der Archiv explored the concept of archival and media theory from a current cultural digital context. Ernst challenges the traditional perspective of the cultural heritage institution and how it relied on media for creating, storing and disseminating digital information. Archives have a place in a digital society, and the archivist’s role will be more increasingly vital in the future. As Ernst points out, his work will show a way out of the archive, away from the notion that the era of archive is coming to an end. Here is the long-awaited English translation of this seminal work exploring cultural heritage before the archives, throughout history, and from today into the future.Ernst work emphasized a need to recognize media as a method for capturing and preserving our collective cultural identity. It is vital that archivists promoted a greater awareness of how media technology augmented the creation, management, and dissemination of digital content.

Wolfgang Ernst’s new work, Technológos in Being, in its explicit media-scientific approach, aligns with the politics of the thinking media series to publish innovative works that advance media studies towards the ‘new sciences.’ Ernst’s invites readers to re-adjust their ideas of Media Studies: the conviction that an extended understanding of "medium" needs to include a concept of materiality that focuses on "non- human" agencies as well. The book grounds media analysis radically in the technological apparatuses, relays, transistors, hard- and software, to precisely locate the scenes, operations and frictions where reasoning logos and ‘informable’ matter interfere.

Wolfgang Ernst’s new work, Technológos in Being, in its explicit media-scientific approach, aligns with the politics of the thinking media series to publish innovative works that advance media studies towards the ‘new sciences.’ Ernst’s invites readers to re-adjust their ideas of Media Studies: the conviction that an extended understanding of "medium" needs to include a concept of materiality that focuses on "non- human" agencies as well. The book grounds media analysis radically in the technological apparatuses, relays, transistors, hard- and software, to precisely locate the scenes, operations and frictions where reasoning logos and ‘informable’ matter interfere.

This book provides unique insights into modern collective judicial decision-making. Courts all over the world sit in panels of several judges, yet the processes by which these judges produce the court's decision differ markedly. Judges from some of the world's most notable judicial bodies, in both the civilian and the common law tradition and from supra-/international courts, share their experiences and reflect on the challenges to which their collective endeavour gives rise. They address matters such as the question of panel constitution, the operation of rapporteur systems, pre-and post-hearing conferences, the hearing procedure itself, the nature of the interaction between the judicial panel and parties' advocates, the extent to which a unitary judgment of the court or at least a single majority judgment is required or deemed desirable, and how it is ultimately arrived at through different voting mechanisms. They allow the reader a unique inside view into the functioning of modern judicial bodies. The judges' chapters are supplemented by a series of comparative analyses and reflections on the lessons to be learnt from them. Collective Judging in Comparative Perspective thus also provides an ideal starting point for thinking about future court design.

Justinian 's Digest, enacted 533 CE, collects excerpts of high-calibre writings from Roman legal intellectuals, produced in the first and second centuries CE. Since the High Middle Ages it has been used as a quarry of legal concepts and doctrines. Concerning the liabilities of two consecutive attackers, the first of whom mortally wounds the victim, while the second finishes the job and leaves the victim dead, the Digest preserves two conflicting texts: Celsus (67130 CE) held that the second attacker is liable, under the relevant statute (the lex Aquilia), for killing, whereas the first attacker should be liable for wounding only. Julian (ca 110ca 175 CE), in contrast, advocated holding both attackers liable as killers.To the present day, commentators on Justinian's Digest have been challenged to make sense of the conflict between these two statements. Ever more elaborate interpretations have been advanced, unlocking a range of diverse issues of causality and evidence, deterrence and statutory interpretation. Like few other texts from Roman lawyers, Julians essay (D. 9.2.51), mirrored in a colourful spectrum of intellectual responses, emerged as a signature piece of the western legal canon.Focussed on the history of one case, this book provides an exhaustive review of past and present interpretations and makes for a historiography of Roman law scholarship, from its medieval beginnings to our contemporary research activities.

Wolfgang Ernst has demonstrated that the knowledge of time-giving (‘chrono-poetical’) media and their temporal essence enriches the tradition of philosophical inquiry into the nature of ‘time’. This book, a translated and abridged edition of Ernst’s two major volumes, Chronopoetik and Gleichursprünglichkeit, undertakes this on three levels: a close analysis of time-critical moments within media technologies; descriptions of how media temporalities affect and disrupt the traditional human sense of time; and questioning the traditional position of media time within cultural history.The book brings together two fields of inquiry: the technological analysis of media time processes and the venerable tradition of philosophical inquiry into the nature of time. Ernst argues that the scientific inquiry into the nature of time is enriched by the media-technological context. The book exposes a media theoretical approach to contemporary media culture that derives from the combination of philosophical reflection on the essence of technology and a close analysis of technological devices themselves. Ultimately Ernst addresses a fundamental concern of past, contemporary and future media culture: the position of technology in culture under the focused perspective of its tempor(e)alities.

Wolfgang Ernst has demonstrated that the knowledge of time-giving (‘chrono-poetical’) media and their temporal essence enriches the tradition of philosophical inquiry into the nature of ‘time’. This book, a translated and abridged edition of Ernst’s two major volumes, Chronopoetik and Gleichursprünglichkeit, undertakes this on three levels: a close analysis of time-critical moments within media technologies; descriptions of how media temporalities affect and disrupt the traditional human sense of time; and questioning the traditional position of media time within cultural history.The book brings together two fields of inquiry: the technological analysis of media time processes and the venerable tradition of philosophical inquiry into the nature of time. Ernst argues that the scientific inquiry into the nature of time is enriched by the media-technological context. The book exposes a media theoretical approach to contemporary media culture that derives from the combination of philosophical reflection on the essence of technology and a close analysis of technological devices themselves. Ultimately Ernst addresses a fundamental concern of past, contemporary and future media culture: the position of technology in culture under the focused perspective of its tempor(e)alities.

With the pervasive digitalization of communication and information devices in society, and with the increasing supremacy of software that dissimulates its physical medium, actual technologies are increasingly disappearing behind their user-oriented surfaces and manifest content. The more human users are superficially in touch with such devices, the more their technical essence recedes into an almost non-intelligible sphere, culminating in the hidden layers of neuronal nets in Artificial Intelligence.Transitive Media [Philosophy] argues for a media engagement that instead stays close to the mechanism and becomes conscious of its knowledge value in real time. Rejecting symbolic abstraction, the book argues for a ‘transitive’ engagement, in the grammatical sense of an immediate relation between verbal expression and its objects where the actor remains entangled in the action. Concrete technical scenarios explore how knowledge arises from real-time interaction with machines, whether through reactivating obsolete devices in Berlin’s Media Archaeological Fundus, analysing glitches as epistemic revelations, or reframing writing itself as a technical act. A hands-on, entangled philosophy emerges through—not just about—technology.Addressing a broad readership in media culture and philosophy, this volume offers a new kind of doing-media theory, urging readers to trade passive observation for embodied, operational insight to achieve a more conscious dialogue with their smartphones, tablets and other such items. Emerging from the author’s long academic training in media theories and from practical media-archaeological experience with generations of technical devices, this provocative book compels a rethink of how thought and technology co-constitute one another.

Das Handbuch des Römischen Privatrechts gilt dem römischen Privat- und Zivilprozessrecht von den ältesten römischen Rechtsquellen bis zur Zeit Justinians. Erstmals seit fünfzig Jahren erfolgt eine umfassende Darstellung auf der Höhe des aktuellen Forschungsstandes. Das Standardwerk bietet sachkundige Orientierung angesichts der Vielzahl der Forschungsgegenstände und der stetig reicher werdenden Sekundärliteratur. Es dient auch Althistorikern, Klassischen Philologen, anderen Geisteswissenschaftlern und Vertretern des geltenden Rechts als Nachschlagewerk und erhebt den Anspruch, ein Bezugspunkt der internationalen römisch-rechtlichen Forschung zu sein. Der Schwerpunkt der Darstellung liegt auf der Diskussion der spätrepublikanischen und kaiserzeitlichen römischen Jurisprudenz, wobei eine intensive Bezugnahme auf den Prozess erfolgt. Die juristische Papyrologie und Epigraphik sind ebenso berücksichtigt wie die provinziale Rechtspraxis.Das Handbuch erscheint in 2 Bänden mit zusätzlichem Registerband und wird nur geschlossen abgegeben.„Der romanistischen Forschung haben [die Herausgeber und Autoren] damit einen unschätzbaren Dienst erwiesen."Reinhard Zimmermann ZEuP 31 (2023), 734„Es sind nicht nur diese Perlen, die diesen Bänden einen festen Platz in jeder ernst zu nehmenden juristischen Bibliothek verschaffen, sondern auch die Beiträge, die den Stand der Forschung im besten Sinne kritisch und verlässlich aufarbeiten."Nils Jansen RabelsZ 87 (2023), 849„kommt man doch nicht umhin, dem neuen Handbuch einen bleibenden Wert zu attestieren."Jan Dirk Harke Juristenzeitung 21 (2024), 981„a true game changer. Roman law scholarship will be vastly improved by the existence of the new Handbuch des Römischen Privatrechts.[...] an English translation is a matter of urgency."Stefan Vogenauer Rechtsgeschichte 31 (2023), 221

Die Erforschung des römischen Rechts wendet sich zunehmend den Realitäten des antiken Rechtslebens zu. Dahinter steht die Erkenntnis, dass sich auch das rechtswissenschaftliche Schrifttum der römischen Juristen zu einem erheblichen Teil auf die Vorgänge des Rechtsverkehrs bezog. Zugleich erlaubt die epigraphische Überlieferung einen unmittelbaren Einblick in die Rechtsgeschäfte des antiken Alltags. Die urkundlich überlieferte Rechtspraxis und das rechtswissenschaftliche Schrifttum der iurisconsulti sind aufeinander zu beziehen und erschließen sich in ihrer Wechselbeziehung der heutigen Forschung. Mit diesem Blickwinkel greifen die Autoren des Bandes verschiedene Sachfragen des römischen Vertragsrechts auf. Beiträge zur Ausbreitung des römischen Rechts und zu Nachbarrechten der Antike, aber auch zur kulturellen Bedeutung des romanistischen Erbes in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte, runden den Band ab.

Das Kaufrecht der kontinentalen Rechtsordnungen beruht auf dem Recht des römischen Vertrages emptio venditio. Auch das englische Recht ist von römischen Vorstellungen nicht unberührt geblieben. Was einen Kaufvertrag – im Gegensatz zum Tausch – ausmacht, wurde von den römischen Juristen ermittelt. Die antiken römischen Vorschriften zum Käuferschutz gegen Sachmängel wurden ebenso wie der Satz vom sofortigen Übergang der Gefahr Grundlagen der Rechtsentwicklung seit dem Mittelalter. Überall in Europa ist modernes Kaufrecht das Ergebnis einer produktiven Auseinandersetzung um die Sachgerechtigkeit der römischen Regelungen. Die Autoren dieses Bandes untersuchen einzelne Fragen des Kaufrechts in der römischen Antike und in Rechtsordnungen der Neuzeit.

Sonic Time Machines presents a striking new approach to theorising sound that investigates its split existence: as a temporal effect in a techno-cultural context and as a source of knowledge and information.

"Wolfgang Ernst ger raka svar på frågan om vad digitaliseringen gör med arkiven." (Copyriot)"(E)n uppslagsrik essä om arkiv idag och igår, arkivet som metafor för allt mänskligt vetande och vilken roll arkivet (det faktiska och metaforiska) kommer att spela i framtiden." (Norrköpings Tidning)Alltsedan den moderna historiografin föddes har arkivet utgjort samhällets minne. Alltsedan Michel Foucault utmanade samma historiografi har arkivet omvänt betecknat det som inte låter sig nedtecknas. I Sorlet från arkiven konfronterar den tyske mediearkeologen Wolfgang Ernst dessa olika sätt att tänka arkivet med datalagringens rent tekniska villkor. Först när arkivteorin tar hänsyn till vad just lertavlor eller papper, celluloid eller elektroniska kretsar kan lagra kommer den att kunna förklara varför något alls låter sig minnas. Att detta i dag blivit uppenbart hänger samman med de digitala databasernas explosionsartade framväxt. Från att ha varit den trösterika platsen där historien hålls i minne har arkivet blivit den löftesrika källan till flödet av information och underhållning. Sorlet från arkiven är ett försök att i essäns form undersöka vilka konsekvenser denna förändring av arkivets materialitet får både för vad som låter sig arkiveras och för vår förståelse av detsamma. Samtidigt är essän ett inlägg i en vidare kulturanalytisk diskussion. I Michel Foucaults och Jacques Derridas efterföljd har arkivet förvandlats till en kulturteknisk universalmetafor för alla möjliga former av minne, vetande och hågkomst. I likhet med många hävdar Ernst att vi måste återvända till arkivet, men inte för att uppsöka den ursprungliga ort där historien återuppstår, utan för att analysera vetandets villkor. Till skillnad från andra som låtit sig inspireras av den franska, filosofiska läsningen av arkivet menar emellertid Ernst att det inte kan reduceras till en epistemologisk metafor. Tvärtom måste arkivets epistemologiska implikationer analyseras underifrån, utifrån dess lagringsmedier. Arkivet är inte bara den historiska horisont under vilket vetandet framträder, det är självt en historisk skapelse vars skiftande tekniker tillåtit olika former av vetande att uppstå.Wolfgang Ernst är professor i medieteori vid Humboldtuniversitetet i Berlin och författare till flera böcker om historiografi, arkiv och arkivteori.