Hultschin where three countries meet, enhanced his literary works with a mixing of words
bordering on the whimsical. Writers living along the Western border of Germany were even
more determined to detect progressive tendencies in a “double culture”. Thus Schickele, Flake,
H. Wendel, or Lion pleaded for a multilingual Alsace as a model for Europe. The aesthetic
reserve voiced with regard to the mixing of languages in border areas has been refuted by poets
such as Weckmann, Finck, or Kieffer, consciously using triphony as a convincing literary
answer.
Peter Thorau
Differences and Coincidences in Military Equipment and Tactics between
Crusaders and Muslims
Two main points need emphasizing: the Orient did not lag behind the Occident in terms of
civilization and culture - as should be already widely known - nor was it a case of one-way
traffic from West to East. The thesis of the superiority of the Christian West put forward by
Lynn White Jr. with respect to military-technical progress does not stand up to the critical
historical scrutiny attempted in this paper. Rather, it has to be stated that both Muslims and
Christians primarily adjusted their military-technical requirements to the economic, social and
geographic-climatic conditions. When they confronted each other as opponents in the course of
the crusades, the crusaders as well as the Muslims tried to adapt themselves to their antagonist
in the best possible way in order to improve either their own defence or their engagement with
the enemy. This can be applied to the relatively ‘conventional’ field of deploying different types
of cavalry and body armour as well as to the field of 'technical' weapons. Not without reason
was the Occident terrified of the Ottoman Empire, the last Islamic Great Power, right down to
modem times.
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