SPP 1173: Integration and Disintegration of Civilisations in the European Middle Ages

优先方案的指导思想是假定欧洲从来不是由单一文化组成的。因此，该计划拒绝了欧洲中世纪几乎完全由一种文化，即拉丁基督教文化所表征的普遍观点。这一意见显然是基于当代和有时限的对身份的追求，这种追求在目前的复杂性面前失败了，无法科普当前和未来的挑战。因此，研究计划的目的之一根本不是发现甚至确认欧洲的身份，而是以严格的科学方式要求整合和分解过程的辩证法。我们相信，这些总是相互制约、不断交替的矛盾过程，沿着标志着欧洲历史，并构成了欧洲历史的特殊性。

The guiding idea of the Priority Programme is the presumption that Europe has never been made up of one monolithic culture. Thus, the programme rejects the widespread opinion that the European Middle Ages were characterised almost exclusively by only one culture, the Latin Christian culture. This opinion is clearly based on a contemporary and time-bound search of identity that fails in the face of the present complexity and is not able to cope with current and future challenges. Therefore, one purpose of the research programme is not to discover or even affirm a European identity at all, but rather to ask, in a strictly scientific way, for the dialectics of integrating and disintegrating processes. We believe that these contradicting processes, that have always conditioned one another and continuously alternated with each other, marked European history all along and made up its specific character.