the history of historical earthquake research in germany

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ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 47, N. 2/3, April/June 2004

Key words historical earthquakes – fake quakes –Germany – historical earthquake research – earth-quake catalogues

1. Introduction

This is a short treatise on the meta-history ofearthquakes in Germany, i.e. on the history of col-lecting and evaluating information on earthquakes.It is not a history of the broad field of literatureabout hypotheses or theories on earthquakes.

The seismicity of Germany can be regardedas relatively low, although the largest in Europenorth of the Alps. Earthquakes of 5.1 ML (4.8 MW)have a mean return period of ten years and events

of 5.8 ML (5.5 MW) of 50 years. The maximummagnitude of known earthquakes in Germany is6.1 ML (5.8 MW). Events of this size are associat-ed with a mean return period of about 100 years.An exception is the Basel earthquake in 1356with 6.6 MW (Grünthal and Wahlström, 2003),which occurred in what is today Switzerland butnext to the German border and should have beenstrongly felt over a large area of Germany.

The seismicity in Germany is concentratedalong the Upper Rhine Graben from Basel in thesouth to Frankfurt/Main in the north as well as tothe Lower Rhine Embayment in the area betweenLiège (Belgium) and Köln (fig. 1). Another subre-gional seismicity concentration occurs in a narrowsource zone south of Stuttgart. This zone releasedthe largest earthquakes in Germany in the 20th cen-tury. The seismotectonic province of EasternThuringia and Western Saxony, with pronouncedswarm quakes in a highly localized area, is anoth-

The history of historical earthquake research

in Germany

Gottfried GrünthalGeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam, Germany

AbstractThe paper summarizes the history of collecting and evaluating information on earthquakes in Germany. A rich lit-erature mentioning historical and contemporary earthquakes has existed since the 16th century. Early earthquakecatalogues began to appear in the middle of the 16th century, some of which report earthquakes in Germany datingback to the 9th century. Modern seismological views were introduced in connection with intense philosophicalanalysis of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which was largely observed in Central Europe. The 19th century was char-acterized by a tremendous increase in detailed earthquake studies as well as earthquake compilations in the formof catalogues. The most comprehensive non-parametric catalogues were created in the middle of the 20th century,while the first digital parametric catalogues were published in the 1980s. This was also the time when critical stud-ies on the re-interpretation of historical earthquakes began. Only in the 1990s was such analysis made in a sys-tematic manner resulting in numerous publications and the current development of a modern earthquake catalogue.

Mailing address: Dr. Gottfried Grünthal, Geo-ForschungsZentrum, Telegrafenberg C3, D-14473 Pots-dam, Germany; e-mail: [email protected]

«It would be desirable / that one would collect complete in-formation about all natural occurrences / since this is the on-ly way to reach a thorough cognition of nature».

J.J. Scheuchzer (1746)

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er seismicity area in Germany. Furthermore, thereis scattered seismicity over large parts of the coun-try with occasionally even damaging events out-side of the primary seismic zones.

The rapid and effective distribution of news,including information on earthquakes, was to alarge extent connected with the advent of printedbooks, illustrated broadsheets or «new tidings»,especially in Germany. These new developmentshave a strong link to the dramatic expansion oftrade and commerce in Central and Northern Eu-rope since the Late Middle Ages and the EarlyModern times. Obviously, there was a lively in-terest by German urban dwellers in the outsideworld. Moreover, the printer-publishers made useof the appetite of the German-speaking cus-tomers for news and entertainment and had, es-pecially with the broadsheets, a quick financialreturn. When certain phenomena, like earth-quakes, were not so frequent in Germany itself,such information was collected from other partsof the known world, not seldom connected withsensationalism. The large distribution of printedmaterial (including earthquake reports) can betraced back to the beginning of the 16th century,while illustrated news-sheets and chronicles firstappeared at the middle of this century. They evenbegan to appear on a daily basis when the condi-tions had stabilized after the Thirty Years’ War.

Examples of woodcuts or engravings pro-duced in and distributed from Germany are re-produced in e.g., Deresewicz (1982) or Kozákand Thompson (1991). Many of them depictMediterranean earthquakes. A negative conse-quence of this practice is that a certain portionof such reported «earthquakes» are fake andpartly included in modern earthquake cata-logues. In particular, this concerns cases wherethe «earthquake epicentres» are associated withtowns where the reports originate (Grünthal andFischer, 2000; Grünthal and Fischer, 2001).

2. Developments during the last halfmillennium

2.1. The 16th century and early 17th century

Profiting from the invention and introduc-tion of the art of printing with moveable metal-

lic letters by Johann Gutenberg about 1450,with the famous prototype print of the Bible in1454/1455, an invasion of illustrated broad-sheets (in German Flugblätter or FliegendeBlätter «flying sheets» or Einblattdrucke «sin-gle-leaf prints»; prints from a single block ex-isted already half a century earlier) and chroni-cles of all kinds began making their appearancein Germany in subsequent decades. The broad-sheets are usually printed on one side of a sin-gle sheet of paper and consist of a woodcut il-lustration, frequently coloured, combined withtext, often columns of verses.

The earliest known printed earthquake re-port, at least in Germany, concerned the strong1511 Slovenia - Friuli - Venezia earthquake andwas published shortly after by an unknownBavarian writer issued by a Münich printer(Günther, 1890).

Among the early prints, usually in para-graphs entitled «Miscellaneous», there are fre-quent compilations of natural events includingearthquakes, which often go back to ancienttimes. It would be beyond the frame of thisshort contribution to give an even roughly com-plete overview of these references; the follow-ing are a few examples of relevant historical lit-erature where contemporary and historicalearthquakes are mentioned with their effects:Nausea (1532), Fritschius (1555), Sleidanus(1556), Lycosthenes (1557), Fabricius (1569),Spangenberg (1572), Dresser (1596a,b) andPeckenstein (1608).

One of the most popular of those compila-tions were obviously the «Prodigies and Ap-paritions» by Conradus Lycosthenes (1557). Itserved as a major source of earlier times forMallet’s (1853-1855) catalogue. Lycosthenes’work contains almost 200 earthquake reportsand more than 1400 illustrations on 670 large-format pages. Among these illustrations, thereare six distinct woodcuts illustrating earthquakeeffects which appear repeatedly, altogether 134times. One of the six woodcuts, already used inSebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (in the is-sue by Münster, 1550 but not the one by Mün-ster, 1544), is the one which some modern au-thors associate with the 1356 Basel earthquake(fig. 2). Lycosthenes uses this picture not onlytogether with the Basel eartquake, but also with

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like Dressl (1559), who compiled conflagra-tions, floods, storms, lightening and thunder,plague of locusts, frost, etc. – and, what is ofspecial interest here, earthquakes. Early earth-quake catalogues, i.e. chronicles focussing onearthquakes, are those by, e.g., Ragor (1578),

many other events. With the dramatic excite-ment this woodcut expresses, it was apparentlyone of the most popular already by Lycos-thenes, regarding the frequency of its use.

Other studies, profitable as well, give com-pilations of «all sorts of God’s punishments»,

Fig. 1. Seismicity of Germany and adjacent areas (in yellow; after Grünthal and Wahlström, 2003) and a se-lection of fake quakes in Germany with a former maximum intensity larger than or equal to VI. The latter aredifferentiated into hoax events and mix-ups with real earthquakes (in red) mostly happening outside of Germany,misinterpreted storms, landslides or collapses (in blue), and events relocated by more than 100 km distance withan intensity deviating by more than one degree (orange). These findings were subject of papers by Grünthal to-gether with Fischer or Meier from the last ten years (cf. text).

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Rasch (1582a,b, 1591), Beuther (1601), Sig-wart (1613) and Bernhertz (1616).

Ragor’s (1578) earthquake catalogue con-tains about 100 earthquakes from 22 A.D. up to1577. His first entries on German earthquakesdate back to 880 A.D. on an event experiencedin Mainz (correct date is 30 December 880 or881). Before that he reports mostly about Greekearthquakes. The earthquake history by Rasch(1591) was written after experiencing the fairlystrong (intensity IX) earthquake in 1590 east ofVienna, the last entry of his catalogue. His com-pilation, starting in 19 A.D., contains severalhundred events – up to the 8th century mostly inthe eastern Mediterranean area. With the begin-ning of the 9th century his catalogue becomesspecific with respect to German earthquakes.

It would be beyond the scope of this paperto mention the numerous chronicles with localconcern only. Many of these are not printed andexist only in one or a few handwritten copies.This prosperous period was interrupted duringthe Thirty Years’ War, a dark period in culturaland scientific life, within which strikingly fewearthquakes were reported.

2.2. Late 17th century and early 18th century

Besides the rich literature of municipalchronicles including earthquake reports, e.g.Pusch (1713) and Vogel (1714), there are sever-al studies with detailed and broad regionalscope from the late 17th century, in some casessolely dedicated to earthquakes. Examples areMPSAC (1670), Höpfner (1691) and the anony-mous Disaster-Chronicon (1692).

2.3. Mid and late 18th century: post 1755Lisbon earthquake studies

The Lisbon earthquake on 1 November1755 gained so much attention in Central Eu-rope, not least in Germany, that it can be re-garded as the starting point to an early seismo-logical science there, connected with the aban-doning of many previous myths associated withthis natural phenomenon. On the other hand,the Lisbon earthquake became the initial ele-ment of disillusion of the period of Enlighten-ment. This event had a tremendous effect on the

Fig. 2. Illustration (Münster, 1550) of a dramatic situation in which a town is severely affected by an earthquake.Lycosthenes (1557) used this woodcut in connection with his description of the 1356 Basel earthquake – but formany other earthquakes as well (cf. text). It is therefore not likely that the town Basel its depicted, as assumed bysome modern authors.

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In this conjunction it becomes clear that anumber of pure earthquake chronicles, e.g.,MJAW (1756), Seyfart (1756) and Gottfried(e.g., 1759), were prompted by this remarkableseries of events. They contain material pub-lished in Europe including «flying-sheets» andnewspapers.

2.4. 19th century and early 20th century

In the 19th century great attention and inter-est were paid to the general description of na-ture and natural phenomena like earthquakes.This favoured the ability and knowledge tomake detailed treatments and analyses not onlyof seismic events occurring in that time but al-so of historical events. Earthquake cataloguescreated can be differentiated into those coveringlarge regions, at least country-wide and thosecontaining more detail and focussing on a localor sub-regional areas. To the group of large re-gional studies belong two less reliable sources,Schnurrer (1823-1825), where earthquakes arementioned chronologically among all kinds ofdiseases, meteorites and other «plagues», andKeferstein (1827).

Much more comprehensive are the cata-logues by von Hoff (1840, 1841), in two vol-umes published after his death by his friend, thefamous geographer and cartographer HeinrichBerghaus. The first volume extends from 3460B.C. up to 1759 A.D. (von Hoff, 1840) and thesecond from 1760 to 1805 and from 1821 to1832 (von Hoff, 1841). This valuable workcovers events of what was known worldwidewith a precise and methodic study based on cit-ed sources. Another earthquake catalogue from786 A.D. up to 1846 is that by Boegner (1847).

An outstanding compilation of earthquakedata from about 1000 B.C. up to 1897 is themanuscript by Lersch (1897), handwritten in anarrow gothic style and using many abbrevia-tions, not all of which could be deciphered. Itamounts to some 7000 pages (Sieberg, 1902).This huge work was presented at the First Inter-national Seismological Conference, 11-13 April1901, at the Imperial Main Station for Earth-quake Research in Strasbourg (Lersch himself,already 83 years old, was not present). The con-

people. It caused a large revision in the philos-ophy of life initiating a new direction of think-ing, European Pessimism.

The Lisbon earthquake was the motive forImmanuel Kant to write two famous treatises onthe nature of earthquakes (Kant, 1755, 1756; cf.also Kant, ed. in 1910). In a critical scientificpolemic he defended the explanation of theseevents on the basis of natural causes contrary tospeculative unscientific and clerical concepts(e.g., in JAEM, 1756). An early poetic requittalwith the up to that time dominating optimisticphilosophy is Voltaire’s «Poem sur le désastrede Lisbonne» (Voltaire, ed. in 1931, 1994; hemoved to Potsdam in 1749 at the invitation ofthe King of Prussia «Frederik the Great») aswell as «Candide ou l’optimisme» from 1759(in Voltaire, ed. in 1993). Goethe reflects on theperplexity provoked by the news from the ruinof the city in «Das Erdbeben von Lissabon (Theearthquake of Lisbon)» in «Dichtung undWahrheit» (Goethe, ed. in 1964).

Kant’s polemic found fertile ground in thesocalled educated public, since Central Europewas at that time in a real earthquake hysteria.This was not only due to the news from Lis-bon, where exactly on All Saints’ Day theprosperous city had been laid in ruin withabout 60 000 deaths, but also due to the wide-ly recognized long periodic effects in all Cen-tral Europe, like swinging candelabras in thecrowded churches during the morning servic-es, seiches in lakes and similar phenomena atcoast lines on this highly religious holiday.The chroniclers themselves could not fleefrom this hysteria. Everybody who had experi-enced the shaking became part of its grip. Thissituation became even worse due to real newstrong earthquakes. So, felt effects were mixedwith news on strong aftershocks striking Lis-bon. The felt effects were due to the damagingearthquake on 9 December 1755, 6.1 ML in theWallis (Switzerland), also strongly felt insouthern Germany, and a sequence of damag-ing earthquakes in the Lower Rhine Embay-ment between December 1755 (the largestshock 5.1 ML on 26 December) and February1756 (the main shock 6.1 ML on 18 Februarybeing the strongest event in the Lower RhineEmbayment in historical times).

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ference expressed its highest appreciation of thismonumental catalogue and suggested its use inthe future earthquake research (Polis,1902/1903). Consequently, it served as the basisfor the two German earthquake catalogues fin-ished half a century later; i.e. Sieberg (1940) andSponheuer (1952). From today’s perspective,the Lersch catalogue can therefore be regardedas essentially exhausted by these two cata-logues.

More locally oriented catalogues are, e.g.,Nöggerath (1848, 1870), Pfaff (1850), Eisel(1863), Lasaulx (1874), Laube (1874), vonGümbel (1889, 1898), Langenbeck (1892,1895), Pauls (1893), Doß (1898), Knett (1899),Laska (1902), Schorn (1902), Günther undReindl (1903), Reindl (1903, 1905a,b), Regel-mann (1907) and Botzong (1912).

The historical earthquake studies in this pe-riod benefited much from the systematic gener-al historical research connected with the editionof reprints of many mediaeval sources.

Although not subject of historical research, itis worth mentioning that countless studies oncontemporary earthquakes from the 19th andearly 20th century exist with systematic and de-tailed collections of macroseismic effects, whichhave a high quality even from today’s perspec-tive. Earthquakes of this time period have beenan excellent basis for detailed modern studies(e.g., Grünthal, 1992 and Fischer et al., 2001).The improved timing accurate to within a fewseconds in connection with the country-widetelegraph system as part of the railway networkfacilitated the first attempts of «instrumental» lo-calization of earthquakes with the method of ho-moseisms after Hopkins (1847). This methodwas applied e.g. by von Seebach (1873) for adamaging earthquake in eastern Thuringia in1872 and by von Lasaulx (1874) for an event ofsimilar size in the Lower Rhine Embayment in1873. Filled by faith in the technique, some in-vestigators trusted instrumental locations morethan well established macroseismic ones.

To this productive period belong also con-temporary catalogues covering several years ora few decades, e.g., Fuchs (1886) with about10 000 entries of seismic events for the years1865-1884, Credner (1902, 1903, 1904, 1907)covering the intense Vogtland swarm quakes

from 1900-1906 with several thousands of feltearthquakes and Etzold (1919) listing the con-tinued swarm activities from 1907-1915, whichwere even more intense and largely recorded in-strumentally (for further references cf. Grün-thal, 1988). The comprehensive work on the in-tense seismic activity in SW Germany, initiatedby the so called Central European earthquake in1911, with many contemporary studies (e.g.,Gutenberg, 1915) is not further referred to here.

Another culmination of historical studies ofthe early 20th century are the two volumes byGießberger (1922, 1924) entitled «The earth-quakes of Bavaria». In spite of the title, theycontain much more than Bavarian earthquakes.They cover the time period from 169 A.D. up to1905, the year when the instrumental record-ings started in Bavaria by the Earthquake Ser-vice. This is not an earthquake catalogue, but anexhaustive annotated chronological extractfrom original sources in their original wording.Since this «raw material» has not been critical-ly analysed and commented (except for somefootnotes), the author gives a correspondingwarning for its use, since he was aware that sev-eral references do not have a real background inearthquakes or are fake in other respects. Over-critical readers might have overlooked thiswarning and for no reason discredited thiswork.

2.5. Mid 20th century

The non-parametric catalogues by Sieberg(1940) and Sponheuer (1952) represent funda-mental milestones. As mentioned, both rely to acertain extent on the monumental work by Ler-sch (1897). Sieberg (1940) covers the time span58 A.D.-1799 using 58 referred historicalsources, while Sponheuer (1952) continues withthe period 1800-1899 based on 93 contemporaryor topical quotations. One should be indulgentwith both authors that their verbal descriptivecatalogues are, besides the already expresseddoubts on several events by themselves, not freefrom misinterpretations. Many events have beensubject to reevaluations in the last ten years.

The high seismic activity in the chronicswarm quake area of the Vogtland (in the triangle

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where Saxony, Bavaria and Bohemia meet) withseveral thousands of felt shocks, mainly in 1901-1911, was obviously a too large burden for Spon-heuer and other workers at that time to continuethe catalogue into the early 20th century. It wasnot until the Grünthal (1988) catalogue that thispart was covered down to small magnitudes. Inthis respect the catalogue by Kárník et al. (1956)for Czechoslovakia, terminating in 1956, can bementioned, since it contains information for thewestern adjoining parts of Germany.

The significant seismic activity in SW Ger-many in the years 1800-1950 was the subject ofthe PhD thesis by Fiedler (1954). However, thiscatalogue contains many errors and gives littleindication on exact source references. Quota-tions are often given without relation to the ac-companying data (Fischer, pers. comm.). Furtherwork for this area and time period is presented inseveral diploma theses (e.g., Vogel, 1955).

An early attempt to squeeze the verbal datainto a parametric format is the catalogue byRothé and Schneider (1968) for the RhineGraben area, which belongs both to Germanyand France. It covers the time span 1021-1965and makes intense use of Sieberg (1940), Spon-heuer (1952) and Fiedler (1954). Earthquakechronicles with emphasis on the Lower Rhinearea are given by Schwarzbach (1951) and, forthe period 1958-1970, by Ahorner (1964,1972).

A not so critical reflection on the damagingearthquakes of the Federal Republic of Ger-many is given by Ahorner et al. (1970). In thispublication, many currently known misinter-pretations with respect to earlier catalogues re-main untouched, as was common in large partsof Europe at that time.

2.6. Late 20th century up to 1995

2.6.1. 1975-1988

With the rapid development and broaderuse of computers starting in the 1970s and theneed to perform probabilistic seismic hazardassessments, a new generation of country-widecatalogues had to be prepared. Following ini-tial internal versions, two catalogues were pub-

lished, by Leydecker (1986) for the westernand southern parts of Germany for the time pe-riod 1000-1981 and by Grünthal (1988) forcentral-eastern Germany for the time span 823-1984 (*). Leydecker’s catalogue has 423 entriesbefore 1900 and 63 between 1901 and 1910,while Grünthal gives 536 events before 1900and 3466 between 1901 and 1910. Concerningthe historical events, both catalogues arestrongly based on Sieberg (1940) and Spon-heuer (1952). Although the personal resourceswere limited and the time pressure high to pre-pare these catalogues, attempts were made toimprove the data on historical events comparedto the earlier catalogues. Leydecker (1986)refers additionally to 20 and Grünthal (1988)to 154 historical sources or sources about pre-1910 earthquakes. The latter refers to 80 iso-seismal maps based on given intensity datapoints for the strongest events since the 18thcentury. Also Leydecker (1986) could makeuse of such data, giving isoseismal radii for aconsiderable number of events. The catalogueby Grünthal (1988), later extended up to 1990,has been assimilated with that by Leydecker(1986) in 1990 as an implication of the reor-ganization of scientific activities in the unitedGermany, where the catalogue work is contin-ued by Leydecker.

Besides the catalogue work, early probabilis-tic and deterministic seismic hazard assessmentswere performed from 1975 up to about 1988. Al-so maps of maximum observed intensities fordifferent time spans were derived. Part of thesestudies also concerned maximum effects andareal extension of certain intensities of historicalkey events.

With some exceptions that time was not ripefor separate publications on historical events.Most of the findings were simply assimilatedinto the ongoing catalogue work. Studies of amore general nature are e.g., Schmidt (1980)and Kozák and Schmidt (1981); one more spe-cific study on a certain quake is by Sponheuerand Grünthal (1981).

(*) Germany was after WW II separated into two states.

logue would have profited had it had feedbackfrom seismologists. Still it is regrettable that nocontinuation has been published by the author.

Detailed studies on single historical eventsbased on contemporary sources are Wolf andWolf (1989), on the phantom earthquake in1062; Grünthal (1992), on the reinterpretationof the Central German earthquake in 1872, thestrongest known in eastern Thuringia with ex-tensive descriptions of felt effects from 409 lo-calities (see also above); Meier and Grünthal(1992), reinterpreting a key event in 1770 inNW Germany; and Vogt and Grünthal (1994),on another quake in that area from 1612. Thetwo latter studies resulted in distinctly newsource parameters. The 1612 event is one of thefew early German earthquakes being subject toa contemporary illustration (fig. 3). This en-graving, appearing on a contemporary broad-sheet, clearly reflects the effects described by

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2.6.2. 1989-1995

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there wereseveral concerted actions in Europe to systemat-ically study the historical seismicity, e.g., byStucchi et al. (1991) and Stucchi (1993). Withrespect to Germany, the studies by Vogt(1993a,b) on Rhenish earthquakes in 1737 and1787, respectively, resulted from the projectRHISE (Review of Historical Seismicity in Eu-rope). Further publications from this project areVogt (1994) on the 1640 Lower Rhine Embay-ment quake and Alexandre and Vogt (1994) onthe 1755-1762 sequences in the same area. Themediaeval sources of western Europe from 394A.D. to 1259 (including Germany) are part of theexhaustive, comprehensive and methodological-ly rigorous study by Alexandre (1990), a studynon-historians would usually not be able to mas-ter themselves. In spite of its qualities this cata-

Fig. 3. Contemporary engraving showing the effects of the 1612 Bielefeld earthquake - frightened people, fallingpewter ware and damaged buildings (cf. Vogt and Grünthal, 1994).

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et al. (1999), Fischer et al. (2001), Grünthaland Fischer (2001) and Grünthal and Fischer(2002a,b). The paper by Grünthal and Fischer(2000) is a summary of findings on erroneous-ly alleged damaging events in Central Euro-pean catalogues as a result of confusion withdistant large earthquakes. They are illustratedin fig. 1. The mentioned references include on-ly a limited part of the new findings on histor-ical earthquakes in Germany.

The current knowledge on the state of theart of interpretations of historical earthquakesin Germany has been incorporated as part of theearthquake catalogue being the basis for ongo-ing probabilistic seismic hazard assessmentsand related studies (Grünthal and Wahlström,2003). Detailed descriptions are given on thedata cleaning, i.e. to separate fake and non-tec-tonic events and to find duplicates, especiallyconnected with the use of different calendars.Special emphasis is given to the calculation ofunified moment magnitudes Mw involving thederivation of reliable conversion relations ofearthquake strength parameters (Stromeyer etal., 2004). A previous re-evaluation of earth-quake catalogues for Germany, Switzerland andAustria with neighbouring regions was per-formed in 1995-1997 in connection with a jointproject on seismic hazard assessment for thesecountries (D-A-CH Project, see Grünthal et al.,1998; Grünthal and Mayer-Rosa, 1998).

3. Macroseismic scales used in Germany

Apart from attempts to classify the severity ofshakings of single events, the earliest recogniza-ble use of intensity in a generalized way was in-troduced by Egen (1828), who specified five de-grees. This scale was applied to Rhenish earth-quakes in the early 19th century. Based on the lat-er denoted Mercalli-Cancani scale (MC; Can-cani, 1903-1904), with 12 degrees, Sieberg(1912) introduced a more extensive definition forthe single intensity degrees. A French translationof this, published in Sieberg (1917), was later(but never by Sieberg) called the Mercalli-Can-cani-Sieberg scale (MCS-1917). A slightlychanged version was published by Sieberg(1923). A strongly improved version by Sieberg

several independent and reliable sources - con-trary to a large portion of «flying sheets» re-flecting exaggerations.

A catalogued I = VI-VII event in an almostaseismic area in Bavaria in 1822 proved to besimply a newspaper hoax (Bachmann andSchmedes, 1993). Using contemporary sourcesGrünthal and Meier (1995) showed that the for-mer key earthquake in NE Germany (I0 = VII in1410) was a quake in 1409, I0 = V-VI, with thefocal area more than 100 km to the south.Worth mentioning is also the PhD thesis byMeidow (1995) on the most striking damagingearthquakes in the Lower Rhine Embayment1755-1878 largely based on newspaper reports.Unfortunately, this study does not make use ofthe rich material collected by Alexandre andVogt (1994).

According to the intention of this issue andto limit its extent, only earthquake studies in thelast 15 years will be mentioned, which attemptto retrieve and interpret contemporary sourcesnot used in a decisive way in earlier interpreta-tions and which resulte in distinctly deviatingsource parameters.

2.7. Recent studies - after 1995

Fundamental work on retrieval and classifi-cation of roots of historical sources was carriedout within the project BEECD (Basic EuropeanEarthquake Catalogue and Data Base 1995-1998; Albini and Stucchi, 1997). Numerous de-tailed studies within this project could be per-formed by J. Fischer and G. Grünthal, largelybased on the root classifications for the eventswith catalogued I0 =VI or VI-VII in the period1300-1900. The sources were traced back,whenever possible, to contemporary or eyewit-ness reports. It is beyond the scope of this con-tribution to mention all the references here.

The publication policy since BEECD hasbeen to make the user community familiarwith the most striking changes in interpreta-tions of historical events. Examples are for-merly catalogued «damaging earthquakes»turning out to be fake. A selection of theseanalyses are Grünthal and Fischer (1998),Grünthal and Fischer (1999, 2000), Grünthal

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(1932) resembles, with its defined use of fre-quencies of effects, much later developed scalesin the 1960s. All three versions by Sieberg wereapplied up to the mid 1960s without usually spec-ifying which of the versions was actually used.

The Medvedev-Sponheuer-Kárník scale(Medvedev et al., 1965; Sponheuer, 1965) wasquickly adopted in Germany. After an early at-tempt to update the MSK-scale, initiated by theEuropean Seismological Commission (ESC) in1980 (thanks to Dieter Mayer-Rosa), it took an-other twelve years, until the test version of the Eu-ropean Macroseismic Scale (the EMS-92) ap-peared (Grünthal, 1993), again on behalf of theESC. The Roermond earthquake in 1992 was oneof the prominent events used to test the new scale.Later, the EMS-98 (Grünthal, 1998), adopted bythe General Assembly of the ESC for use in theseismological practice in Europe, was applied.

4. Conclusions

Much progress in earthquake catalogue pro-duction and connected historical studies hasbeen made in the last 20 years. The first para-metric catalogues from the mid 1980s could besignificantly improved in the last ten years. Anessential basis for this was the BEECD project.The most striking false interpretations of histor-ical key earthquakes have also likely beenfound and corrected, at least for those occurringin time periods used for hazard assessments dueto the completeness criteria. Still, there may ex-ist historical material on earthquakes that hasnot yet been retrieved and made available foranalysis and so, further new interpretations ofhistorical earthquakes with respect to their lo-calization and strength can be expected.

Although not studied in detail, our experi-ence from BEECD is that the amount of earth-quakes whose information was hidden so far inthe chronicles is limited. All newly foundevents were rather small and most occurred intime periods not used for seismic hazard as-sessments. However, no doubt is a better andmore complete view necessary to improve ourunderstanding of the seismicity. Of special in-terest could be areas with high current seismic-ity but lacking data in the past and national bor-

der regions, where limited data could be im-proved by joint efforts of specialists from thedifferent countries.

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to Rutger Wahlströmand Dieter Mayer-Rosa, the latter as a referee,for critical reading and valuable comments.

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