Cornel Zwierlein, Ph.D. (2003) University of Munich (LMU) and the CESR Tours is currently on a Heisenberg-Stelle at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, FU Berlin. Before he was w1-Prof. 2008-2017. He holds the Habilitation (Privatdozent) at RUB Bochum (2011/3), was Fellow at the History Department, Harvard University 2013-2015, Associate there 2016, 2018, CRASSH Cambridge 2014, Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt 2017/18. His monographs include: Discorso and Lex Dei (French Wars of Religion, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 2006), The Political Thought of the French League and Rome, 1585-1589 (Droz: 2016) and Imperial Unknowns. The French and the British in the Mediterranean, 1650-1750 (Cambridge UP, 2016/8).

Large city fires were a huge threat in premodern Central European every-day life; only quite late, institutional forms of fire insurances emerged as a post-disaster instrument of damage recovery. During the nineteenth century, insurance agencies spread through the World forming a plurality of modernities, safe or unsafe.