Mesosaurier, kleine Reptilien aus dem Unteren Perm, gelten als die frühesten aquatischen Reptilien. Trotz ihrer kurzen Existenz und begrenzten Verbreitung bieten sie wichtige Einblicke in die frühe Amnioten-Evolution. Diese Arbeit fasst vier Artikel zusammen, die Aspekte der Anatomie, Ontogenese und Ökologie von Mesosauridae beleuchten. Kapitel 1 behandelt die Knochenhistologie und Pachyosterosklerose in Mesosaurierknochen, was auf eine vollständig aquatische Lebensweise hinweist. Wir identifizieren auch eine große intraspezifische Variation, die möglicherweise durch unregelmäßige Probenahmeorte beeinflusst wird. Kapitel 2 untersucht die morpho¬logische Variation bei Mesosauriern und deren Umwelt-verteilung basierend auf ihrer Größe. Ontogenetische Veränderungen stehen im Zusammenhang mit dem Wechsel des Ablagerungsmilieus und deuten auf Veränderungen in Ernährung und Lebensraum mit dem Wachstum hin. In Kapitel 3 wird die kaudale Autotomie bei Mesosauriern überprüft und das Vorhandensein kaudaler Bruchebenen bestätigt. Wir schlagen eine stärker von den Extremitäten angetriebene Fortbewegung vor. Unsere Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass kaudale Autotomie ursprünglich in einer breiten Gruppe von Reptilien vorhanden war, anstatt konvergent in verschiedenen Linien entstanden zu sein. Kapitel 4 beschreibt auf Grundlage von Mesosaurier-Exemplaren vier grundlegende axiale Entwicklungs-modelle bei Amnioten und rekonstruiert ihren ursprünglichen Zustand in der Klade. Diese Muster bleiben im Laufe der Zeit relativ stabil, obwohl regionale Einflüsse möglich sind. Diese Erkenntnisse beleuchten wichtige Aspekte der Mesosaurier-Paläontologie und unterstreichen ihre Bedeutung für die Erforschung der Evolution früher Amnioten. / The enigmatic mesosaurs were small, reptiles that lived during the Lower Permian period and were the earliest known reptiles to return to living in water. Despite their short existence and restricted geographical distribution, mesosaurs can provide important evidence about the early evolution of amniotes and the colonization of aquatic environments. This thesis regroups four articles published in peer-reviewed journals that investigate aspects of the anatomy, ontogeny, and ecology of Mesosauridae. In Chapter 1, my co-authors and I study bone histology and pachyosterosclerosis in the long bones, vertebrae, and ribs of mesosaurs. Thin sections show a high degree of osteosclerosis in their bones, supporting a fully aquatic lifestyle. We also recover a large intraspecific variation in Mesosauridae, albeit possibly due to irregular sampling locations. In Chapter 2 we examine morphological variation in mesosaurs and the environmental distribution of individuals as a function of size. We highlight ontogenetic changes in mesosaurs associated with a transition across depositional environments, which suggest that mesosaurs underwent diet and life environment change with growth. In Chapter 3, we review the information on caudal autotomy in mesosaurs. We confirm the presence of caudal fracture planes in the clade and propose a more limb-driven propulsion than previously considered. Our results also suggest that caudal autotomy was ancestrally present in a large radiation of reptiles, rather than a feature evolved convergently in multiple lineages. In Chapter 4, based on data in mesosaur specimens, we describe four axial developmental patterns in amniotes and reconstruct their ancestral condition in the clade. We demonstrate that these patterns are relatively stable throughout time, albeit possibly affected by regionalization. These new elements reveal crucial aspects of mesosaur paleontology and substantiate their significance for studying the evolution of early amniotes.

The present study deals with interconfessional exchange of oratorios in German-speaking countries during the 18th century. In doing so, it pursues the goal of focusing on the question of the denominational or non-denominational nature of the sacred music genre, a question that has so far been insufficiently discussed in musicological and literary research. It analyses selected oratorios between 1715 and 1781 which were written at important contemporary musical locations and were received interdenominationally (Hamburg, Leipzig, Brunswick, Catholic imperial court of Vienna, Catholic Saxon court at Dresden). The study comes to the conclusion that the oratorio of the 18th century was not defined solely by its denominational orientation, but influenced by a number of other factors reflecting the intellectual-historical upheavals of the Age of Enlightenment: contemporary musical aesthetics, socio-cultural developments (middle-class concert business), and fundamental religious-historical dynamics that led to a distancing from dogma and to a change in piety practice.

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When Anna Katharina Elisabeth von der Leyen (1652-1738) married the margrave of Haraucourt in 1669, she became a member of one of the most ancient families of the duchy of Lorraine. As for all noblewomen of that time, this marriage would be the first step into a new life: Anna Katharina left the place where she had grown up, a tiny territory of the Holy Roman Empire, to join her husband in the German district of Lorraine – just across “the border” – where she would soon be exposed to war and officially become a subject of French King Louis XIV. Obviously, in order to fulfil expectations, Anna Katharina crossed both social and territorial borders. In Lorraine, she got strongly connected to a new family acting within a different aristocratic group and geographical, political and linguistic space. Did territorial borders matter to nobility before the rise of the nation-state? Or did noble families live a rather “borderless” life as by status and traditional habits, they travelled a lot more than the commonalty? The paper examines the von der Leyen, a rather overseen regional family of the Holy Roman Empire, by drawing special emphasis on their degree of cross-border activity towards Lorraine. On the basis of historical record drawn from the archives in Coblenz, I discuss the potential as well as the problems of a nobility-based analysis of early modern borders which includes a critical examination of the term “border region” for prenational contexts. The paper also explores recent attempts to historize borders in the early modern era which are strongly connected to the question of the actual practices of border crossing. In this regard, it argues for a small-scale analysis of “regional” families to get closer to the crossing and perceptions of early modern borders. The study also shows the importance of availability of historical record on which early modernists strongly depend as information on border perception is scarce in an era when national borders were yet to come.