This volume offers an account of the scientific outcome of a Priority Programme (Schwerpunktprogramm) which the Deutsche Forschungsgemein- schaft (DFG; German Research Society) promoted during 6 years from 1976 to 1982. In the understanding of the DFG, a Priority Programme involves the financing and coordination of research efforts of a group of investigators, possibly from several institutions, and is in- tended to concentrate on one particular topic and/or on one maJor area of interest over a period of, as a rule, 5 years. Discussions on the feasibility of a major programme on vertical move- ments started in 1971. The tentative programme was published under the title Terrestrial Vertical Movements in the DFG’s planning docu- ment Grauer Plan IV: 1972-1974; p. 152. Deliberations within the Na- tional Committee for the International Geodynamics Project and in the Senate Commission for Joint Research in Earth Sciences (Geokommission) set out the scope of the project and envisaged an investigation of the Rheinische Schild, (i. e. , the Rhenish Massif east and west of the River Rhine). Seventeen geoscientists participated in a round-table dis- cussion on the subject Vertical movements and their causes as exempli- fied in the case of the Rheinische Schild, which took place at Bonn- Bad Godesberg on 8th July 1975. At this meeting the scientific objec- tives came more clearly into focus. A Programme Committee formulated the proposal to be put to the Senate of the DFG.