When Life is Beyond Canons. Considerations on Some Archival Documents

Author(s): Corina Teodor / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2015

This study complements the research made on the history of the Greek Catholic deanery of Mureș, at the early twentieth century. The period is one tense for the alienation of parishes, which were joined in 1913 to the Hungarian Greek Catholic Diocese of Hajdudorog, the disruptions of the First World War were also added. In this context, the dean Dionisie Decei remained under the ruler of Blaj and faced a series of administrative, financial, social and cultural problems. Finally, he tried to oversee the morals of the Greek Catholic communities under his authority. Based on several unpublished archival documents this study captures the moral deviations of the era especially.

Dva zaboravljena bihaćka vakufa

Author(s): Suad Mahmutović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 60/2014

This article presents two long forgotten waqfs in the very centre of Bihać town. Namely the waqf of Mehmedpaša Bišćević, established in first half of the 19th century, and the mosque of Hajji Mujaga with adjoining shops and waqf houses established in about 1858. Mehmed-paša Bišćević Madrassa ceased to function by the end of twentieth century, and the mosque was demolished in the first half of twentieth century. Hajji Mujaga mosque has suffered some minor damages during the Second World War, however after the war it was demolished to the ground. Today these waqfs are nonexistent. We are left with only the memories of these significant waqfs and their founders (waqifs).

Poljoprivredni vakufi u BiH – mogućnosti obnove

Author(s): Hajrudin Baturić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 60/2014

First waqf in the constitutive period of Islam was agricultural land. Waqf as a “lasting good” obliges the community for which it is intended as such, to maintain, improve and renovate it. Functioning and maintenance of waqfs is an important issue for Muslim community. Waqf is economic foundation esteemed by Muslims in the history of Islam as a precondition for good organisation of activities that are essential for stability and material security of Muslims. In Bosnia and Herzegovina agricultural land was often made a wqaf, this article reflects upon possibilities of renewal and development of agricultural waqfs in BiH, orchards in particular.

O reformă conservatoare. Legea învăţământului primar din 1893

Author(s): Iustin Gherman / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 61/2015

The problem of educational development has become at the end of the nineteenth century one of the main themes that political parties could no longer deny, without jeopardizing the normal development of the Romanian society. This vital matter was closely related to amending the Law of Public Instruction from 1864, drafted during the reign of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, for which the Romanian politicians were steadily pleading. On January 4, 1892, a month before the election, the Conservative government published its legislative program named „Call to voters” where education was seen as an area to be brought as soon as possible to the requirements of a modern state. It sought the fulfillment of the following goals: streamlining the principle of compulsory primary education, establishing the rights and obligations of teachers, restoration and construction of new schools and primary school teachers. The one appointed by the Lascăr Catargiu – P. P. Carp government to successfully continue its predecessor’s efforts in reforming the education was, throughout the cabinet, Take Ionescu. The bill presented by the conservative politician in the spring of 1893 was composed of six chapters, plus transitional provisions, which raises the number of articles to 91. The law-project of Primary Education was first presented to the Chamber of Deputies on March 1, 1893 and after that, in the Senate meeting of May 3. After boisterous and spirited debates, the project was voted by the Chamber of Deputies in the meeting of March 22 and respectively May 8, in the Senate. Consequently, on 19 May, Take Ionescu sent a letter to King Charles I, letting him know that the draft Law on the Primary Education was approved by the Parliament, asking him to sign the decree for sanctioning and promulgation of this Act from 1 September 1893.

Танцуването по български като съвременно пътуване към себе си и света: опит за систематизация на феномена

Author(s): Gergana Panova-Tekat / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2015

The text analyses the proliferation of the Bulgarian traditional dances in the towns of Bulgaria and the Western World starting from the since 1950s. The author of the text compares dancing with the mode of communication of an infant and examines the individual or group dancing within the framework of a universal three dimensional “semantic star”, whose axes balance between continuity and innovation, individualism and collectivism, body and spirit. On a macro-political level the phenomenon of “dancing the Bulgarian way” varies between four models, which the author has identified in the course of a long-term empirical practice. Every one of the models represents a different way of viewing the world and finding out or proving to oneself, i.e. different semantic stars. The Soviet model was created, financed and rationalized within the context of Socialist Bulgaria. In it one can discern the emergence of not only a new genre of scenic professional art form – the „Bulgarian Folk Choreography”, but a new musical-dance national identity of the Bulgarian people. The American model was created on the other side of the Iron curtain. It represents an active hobby for modern and open minded foreigners, a source of information and more often than not – a source of love for Bulgaria. Of particular interest are the old “authentic” forms of the Bulgarian circle dance, which are thought and practiced regularly in private clubs and big camps. Gradually after 1989 the Bulgarians came up with two additional hybrid models of “dancing the Bulgarian way”. The Democratic model marks the accession of Bulgaria into the European Union and presents the resurgence of the national self- consciousness of the Bulgarian and a boom in the club dance form. The initiative comes from professionals of the Socialist model, who search for and teach traditional dance material. In the West we are witnessing a marked resurgence of ethnicity amongst the younger Bulgarian dancing diaspora. The emigrant model organizes amazing “Bulgarian festivals” and strives through the attractiveness of the Bulgarian stage folk dances to gain respect and equal status outside the borders of their homeland. The conditional differences and similarities uncovered in the process of systematization of the empirical material demonstrate the poly-valence and flexibility of the Bulgarian dance heritage on the crossroad between East and West, Socialism and Capitalism, locality and globalism. At the same time we reach some very general conclusions regarding the role of dancing in the human existence or way of life.

Un proces de adulter din 1585 din Reghinul Săsesc

Author(s): Julia Derzsi / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 23/2015

After waking up the day after Ash Wednesday, in 1585, Martin Faber, a blacksmith master from Reghinul Săsesc (Sächsisch Regen) went to the town hall and denounced his wife and her lover on the count of adultery. The town’s law court found the accused guilty and decided the husband was in his right to demand their head, namely the death penalti. The law court in Reghinul Săsesc has retrialed the case and decided against the defendants. The latter appealed the verdict at the law court in Bistriţa.The present paper sets aut to offer a reading of this particular adultery case dating back to the late 16th century. The analysed source is a letter of appeal drawn up by the law court in Reghinul Săsesc, documenting the rare case of „private” criminal law suits started by the injured party and not ex officio. The letter of appeal (litterae transmissionales), containing a document drawn up during the law suit’s judicial remedy phase, already contains the grounds’ „file”. Based on this document, the law suit’s phases are to be retraced: the plaint, the legal exceptions, the defendands’ response, the witnesses’ testimonies, the judges’ rulling during the first law suit, the inquiry to open a new lawsuit, the princely mandate regarding a new lawsuit and the new lawsuit’s phases” the plaint and the defenses’ response, the law court’s ruling and the claim of appeal drawn up against this new ruling. Taking into account the laws and customs in force by the late 16th century in matter of criminal claims, we have set out to reconstruct the lawsuit’s key moments and, not by least, the causes and reasons, namely legal grounds that led to the actions undertaken by the people involved in this particular law suit.

Дневник на Спас Ганев от Балканската война

Author(s): Spas Ganev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1-2/2015

Here is published the diary, kept during the Balkan war, by one of the prominent Bulgarian politicians before September 9th 1944, minister of public buildings, roads and public works (1935–1939) and a member of the 25th Ordinary National Assembly (1940–1944) – Spas Ganev. The diary covers the period from September 17th 1912 to March 23rd 1913. It is interesting for the nowadays reader, because it reveals the immediate experience of an officer – a participant in the war, gives an almost daily idea of the Balkan war times and notes some of the discontent among the young officers, points out some disadvantages of the military leaders and conveys impressions about the military life in a relatively restrained, devoid of euphoria way.

Nordijski hodočasnici u hrvatskim primorskim krajevima (14. – 17. stoljeće)

Author(s): Krešimir Kužić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 49/2015

Even though the Nordic countries were a periphery in the eyes of the Mediterranean population during the late medieval period, Scandinavian rulers and their subjects participated in important political and religious events, including the Crusades and pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Their interest in visiting Jerusalem is evident in itineraries written in Icelandic and Danish, dating from the period between the 12th and 15th centuries. As for the motivation behind them, pilgrimages can be classified as votive – supplicatory or thanksgiving – and penitential. They could also result from court verdicts, as well as contracts or testaments. In this paper, we have focused on the last will of Queen Margaret I from 1411 and a votive pledge of Queen Dorothea from 1488. Several examples testify of the wish to commemorate a performed pilgrimage, such as tombstones and especially written travelogues. However, the religious motive declined with time and was substituted through the wish to undertake a scholarly or research adventure. A particularly interesting aspect is the efforts invested by the nobility in order to gain the title of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. A decline in the number of pilgrimages is recorded from the mid-16th century, when the Nordic countries embraced Protestantism. The pilgrims travelled over the North Sea and Baltic harbours and further through the German lands in order to reach Venice. There they signed transportation contracts with Venetian shipmen and embarked on a journey descending the Adriatic. During the early period, they travelled on galleys, and later on various types of sailing ships, which allowed them to become acquainted with Croatian cities and regions. The most frequented ports included Poreč, Rovinj, Zadar, Hvar, Korčula, and Dubrovnik (Fig. 1). Among the 58 pilgrims mentioned by name, several deserve special attention. One is the pilgrimage of King Eric VII in 1424, which was also undertaken by Ivan VI Frankopan. The travelogue of Danish nobleman Holger Gregersen Ulfstand (Fig. 2) (1487 – 1542), who embarked on his journey in 1518, tells us not only about his piety, but also about the Croatian coast: for example, about the religious customs in case of plague. Indirectly, travelogues also tell us about some visits to the relics of St Euphemia in Rovinj, St Simon in Zadar, and St Blasius in Dubrovnik. Jakob Jakobsen Bonn, a canon from the then Danish, now Swedish city of Lund, died in 1496, exhausted by the journey, and was buried on the island of Arkanđel near Trogir (Fig. 1). His fate was shared by several other Nordic pilgrims, who lost their lives in various places. Beside illness, they were threatened by fierce weather and Turkish pirates, the latter especially present in the 16th and 17th centuries. Apart from the fact that Nordic pilgrims were few in number, their ignorance of the local language was the main reason for the lack of personal contact, as well as the local mentions of pilgrims from Scandinavian countries.

Constituția din 1923 și contextul evoluției cultelor neoprotestante din România

Author(s): Mihai Handaric / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2024

The author analyzes the context that influenced the formulation of the Constitution of 1923. It is about: the Revolution of 1948, the King as an institution, World War I and Greater Romania formed after 1918. Understanding the context helps us to understand the role that the constitution had in the development of neo-Protestantism in Romania. The revolution of 1848 opened the horizon of Romanians to the ethnic and religious situation on the continent. The ideas brought by the young people who studied in Europe contributed decisively to the union between Moldova and Wallachia in 1859. On June 29, 1866, the first Romanian constitution came into force, considered one of the most modern of the time, inspired by the Belgian constitution. During this period the Baptist movement developed in Germany. Gerhard Onken spread Baptist ideas in Europe, reaching Romania as well. The first German Baptist Carl Scharschmidt settled in Bucharest in 1856. In 1863 the German pastor August Liebing established the first German Baptist church in Bucharest. King Charles I was the reason for drafting the constitution of 1866, from which 78 articles were taken in the 238 of the Constitution of 1923. The royal dynasty supported Catholicism, with experience in interfaith coexistence. Another decisive factor in the drafting of the constitution was the end of the First World War, which led to the union of Romanians from Transylvania, Bucovina and Bessarabia. This change required the drafting of a constitution that would defend the rights of citizens of different ethnicities and religions. The Constitution of 1923 is the first major document that enshrines the phrase „Greater Romania” for the new state formed in 1918. In 1919, the Baptists formed the Union of Baptist Churches in Romania. In 1922 the Pentecostal confession appeared. Although the interwar totalitarianism affected the application of the constitution, it nevertheless had a decisive role in the defense of the individual's ethnic and confessional rights. The dictatorship established in 1930 decided to replace it with a new constitution in 1938.

The Translation Projects of Maria Eleonora von Sporck and María Francisca de Montijo. Women’s Translation Practices in the 18th Century

Author(s): Gabriela Eichlová Ördöghová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

This paper responds to recent research on linguistic and more broadly cultural translation in the field of cultural exchange and transfer studies. The study will focus on two translation projects undertaken by women in the eighteenth century for whom translation was not a profession, namely Maria Elenora von Sporck (1687–1717) and María Francisca de Montijo (1754–1808). Two types of translation activities will be examined: 1) translations from French into German in the Czech Germanophone environment and 2) translation from French into Castilian in a Spanish-speaking environment. The two francophone noblewomen from Catholic backgrounds translated books with spiritual and moral themes, but somewhat surprisingly they were authors suspected of religious heterodoxy. This fact, among other things, invites us to take a closer look at the extra-textual factors, in addition to textual ones, that influenced the emergence of these translations. Focusing on women translators of heterodox texts the study thus aims to extend the research on the early modern translation. It also seeks to contribute to contemporary discussions on the reconceptualization of agency, especially with an emphasis on the concept of collaborative authorship, and, finally, to contribute to the assessment of the applicability of translatological concepts to early modern translations.

Piety and Pedagogy Reinvigorated: The Adaptation of Halle Pietism in Upper Hungary and Upper Silesia

Author(s): Eva Hajdinová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

This article analyses the dissemination and adaptation of Pietism in Upper Hungary and Upper Silesia, with a particular focus on the Pressburg and Teschen centres, during the first third of the eighteenth century. This period saw a complex process of cultural and social exchange within Halle’s missionary project. It summarizes the role of religious writings, patronage mechanisms, printing and distribution, and personal communication networks in transmitting new forms of piety and pedagogy from German centres to these regions. The article explores in particular how these border regions reinforced connections among themselves and with other significant hubs in the network, such as Lusatia, Transdanubia, and Vienna. The latter emerged as a major target of Pietist propaganda, challenging previous research on the effectiveness of local censors and necessitating a re-evaluation of the hubs of cultural exchange of Pietism within the Habsburg Monarchy. Additionally, the study addresses the challenges of adopting and adapting Pietist pedagogical reform programme in the examined areas. Despite political, religious, and cultural obstacles that impeded full implementation in the semi-legal context, these educational reforms had a notable influence by the end of the century, even in predominantly Catholic regions of the Habsburg Monarchy, thereby contributing to its composite intellectual history.

Kalendarz Żydowski as a Mirror of Jewish Life in Poland in the 1980s

Author(s): Monika Stępień / Language(s): English Issue: 20/2022

The article is devoted to the Jewish Calendar [Kalendarz Żydowski] published by the Religious Union of the Mosaic Faith [Związek Religijny Wyznania Mojżeszowego] in Poland in the 1980s. In addition to the abbreviated liturgical calendar and the most important prayers, Kalendarz Żydowski included numerous articles on Jewish history, religion and culture and featured important events in the life of the Jewish community. The texts published in Kalendarz Żydowski were written by, among others, activists from different Jewish organisations reporting on their work. By virtue of the publisher, the most extensive of those were, of course, the regularly published reports on the activities of the Religious Union of the Mosaic Faith. Articles on the work of other organisations usually appeared in conjunction with the anniversary of their establishment. The aim of this paper is to examine what elements of Jewish life are addressed in Kalendarz Żydowski, and which changes taking place within the Jewish community it reflects.

Constituționalism, învățământ și drepturile educaționale după 1923 – cale a modernizării României. Studiu de caz: minoritatea maghiară

Author(s): Zoltán Salánki / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2024

Broadly speaking, constitutionalism is defined as a set of principles that promote the idea that the authority of government flows from and is limited by a body of fundamental laws that are above the will and arbitrariness of individual or community decision. In this sense, a type of political organization can be considered constitutional to the extent that within it the mechanisms of power control function, i.e. the separation of powers in the state. These institutionalized mechanisms are meant to prescribe, regulate and guarantee the rights, freedoms and obligations of citizens. Such a fundamental right is the right to education. In fact, it was not only the right but also the obligation of citizens to complete a minimum training stage that contributed essentially to the formation of modern states. The present study brings into debate both the conjugation between education and the evolution of Romanian society as a whole, referring in this case to the significant moments represented by the reforms of the educational field, as well as the effects of the first-rate laws in the educational field on the Hungarian minority.

Prześladowanie i zagłada Żydów w dystrykcie lubelskim w ujęciu izraelskiego historyka

Author(s): Jakub Chmielewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54/2024

PUT ZDRAVIH GRADOVA

Author(s): Zoran Ćosić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1-2/2012

A healthy city is a concept and an approach to the identity of a global city. The modern form of this phrase stems from a 1987 World Health Organization (WHO) project. In the first decade of the XXIth century, the city of Belgrade gradually revived its previous spirit of a European capital and managed to rebuild the severed links with its European neighbors by gradually becoming involoved in the process of European integrations and regional cooperation. At the end of the XXth century, Belgrade’s demographic and social structure gradually changed as a result of the dymanic changes caused by the emigration of a part of the young and best educated population and the great pressure of refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as immigrants from the empoverished parts of Serbia. This wrought changes to the city’s urban identity with far reaching consequences. We are witness to the halt and stagnation in the development of the structure of health care institutions. A new energy has been invested in this stage of the development of the helath care sphere and health care culture and an interaction between the health care sector, ecology and the infrastructure has been realized.

The Theatrical Experience of War on the Stage of the Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia (1917–1918) season

Author(s): Veneta Doytcheva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

The article comments on two Bulgarian plays: The Prisoner of War from Trikeri, by Konstantin Mutafov, and They Say He’s not Worthy, by Stoyan Chilingirov, both of which premiered on the stage of the National Theatre in Sofia during the 1917–1918 season. The text analyses the artistic specifics through which the authors convey the experience of war. Special attention is paid to the choice of plots and denouements in the two plays. The contribution focuses on the connection between the poetics of the play The Prisoner of War from Trikeri (K. Mutafov) and the documentary evidence from the time (Vladimir Sis's book The Graves of Trikeri (1914).

The Schizophrenic Face of War

Author(s): Heike Karge / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

My contribution deals with the question of how the First World War affected the mental health of Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian soldiers who served in the Austro-Hungarian armies and who were sent during or shortly after the war to the Hospital for the Insane in Stenjevec (close to Zagreb, Croatia-Slavonia). In that time, military men who were admitted to Stenjevec were predominantly given diagnoses such as dementia praecox, catatonia, or amentia. This is astonishing indeed, as in other societies at that time, such as in Germany, France, or Britain, the massive breakdown of soldiers during World War One generated the then heatedly debated diagnoses such as shell-shock or war neurosis. What were the reasons for the absence of war related diagnoses such as war neurosis in the Stenjevec psychiatric files? Did different theatres of war produce different diagnoses, and as such, different psychological reactions to war? Did the Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbian soldier, as opposed to the German or British one, simply not suffer mentally from the horrors of the First World War? Or did psychiatric practices of diagnosing soldiers during and after 1914–18 generate different diagnostic labels for potentially the same symptoms? To answer these questions, I am presenting an analysis of selected soldiers’ patient files as well as of the psychiatric discourse of the main Croatian and Serbian medical journals in the respective period. Analysing the psychiatric language that was used to describe a mentally distressed state of a (former) soldier, I argue that during and after the First World War, the diagnoses of schizophrenia, amentia, catatonia, or mania – then the most widely used psychiatric concepts in Croatia and Serbia, later Yugoslavia – were in fact placeholders for soldiers’ mental suffering from war.

Furies, Workers and Organizers: Women and Anti-war Protest in Italy, 1914–1918

Author(s): Roberto Bianchi / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

Between 1914 and 1918, the Kingdom of Italy was the scene of periodic waves of protest against the war, with varying characteristics, intensity, geography, and outcomes, within which women played a significant role. The forms taken by the state of exception and by industrial, agricultural, food supply, and civil mobilization were inextricably intertwined with these phenomena. By analysing documents preserved in court archives, police sources, periodicals, and memoirs from the time, the characteristics of protest movements emerge, which for a long time were underestimated in historiography. Social conflicts always had a political meaning and played an important role both during the year of neutrality (1914–1915), in the central phase of the war, and in the final year of the conflict, after the defeat of Caporetto (1917), and had significant consequences on the postwar period and the so-called biennio rosso (1919–1920), when the rise of squadrismo and fascism gained strength.

A Business History: The Transition of Fratelli Allatini from a Multi-National Enterprise Based in Ottoman Selânik to a Local Company of Greek Salonica and WWI Economy (1906-1926)

Author(s): Maria Kavala,Evanghelos Hekimoglou / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

In this paper we’ll examine through the archives of the Allatini enterprises, the Orient Bank, and others how the owners of Allatini enterprises managed to overcome difficulties and problems which caused the gradual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of national states in Balkans. The Allatinis were a family of doctors, rabbis, and intellectuals who came to Salonica from Tuscany in 18th century. From 1880 to 1906, they created several enterprises: one of the most modern industrial mills in the Ottoman Empire and in Europe, a bank, a tile factory, a prosperous tobacco company, mining companies, several commercial agencies all over Europe, a real estate company, etc. They had a strong influence on society – together with other social and economic changes of the era – by bringing modernity into the city: clubs, schools, extended charities, new work practices, industrial buildings – true models of technology for that time, new ways of communication for the workers, and new identities. However, it seems that from 1906 they started facing problems: the gradual dominance of Greek banking capital in the city, the financial crisis of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire, the financial crash of 1911 (the Italio-Turkish War) and the ensuing incorporation of Salonica into the Greek state (new taxes, the intervention of the Greek state, etc.), a ten-year war period (1912–1922) led to the relocation of the Allatini, as well as of other big Jewish industrialists, and the merging of their companies, or their appropriation by Greek businessmen (in 1923, K. Panoutsos became the main shareholder of the Allatini mills and in 1926, he bought them).

Violence and Resistance in Cultural Transmission: Generations and Time

Author(s): Giovanni Levi / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

This essay, or rather incomplete notes, is interested in relations between knowledge and culture, discussing on the negative features aroused not from the production of knowledge itself but in the abusive aspects of its transmission. If knowledge is in continuous and often non-linear development, something with a specific time dependency as well as a fragile and non-permanent legitimacy, while culture is something different, as it is composed of knowledge but also of traditions and behaviours, and is connected with social or ethnic groups preserving values, not scientific in character but having an intrinsic strength of their own, so we could pose questions about conditions for varying degrees of violence and varying degrees of resistance in cultural transmission. Based on two important cases, the transfer of religious beliefs and of technical and economic knowledge, and as they tell us a lot about the relationship between the transfer of knowledge and social and ideological structure, without ignoring the role inevitably played by relations of power and authority in this process, we focused on the other aspect of transmitting knowledge. In so far as transmission is clearly the problem with reception, these notes point on the cultural transmission that always implies a modification inherent in the resistance produced by the psychological, biographical, and cultural differences between transmitter and receiver. By observing the factors, which are involved here, more or less psychological and unconscious, as memory, imitation, curiosity, alongside refusal, selection and individual identity, this text emphasizes the fundamental role of time played in the transmission of knowledge in every field, including economy. From this research context, informed by S. Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology, emerges the significant problem concerned with how and why the transmission of historical facts to new generations modifies the meaning of trauma. In conclusion we directly address the issue of resistance in intercultural exchanges.