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The purpose of the article is to present the attitude of Americans towards the First World War, and the rituals and ways to commemorate the soldiers fallen in the Great War. An important role in the creation of collective memory about the Great War was played by soldiers and veterans, among others through the preservation of soldier’s story, rituals during the annual celebrations of the Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and also the ceremonies of reburials of thousands of soldiers’ bodies repatriated from Europe.
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The Russo-Turkish War of 1877 – 1878 is one of the most researched topics of Bulgarian Revival history. The interest towards this war began as early as it was declared, and has not subsided until today. The amassed information of what was written or said regarding the events of 140 years ago is growing considerably around every milestone anniversary of the signing of the Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano. Several generations of historians, local researchers, political and cultural scientists have been studying for over a century one aspect of the war or another, and the number of thematic and documentary volumes, monographs, studies, pa-pers and reports dedicated to the Liberation of Bulgaria is now over 50001. It is enough to call to mind the publications of some war contemporaries such as Atanas Benderev and Georgi Dimitrov, or by reputable scientists like Georgi Genov, Hris-to Hristov, Konstantin Kosev, Tsonko Genov, Velko Tonev, Doyno Doynov, Georgi Valkov, to be assured that representatives of different historiographic schools have contributed to shape and deepen our knowledge on the events on the Balkans in the years of the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875 – 1878.
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The article seeks to answer the questions about the meaning of honour and its possible interpretations, together with that about the usefulness of this category in historical studies. The theoretical reflections are reinforced with an analysis of village court registers from the area of the Vistula Spit at the turn of the seventeenth century which proves the key role of honour within contemporary peasant communities.
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The paper aims to organise the issues concerning the great variety of manuscripts jointly referred to as the “election prophecy”, supposedly made by Georg Joachim Rheticus. The author proposed to apply a model showing how the original text of the “prophecy”, the autograph of which has not been preserved to this day, underwent contamination and interpolation after being introduced into manuscript circulation through correspondence and numerous copies, while at the same time serving as the basis for the creation of vernacular traditions of the text. These processes are depicted in source materials annexed to the paper, containing editions of the Latin, Polish and German variants of the text.
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The article presents the life of nobleman Jan Kunowski, a three times director of the Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed Provincial Synod in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There are various forms of his activity described – as a poet, condotierre, cartographer, diplomat, official, royal secretary, and landowner. His career was not as successful as it had been indicated by both his intellectual potential and patronage of his patron Aleksander Gosiewski. The study explains why he changed his place of residence four times, and every time he abandoned either his post or profession performed.
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In the rich repertoire of Polish Protestant hymnals many songs can be found, more or less explicitly intended for children or adolescents. The presence of such works was largely a result of Luther’s recommendations on religious education through music. The children’s repertoire included primarily prayers for reciting or singing during the day: the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Decalogue, morning and evening prayers, various meals prayers.
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The Jan Laski Society of Lovers of the History of Polish Reformation in Vilnius, established in 1916, played a significant role in the propagation of history of the Reformation in the Polish lands. This was achieved thanks to an intensive activity of its members, including numerous meetings and lectures. In addition, the Society published books on the Evangelical-Reformed Church and the impact of the Reformation on the emerging culture and language. The growing prestige of the Society can be testified by the fact that at the end of its existence it almost doubled its membership in comparison to 1918.
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Proverbs are succinct enunciations that concentrate in just a few words a diversified human typology, tackled from the vantage point of appearance, ethics, social-cultural stance etc. Of the several thousand Romanian proverbs and sayings that I have collected so far, over 360 include some reference to plants from 75 species. Most proverbs refer to generic plant names such as flower, grass, (fruit) tree, weed, thistle or bramble. An analysis of such proverbs shows that half of them express observations regarding the morphology, physiology (particularly phenology), or the ecology of certain species (whether wooden or grassy, cultivated or wild). They are given in such a manner that turns them into: (potential) knowledge; moral precepts; culture (including agriculture, but especially horticulture and its branches: fruit and flower growing, viticulture, or vegetable growing); science (biology, ecology, medicine, dendrology) and so forth. One fifth of all proverbs indicate, via metaphors, physical and behavioural flaws that are either hereditary or not. The most frequent subjects are foolishness and ignorance (which lead to failure), ugliness, laziness (and its consequence, poverty), dishonesty, ungratefulness, impudence, intemperance, boastfulness, greed, witchcraft etc. Some proverbs reflect people's qualities, such as kindness, knowledge or skill, understanding, kindness, patience – features that sometimes go unappreciated by other people. One tenth of the proverbs are in the form of advice, teachings, or brief lessons in agriculture, behaviour (including ecological self-conduct). There are then proverbs that express a perception of false images or situations, or unpredictable happenings, surprises.
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The aim of this article is to provide a description of the linguistic-cultural vision of the manor on the Baltic-Slavic border. The object of the analysis is autobiographical narratives of the oldest residents of Polish villages in the districts of Meikštai and Smalvos in north-eastern Lithuania, on the border with Belarus. The people living there have perfectly retained the memory of old manors and estates, local nobility, and the relations between the peasants and the manor. The article aims to present their memories about the manor, the impact of the manor on the formation of their personalities and attitudes towards the surrounding world, and to characterise the places important for the formation of a multi-ethnic, multicultural borderland and its unique character. The analysis of the conceptualisation of the manor and the landlord by the residents of Smalvos district is based on the general assumptions of oral history, especially those concerning the narrator’s position, his/her worldview and his/her relation with the described reality. The reconstructed vision of the manor, based on the autobiographical narratives, is clearly positive. The described behaviour of the landlord to the peasants dispels the established stereotype of the landlord as a ruthless exploiter and the myth of relations with the peasants based on exploitation. Although cognitive definitions of the concepts under consideration describe the manor as a place distinct from the countryside, at the same time, however, it was a place where peasant children were welcome, taught prayers and the basics of reading and writing. The landlord is described as an educated, tolerant and understanding person who took care about his peasants and supported them.
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The article is a fragment from the forthcoming Memoirs of Radu Ciuceanu, a former political prisoner and vice-president of the National Liberal Party at the beginning of the 1990s. The author revisits the moment in 1992 when the National Liberal Party proposed King Michael I as their candidate in the presidential elections. The decision resulted into an electoral catastrophe for the National Liberal Party.
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In the 1970s in Western Europe, in the United States, in the Middle East and in Central and South America many brutal terrorist attacks took place. The public opinion witnessed the activity of various groups, representing different systems of values. The acts of political violence were exercised in the name of ideology, national liberation or religion. Polish public opinion during the communist rule observed the happenings from a distance, but with much attention. People’s Poland in the 1970s published more than a dozen academic, journalist and popular works on the topic of terrorism. The most influential weekly papers (Polityka, Kultura) dedicated many features to the problem of terrorism. The article, basing on books and press articles from the period, aims to answer two questions. What did the state of public knowledge about terrorism, which could be acquired from open sources, look like? How was the phenomenon of international terrorism and its various forms described and evaluated?
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The Round Table (February – April 1989) has been a thorny issue for many years, igniting debates among historians and politicians of the Third Polish Republic, and opinions about it – favourable or unfavourable – corresponded with the opinions of general achievements of the transformation of the Polish political system. Already during the negotiations, the Round Table talks caused controversies and deepened personal and ideological divisions within Solidarność and the opposition. The end of 1988 brought about the emergence of a tendency to contest the line of action of Wałęsa and his circle, and especially rejected the need of Round Table talks with the communist government. The tendency was shared by political groups originating from Solidarność and newly formed political parties, numerous but weak, existing on the margin. The article presents the most important arguments of political opponents of the Round Table talks – the radicals of the crucial time of changes in 1988 and 1989. The author answers the question whether it is right to use the term “radicalism” and attempts to determine the scope of a social base of radicals; he points out that many arguments put forward by the opponents of the negotiations were also presented by journalists and oppositionists supporting Lech Wałęsa. He thus advances a thesis that it was not political concepts that distinguished radicals from the rest of the opposition, but their specific psychological attitude; this, however, requires further study.
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Władysław Litmanowicz, an officer of the Red Army and the Polish Army, a judge of the Military District Court, was also one of the most important post-war chess activists. He combined his activity in the Polish Chess Union with his journalistic work for the “Szachy” (Chess) monthly in 1950–1983. He was also the author of numerous valuable books on the history of chess game both in a Polish and international arena. Editor Władysław Litmanowicz had also a second nature – he was a judge of Military District Courts in Cracow, Kielce and Warsaw. He was a strict judge who sentenced to death fifteen soldiers of the second conspiracy for independence, and activists of the anti-communist opposition. He was never held responsible for his participation in the Stalinist judiciary, on the contrary, he was awarded with the highest state awards and recognitions as late as in the 1980s.
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Un mic grup de cercetători, coordonați de Marlies Barbara Lenz, vor să salveze patrimoniul străbunilor din Romos (Orăștie) și să conserve elemente de cultură săsească – parte importantă a patrimoniului cultural european. Cercetările au pornit de la prima monografie a Romosului, datorată preotului dr. A. Amlacher – Rumes. Aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart einer siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Dorfsgemeinde, apărută la Sibiu (Hermannstadt), în 1912. Au fost realizate diferite interviuri cu sași care mai trăiesc la Romos sau care au plecat în Germania și se întorc pentru a petrece vara aici. Au făcut și interviuri cu români, deoarece sunt interesați de modul de conviețuire al celor două comunități. Prima etapă a cercetării s-a desfășurat în perioada 1-8 august 2017. Cercetătorii au realizat destul de repede că o să fie nevoie de mai multe interviuri pentru verificarea rezultatelor deja obținute. Au hotărât să continue interviurile și în Germania, chiar dacă sașii din Romos locuiesc la mari distanțe unii de alții. În decursul interviurilor oamenii au oferit informații prețioase și își mai aminteau multe amănunte despre viața rurală, diferitele evenimente importante în cursul unui an calendaristic în lumea de altădată a Romosului. Până la al doilea război mondial sașii din Romos erau țărani cu pământ propriu și duceau o viață autarhică, foarte puține produse trebuind să fie cumpărate din prăvălia satului sau de la Orăștie. Cercetătorii antrenaţi în această investigaţie ştiinţifică sunt convinşi că „au început un drum care va fi obositor, lung, dar și frumos”.
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Oral histories and life stories, as specific “documents of life” (K. Plummer) and narrative forms, have hybrid genre structure, a particular relation to reality, and the process of their evaluation poses different methodological questions. The use of oral histories and life stories as resources and evidence is especially complex issue. These texts are subjective with regard to reconstruction of memories and construction of narratives, as well as intersubjective and dialogical, considering that they are created collaboratively by the interviewee and the interviewer, starting from the conceptualisation of the interview up to its interpretation. The paper discusses the criteria for validity and reliability in oral histories and life stories, which concern advantages and limitations of a field interview (i.e. oral history and life story method), and aspects of constructing narrative identity in oral history and life story interview. The interview is considered to be a form of a heuristic collaboration between interviewer and interviewee, with their shared authority in a dialogue. However, there can be certain methodological limitations regarding, for example, conduction of an interview, relation between participants in a research, interpretation of data, influence of a particular context, employment of specific narrative or linguistic conventions in the construction of narration, and they may affect evaluation. In the final section the importance and forms of evaluation in narrating is discussed. Relaying on sociolinguistic and narrative analysis studies, some characteristic evaluating techniques in narratives are outlined, and also the way how evaluation is connected with other components of the content and the structure of a narrative.
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