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The article constitutes the attempt to formulate remarks and hypotheses referring to the mentality of the elite of Toruń’s burghers in the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, mainly on the basis of the research concerning the history of the culture of Toruń in this period. Toruń’s elite consisted of the few rich members of the proud patriciate and the group of the so called “Scholars” (Gelehrte) – people of various backgrounds, who, having acquired the university education, made a political career in the town and representatives of professions requiring a much better education” priests, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and officials of the city authorities. The factors which united all those people in one group was the Protestant religious community (Lutherans), family, social and economic connections. The mentality of Toruń’s inhabitants was affected greatly by the life in a big city where goods were exchanged and people travelled from the north to the south and the east, and from the west to the north and east. Toruń was traditionally connected with Gdańsk and the Baltic Sea, Germany, the Netherlands, England and the Scandinavian countries. The mentality of the patriciate and burghers was imbued with religiousness in the Lutheran or Calvinist sense. The Protestant model of personal life filled with science and work prevailed. At the same time the mentality of Toruń’s burghers, in the first place those who spoke Polish and had direct contacts with noblemen and Catholics, was affected by the Baroque-Sarmatian models promoting the joy of life, the pursuit of luxury and presenting oneself from the best side. A case in point is Jakub Kazimierz Rubinkowski (1668-1749) – a nobleman and burgher of Toruń. This postmaster and burgrave of Toruń combined the features typical of the mentality of the noblemen and burghers. Toruń’s patriciate adopted many customs from noblemen and magnates, which was reflected in fashion, ceremonies, funerals, weddings, etc. Like noblemen, patricians purchased land, set up small “folwarks” and erected summer mansions in the countryside. Inhabitants of Toruń were mentally connected with inhabitants of Gdańsk. Yet, the mentality of Gdańsk’s inhabitants was mainly affected by the fact of living in a harbor open to the sea. Toruń was more closely connected with the Polish-Sarmatian background. What should be underlined is the ability to adapt and co-exist of various groups along with the ability to create a coherent whole. Toruń’s burghers were capable of reconciliating the material (the sphere of business and economy) with the spiritual (the sphere of belief and existential fear).
More...Przyczynek do dziejów nauki i środowisk naukowych w Polsce w drugiej połowie XX wieku
The memoirs of Professor Stanisław Salmonowicz titled "Life escapes like a donkey" published two years ago constitute the recapitulation of his own life and the scientific autobiography including extensive and important retrospective remarks concerning science and scientific circles in Poland and Europe in the second half of the 20th century. He particularly refers to historical sciences and historical-legal sciences. Against other valuable memoirs of scholars of the period of the Polish People’s Republic, the memoirs by Prof. Salmonowicz are characterized by the thorough description and analysis of attitudes and achievements of scientists and scientific circles in this period. Moreover, as one of the few testimonies of this kind, they stem from the experience of the scholars who, as it was defined by the author, “did not pact with totalitarianism”. Dozens of years of research and teaching in the most outstanding universities in Poland and abroad (despite difficulties generated by the communist authorities) makes the memoirs rich in unique knowledge about the history of science in Poland, particularly in the period of the Polish People’s Republic and to some extent also in the Third Polish Republic. It is of major importance as the research on the history of science and scientific circles in the Polish People’s Republic still remains very scarce. That is why the testimonies of active and important scholars of the period are so significant. They are frequently a more reliable source of information than preserved formal documentation; they allow us to understand how scientific institutions operated in Poland prior to and after 1989 and how it determined their work, development and achievements.
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The publication constitutes an analysis of the activation of Poles – citizens of the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire residing in the province of West Prussia (Eastern Pomerania) in the elections to the German parliament (Reichstag) in the 19th century (until 1914). On the one hand, it was demonstrated that every contemporary citizen of the German state had equal rights irrespective of their nationality; on the other hand, the author presented the process of shaping the national consciousness of Poles using the law to organize a network of their own electoral committees and elect their Polish representatives to the legislative institutions of that state, in the national rivalry with the German society in Eastern Pomerania. Statistically, a successive increase in activation in this area and its specific results in particular electoral districts were presented, depending not only on nationality statistics, but also on the organization of the electoral campaign and the level of the increasing social, national and political awareness. The article presents the organizational manifestations of the national independence of the Polish society of Eastern Pomerania, which was one of the basic factors justifying the inclusion of this region within the boundaries of the reborn Polish state.
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This article places into a broader scope of the research over the image of Gdańsk and its inhabitants in chronicles that are carried out by the authoress. It deals with the analysis of the historiographical sources originating from beyond Gdańsk. The majority of chronicles’ excerpts dedicated to Gdańsk deals with its political and trade activity. The authoress is particularly interested in the criteria, put forward by the chroniclers from 15th to 16th c., which decided on Gdańsk’s urban character, or indicated its value as a city and made it worth a visit. It was a period of intense development of this centre. The purpose of the analyses is to, i.a., check whether the contemporary chroniclers observed these changes and how they evaluated them. The issue has not yet been addressed in the literature of the subject. The analyses, referring to Hans Werner-Goetz’s methodology concerning the representations in chronicles (so-called Vorstellungsgeschichte), were carried out on various chronicles, relations and records, i.a. travel records (Gilbert de Lannoy and Mikołaj Wimann), Polish chronicles (Annales by Jan Długosz, chronicles by Bernard Wapowski, Joachim Bielski, Polonia by Marcin Kromer), foreign chronicles Germania by Eneas Silvius Piccolomini, Wandalia by Albert Krantz), or universal chronicles (Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster). The analysis shows that in the first half of the 15th century the contemporaneous authors did not stand out of other towns in the region (Jan Długosz, Gilbert de Lannoy, Eneas Silvius Piccolomini). Their assessment was made while they pondered on the city’s fortifications, geographical location and building material. It was not until the Thirteen Years War (1454–1466) and subsequent expansion of the city that the chronicles of the 16th c. noticed the ongoing change (especially Albrecht Krantz and Sebastian Münster). They described the “civilizational leap” that took place in Gdańsk in short time, namely during the life of one man. In their opinion, the changes were particularly noticeable in the fast pace of replacing wooden buildings with brick ones. The image of Gdańsk in the foreign chronicles does not contain elements of the descriptions of the city characteristic of Gdańsk records, which the authoress analyzed elsewhere – there are no references to specific buildings, streets and squares, that is, the living space of the city’s inhabitants.
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The aim of the article is to present the material scope and methodological assumptions of the research on the image of cities undertaken since the late 1970s. The author points out that the image of the city is a very broad term in which various research directions are included. The subject matter had been addressed in the works of sociologists, geographers and art historians since the 1920s. The so-called cultural breakthrough in historical sciences in the 1970s has contributed to the increasing interest in the problem of the representation of cities. The essence of the new approach has become the interest in the principles of creating an image, the ways of its construction and its functions. The priority in undertaking new methodological challenges in the research on the perception of cities and its representations should be attributed to researchers of literature and art historians. Historians started to be more seriously interested in the area in the 1980s. According to the author, the studies developing until the beginning of the 21st century were characterized by a large methodological diversity. Over the last ten years, the focus of researchers has been the issue of creating an image of their own city in various research contexts: city representation, city branding, symbolic communication and communal staging.
More...Z doświadczeń odtwarzania układu urbanistycznego Dolska z przełomu XVI i XVII wieku
The article concerns the presence of nature in pre-industrial towns. I address here the problems I encountered when recreating the urban layout of Dolsk, an averagesized town in Greater Poland belonging to the bishops of Poznan in the Old Polish period, at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. This problem concerned showing the socio-economic character of the city. The reproduction constitutes part of Greater Poland’s volume of the series of the Historical Atlas of Poland. The search for the presence of nature in cities was based on a query in written sources from the first half of the 17th century and on the basis of the oldest known and preserved city map from the end of the 18th century. The reference to natural elements in Dolsk is associated with the presence of home gardens, which constitute a kind of natural arrangement. Most often they appear when describing a real estate that was the subject of purchase/sale transactions between burghers of Dolsk or when loans were secured on a real estate. Gardens were located on plots, which constituted the basic unit of the ownership division of the urban space. However, they were not always mentioned in the descriptions of transactions. Most often they appeared at the houses that were built on plots limited from the back by the lakes surrounding Dolsk or passed into suburban areas. However, also in the case of plots that bordered with other plots from the back, one may find information about the presence of a garden on such a plot. The presence of gardens at the back of the plots in Dolsk was also registered on the oldest preserved city map of 1794–1796. Both this fact and the forwarding of elements of nature inside town walls on plans of perspective towns from the early modern period means that marking gardens on the reconstruction of the spatial arrangement seems necessary, especially in the case of towns of the size and character of Dolsk. This makes it necessary to reflect upon the methodology of creating historical maps of old towns. The simplest solution would be to create a generalized, simplified visualization of the urban space based on data taken from the oldest town plan, but not merely from a simple redrawing of the border between the residential-economic zone and the garden zone. However, not being able to mark these borders precisely on the basis of data from written sources from the 17th century, one should adopt a conventional method of marking these zones. However, this requires further reflection on the methodological concepts of modern cartography and their use to create historical maps showing the reconstruction of spatial systems of towns in the pre-industrial period. It seems that further work on a similar way of marking the space of urban plots in average-size and small towns will allow to develop a model of cartographic presentation that will better reflect the character of the space of towns such as Dolsk.
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The politics of violence practiced by the Italian fascist regime of Istria during the interwar period, especially as it was directed against the Croatian and Slovenian population, incited in these people an euphoria of nationalism during the general national uprising of September 1943, and immediately following liberation in 1945, a “national revenge” against the mainly urban Italian population. National tensions between Croats and Slovenes on one hand, and Croats and Italians on the other, were the result of the unclarified political status of Istria. Tensions peaked as the peacemakers conferred in Paris. Research revealed that the causes behind the mass exodus of Italians were many in number and complicated. These causes were likewise difficult to follow because it was often hard to disentangle social factors, such as family, upbringing, education, and cultural background from political and economic factors.
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Povijest Nijemaca na europskom istoku i jugoistoku, i u bivšoj Jugoslaviji, napose u Podunavlju, predmet je mnogih radova povjesničara i publicista, u prvom redu njemačkih. Unatoč svemu, do danas nema cjelovita, objektivna prikaza povijesti jugoslavenskih Nijemaca. Naime, pred historiografijom su još uvijek mnoga otvorena i neriješena pitanja.
More...History, Patronages, and Insight into the Teutonic Order and the Christian Population in Prussia (Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries)
This article summarizes the history of the relics of St Barbara in Althaus Kulm (Starogród Chełmiński), a topic with extensive research in Polish and German circles, but only recently addressed by scholarship in English. It begins with an overview of the relics’ history and a summary of St Barbara’s vita, pointing out the quick rise in her cult in the Teutonic Order’s Prussian territory (Ordensland). Following this, it assesses the function of the relics through three lenses: warfare, daily life, and as a symbol of the Order’s power using three methodological frameworks. These are hierophany (manifestations of the sacred) for warfare, naming practices for studying the impact of St Barbara on the local population, and as a reflection of the Order’s territorial power (Landesherrschaft). The article ultimately demonstrates that the relics were a significant element of the multifaceted structure of religious life in medieval Prussia, both within and outside of the Teutonic Order. Appended to the text are two previously unpublished accounts of the relics of St Barbara and their arrival in Althaus, demonstrating the reputation of the shrine not just in the Ordensland, but within Christendom. It concludes with a summary of the research findings, and a consideration of these findings in light of more ‘recent’ interpretations of the Teutonic Order and the Prussian Crusades.
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The research undertaken in the article is put in the context of the social, administrative and economic transformations undergone by Chełmno (Kulm), which had been a bishop’s town since 1505. These changes also had a significant impact on the organisation of the town’s chancery, which carried out tasks and duties entrusted by municipal authorities. This was reflected in an increase in the number of town officials working in the chancery, to which court secretaries belonged. They formed a professional group, which was characterised by their economic, political and cultural activity against the background of Chełmno community in the early modern period. The main research objective of the article is to create a comprehensive picture of the social environment of Chełmno town chancery from the sixteenth century until 1772, the personnel of which constituted the intellectual elite of the town, and to present the characteristic traits of this group. At the same time, the text presents the profiles of town secretaries and clerks previously unknown or rarely mentioned in the scholarly literature. Methods applied in the research involve critical analysis of the preserved town books and individual documents, both manuscript and edited. On the basis of data collected from the primary sources, a prosopographical analysis has also been conducted. The result of the studies is an overview picture of the professional group formed by the secretaries and clerks of early modern Chełmno, which includes their social origins, family ties, non-professional activity and wealth.
More...Current State of Research and New Perspectives
What is commonly referred to in Poland as ‘December 1970’ was one of the most important and most tragic moments in the history of this country after the Second World War. Then, a violent suppression of workers’ revolts in several Polish cities on the Baltic coast, by the Citizens’ Militia and the army, and the subsequent changes in the leadership of the Polish United Workers’ Party took place. After fourteen years in power, the First Secretary of the Central Committee, Władysław Gomułka, was replaced by the former member of the Politburo and also the First Secretary of the Voivodship Committee in Katowice, Edward Gierek. The military operations on the Polish coast, alongside the Citizens’ Militia, involved some 27,000 soldiers and 550 tanks, 750 armoured carriers and 2,100 cars. Also, 108 aircraft and helicopters, as well as 40 vessels of the Polish Navy were deployed. Apart from the period of martial law (1981–1983), never during peacetime has the Polish Army been put on standby on such a scale and used to such an extent to pacify the society. According to official data, a total of 45 people were killed and 1,165 wounded on the Baltic coast. Although over 80 books and brochures have already been published on ‘December 1970’, we still do not know the answers to all the questions. The role played by the Soviet authorities at that time has been researched the least. However, without free access to the post-Soviet archives stored in Russia, which seems hardly possible in the near future, it will be difficult to make new findings on this issue.
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The last war in history fought between Austria and the Ottoman Empire is known as the “Dubica War” (1788-1791), and although the military actions were limited to a narrow area, this war had strong consequences for the population of the Catholic chaplaincyof Tolisa. The Turkish authorities, anxious to secure the cooperation of Catholics living on the banks of the Sava River, decided to systematically relocate those who had established their houses south of the river. War was officially declared on February 9, 1788 and in the following month around 1,600 inhabitants, as many as lived in the chaplaincy at the time, were relocated to the villages of the Dubrava parish and the chaplaincy of Tramošnica, particularly in the area between Blaževac and Porebrica where the new village Fratrovac was established, named after a friar who had settled there with his people. The newcomers to the area were accepted in a friendly manner by the local population and adapted well to the new environment. Until the return to their villages in August 1791, 223 children were born and 110 people died in exile. After their return to Posavina, some of the villages, such as Tolisa, Boka and Vidovica were not established at the former locations; the returnees chose new locations which became the centres from which the above villages as we know them today emerged.
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The egodocuments (letters and diaries) provide historians and linguists with the rare opportunity to observe the everyday life of generations, who lived long ago. The Diary of Vytautas Civinskis (1887–1910), a young nobleman, tells about the years he spent abroad while studying in Leipzig, Berlin, and Dorpat in the first years of the 20th century. Along with other information, one can find rather scarce, but nevertheless valuable data about the societies of Lithuanians in Moscow, Berlin, and Dorpat which he described. In Moscow Civinskis attended Lithuanian parties, in Berlin he joined some meetings and a picnic, arranged by the local society of Lithuanians. Most closely he observed the life of the Society of Lithuanian Students of Dorpat. Civinskis became an active member of this society, and temporarily worked as a secretary, a librarian, and even one of its leaders. Spending his vacations in the Lithuanian estate Mituva, which belonged to his family, Civinskis also helped to establish the Agricultural Society of Skapiškis, arranged a theatrical performance and founded its library. This Diary, previously practically unknown, adds some interesting new details and trivia about all the mentioned societies, their activities and members. Many surnames of members are mentioned, the printed program of the party in Moscow adds to our knowledge of the cultural life of Lithuanians there, and previously unknown facts about women studying in Tartu are also published. This article includes some good quality photographs, taken by the diarist in Tartu.
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In spite of the relative scarcity of sources this study tries to shed some light on the murky history of the black (arap) slaves and ex-slaves who were once part of the human presence in the Bulgarian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After an overview of some of the racially biased views connecting blackness and slavery, which emerged in the Islamic countries throughout the centuries, as well as of the origins of the black-slave trade in the Middle East, and of the peculiarities in the organization of black slaves and ex-slaves’ socio-religious life in the Ottoman domains, this study turns to tracking the footprints of the black slavery in what is nowadays Bulgaria and its’ border lands. On the basis mainly of documents recorded in the kadi sicils for the cities of Sofia, Ruschuk and Vidin from the 17th to the first half of 18th c., a conclusion was reached that the Sub-Saharan slaves there formed quite a small proportion of the slave population. Besides, no traces of sizable black slave and ex-slave communities led by their own elders (a phenomenon known from the Anatolian and Aegean parts of the Ottoman Empire) were detected in the region. Nevertheless, until the beginning of the 19th c. the documents studied show no apparent signs of any discrimination from the masters based on the slaves’ skin color. In the last Ottoman century however, due to various factors, racial prejudices became more and more evident. This article provides a number of examples of the negative, sometimes highly distorted image of the blacks as reflected in Bulgarian texts from that epoch and seeks an explanation for such stereotypes.
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