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Early modern period
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"Wait till the Scots come!"
This old Prussian proverb exhorts us to be patient and wait for the right opportunity. But what does this have to do with the far north of Great Britain? The answer leads us to Gdansk. In the early modern era, the port city attracted numerous merchant ships from the Baltic region and beyond. Some even came from as far away as Scotland to seek their fortune there.
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Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish romantic, poet, translator and journalist, was a migrant for most of his life. He also travelled to Berlin, Rome, Constantinople and other places for pleasure, scientific purposes and on political missions. These frequent changes of location show a mobile and transnational life story.
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Introduction
Copernicus: A contested European legacy
Over the past two centuries, discussions about Copernicus have played a key role in German-Polish relations. The years commemorating the anniversaries of the astronomer’s birth and death crystallized the debates.
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Object story
Edina's beach bag
A blue and white striped bag with white handles - at first glance an inconspicuous beach bag. But it tells the moving story of the then 33-year-old Edina Rizvanović's flight from what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina to Ulm.
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Biography
Hannah Wadle
In 2009, Hannah Wadle settled in Sztynort to do research for her doctoral thesis – and stayed for a whole year. Gradually, her cautious explorations turned into familiarity and what began as a purely academic interest became a dedicated personal commitment to the town and its people. She learned to see the Lehndorff manor house from many perspectives. In 2017, she founded a cultural festival, and since then the palace has come to life every August.
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Home in a trunk of clothes - the Garlik family's traditional costume suitcase
This suitcase has traveled far – not, as one might expect, after the Second World War, but rather in the decades after the flight of the Nessner family. It was used to transport the traditional costumes of a Danube Swabian dance troupe from Baden-Württemberg as they toured to enclaves of Danube Swabians scattered around the world.
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Jewish Postcard Publishers and the Imagery of the Urban
In numerous cities across eastern Europe, Jewish publishers enjoyed notable success on the newly established postcard market. This article presents a socio-historical background of this topic and asks whether their social positioning influenced the depictions of the urban world they chose to feature on their postcards.
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Introduction
Jews in Poland in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
The article offers an overview of Jewish history and the development of Jewish settlement in medieval and early modern Poland from the first recorded mentions of Jewish centers in the 11th century through to the end of the 18th century. As in the neighboring countries of Hungary and Bohemia, the Polish monarchs were also interested in Jewish settlement; the privilege of 1264 and its confirmations created the legal framework for this. Jews were involved in the economic and demographic development of Poland. The Jewish percentage of the urban population also grew, and their formative influence was particularly visible in the south-eastern provinces, which found expression in the concept of the Jewish "shtetl". In modern times, Poland-Lithuania also became a center of Jewish scholarship. The crises and wars in the mid-17th century brought an influx of messianic movements. In the 18th century, the impulses of the Jewish Enlightenment and the emancipation of the Jewish population were the subject of lengthy and lively discussion.
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Lembergs’s Coffeehouse Culture Before the First World War
The east Galician city of (Lemberg) Lviv had a lively coffeehouse culture during the Habsburg Empire. Poles, Jews and Ukrainians would gather over pots of coffee and tea. As the First World War approached, however, a growing sense of nationalism could also be felt in these otherwise convivial spaces.
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Biography
Maria Zarębska
When Maria Zarębska was born, in July 1948, the village of Sztynort was still scarred by war. A few Masurian families had remained living there, but most of the inhabitants – like Maria's parents – were newcomers. Everyone was struggling to survive, to get along with each other, to find their way in socialist Poland. For a child like Maria, all this was "normal." The curious girl later became an avid and perceptive chronicler.
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Memorials in Wrocław
The Jewish community in Breslau, which was the third-largest in the German Reich in 1925, was forgotten for many years. However, after 1989, new interest in local history began to emerge in Wrocław, Poland. Nowadays, monuments and a commemorative procession serve as reminders of the Jewish people who lived in Breslau (the pre-1945 German name for Wrocław) during the pre-war period.
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Introduction
Migration
The term migration refers to spatial movements of people. But not every change of location is considered migration. Exactly which phenomena and processes of regional mobility are understood as migration in scientific, political, media or public debates is contested and subject to constant change.
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Interview (video)
Nicolaus Copernicus: The relationship between theology and science
Prof. Dr. Matthias Haudel is professor of systematic theology and has specialized in the relationship between theological perspectives and scientific findings, in particular with a comprehensive introductory book published in 2021. In this interview, he clarifies the widespread prejudices about the relationship between the Church and science during Copernicus’ time and continues along this vein to consider the possibilities of a dialogue that could arise today, e.g. between quantum physics and theology.
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Nicolaus Copernicus: The state of source material and the history of research
Prof. Dr. Andreas Kühne was the co-editor of the 2019 edition of the Complete Works of Nicolaus Copernicus. In this interview, he describes what we can learn about Copernicus from the available sources and how the figure of Copernicus came to be politicized. He also describes how research into Copernicus could lead to new findings.
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Object story
Not a Moment to Lose
In 1944, the entire German-speaking population of the village of Novo Selo in Yugoslavia flee for their their lives as the Red Army approaches. Among them is the Neuburger family, who travel by horse-drawn wagon via Hungary to Austria.
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Interview (video)
Pandemic and Migration in Eastern Europe
Copernico asked: What role have epidemics and pandemics actually played in history, especially in Eastern Europe? How were they combated in the past? What impact did they have on the course of history? What role do they play, for example, in the context of human migration movements?
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Places of commemoration of the Shoa in Szeged, Hungary
The Jewish community of Szeged in Hungary has a rich heritage dating back two centuries. Many of their descendants perished in the Holocaust, when Szeged was made the main deportation center for the region. The purpose of the following post is to showcase the Holocaust memorials erected by the locals.
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Post-War Jewish Migration from the USSR and the refuseniki movement
The post-WW II Jewish migration from the Soviet Union (and also after its dissolution) is one of the largest in modern history. Altogether 2.75 million Soviet Jews left the USSR for Israel, the United States, Germany and elsewhere. The position of the Soviet state with respect to emigration was remarkably ambivalent: in some cases, it was allowed and even encouraged, in others, others; it was controlled and strongly limited. The Jewish emigration movement that arose in the late 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s-1980s became an example of resistance and activism within the authoritarian system, which increasingly alerted international attention. In one way or another, it affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and changed the appearance of many cities and towns within the Soviet Union and outside it.
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Spoon Stories
What do you take with you when you are forced to flee your home empty-handed? Which object will be indispensable in everyday life and vital for emergencies? An exhibition project by the consultant for cultural affairs Magdalena Oxfort shows the role that spoons, of all things, can play in people's lives when they face exceptional circumstances and also in their memory of these events.
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Editorial
Steinort – a European place of remembrance
Steinort is a European place of remembrance, because it is a place where the most diverse stories and memories intersect, intertwine, and overlap. The interview project by Ulla Lachauer and Agata Kern explores these subjective strands of memory and reveals a number of different cultures of remembrance.
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