“With all the particular features of the nation of the Wends” – On the construction of ethnic otherness in early modern scientific studies of the Sorbs

Until late in the 17th Century it appears that hardly any special attention was given to the Sorbs as a separate ethnic community by their contemporaries. This only started to change when in the…[Read more]

The Lusatian Sorbs.

An essay on popular notions of the Sorbian minority from the majorities’ point of view.

„Preaching to the poor Sorbian peasants in a good, pure Protestant manner“. Clergy and Rural Society in Early Modern Upper-Lusatia

For some time German historical research has, not without reason, identified the Protestant parsonage as a German „Realm of Memory“ („Erinnerungsort“). However, the comparably high level of territorial and regiona…[Read more]

Sorbs in the city. Medieval and early modern regulations regarding Sorbian/Wendish peasants

The motive for this article was the re-discovery by the author of an eighteenth-Century Sorbian citizen’s oath from Kamenz, which had been thought to be lost. To this day two very different sources of evidence have dominated the discussion about w…[Read more]

A short article about the early modern pastor and Slavic linguist George Körner (1717–1772) from Saxony and his relationship with the „Wendische Predigerkollegium“ (Wendish/Sorbian student preachers society) in Leipzig.

“The Discovery of the Other. Perception and representation of the Lusatian Sorbs in the scholarly literature of the 17th and 18th century”

Ever since the Franconian-German annalists and geographers of the high Middle Ages had dealt intensively with their (pagan) Slavic neighbours, their Lusatian descendants had probably never again received as…[Read more]

Jubilees, anniversaries, commemoration days, public holidays, etc. Anniversaryitis. The coincidences of the calendar and the astronomical constellations that determine it are increasingly and, today, almost exclusively, defining when and with what our so-called historical consciousness occupies itself. If our current public history–our d…[Read more]

Public History scandals have occurred repeatedly in the German Bundeswehr (German armed forces) in recent years. These scandals comprised young men belonging to this modern parliamentary army who actively draw on the traditions and symbols that were once used by the National Socialist Wehrmacht. This has prompted the German Ministry of Defence to…[Read more]

Paul Feyerabend’s essay “Against method” (1975) is rarely mentioned when scientists try to contextualise and justify their research projects. Or at least I have never come across this piece as a positive reference in a proposal submitted to me for review nor have I ever heard it referred to positively in a talk. Well, except if the writer or speak…[Read more]

“So many gilded volumes of poetic works” – The library of Gottsched’s ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft’ in Leipzig

In his detailed keynote chapter, I undertake to restructure the terminological field, which is internationally referred to as “Public History”, but also uses terms such as “Cultural Heritage”, “Collective Memory”, “Culture of Remembrance” or “History Culture” etc. He expands on current ways of understanding the term “Public History” and the core…[Read more]