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Historical writings concerning the structure of Prussian society in 13th-16th century Prussia traditionally distinguish among three social classes: the "great freemen", the "small freemen" and the bondmen. this rather simplified scheme, although providing an insight in Old Prussian society, still fails to provide complete information concerning importance (or lack thereof) of the role that the local people played in the land administration after the occupation of Prussian lands and the formation of the land administration by the Teutonic Order and dioceses. the present paper reveals that Prussian society of the 13th-16th centuries has in fact been much more multi-layered than the above-mentioned three-layer model and that the local people of that time played a significant role in the power hierarchy and land administration in the dioceses of Prussia and the Teutonic Order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a conference entitled "The Flow of Concepts and Institutions," held October 6-8, 2010 in Heidelberg, Germany and sponsored by Heidelberg University’s Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” is presented. The conference focused on ideas of governance and religiosity. Topics included 17th century German views of governance in Mughal India, the influence of Marxism in Asia, and religious violence. Speakers included Bo Strath.

From 1917 to 1924, groups of German children were sent on Erholungsreisen (vacation journeys) to German-speaking villages in Transylvania. These trips were organized jointly by nationalist associations in Germany and their partners in Transylvania, who hoped to reinforce bonds between Germans abroad and the Mutterland. The success of the 1917 trip contrasts with the failure of later campaigns. Empathy between Reichsdeutsche and Ausländsdeutsche was immediately intelligible in the context of a common war effort, but later trips foundered a divergence of opinion about where charity was needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Historians are dumb witnesses to a culture wrangling with itself about its criminal past if they only narrate the sequence of historical controversies such as those that have dotted the German public landscape since the Holocaust. They need to be alive to the subterranean biblical themes flowing beneath the surface froth of events, linking past and present through the continuity of German political emotions that are necessarily collective and therefore sensitive to anxieties about accusations of collective, inherited sin. This article argues that the guilt/shame couplet so common both in public German and academic discourses about postwar Germany cannot account for the intergenerational transmission of moral pollution signified by Holocaust memory. In order to understand the dynamics of German political emotions, it is more useful to employ an alternative couplet: stigma and sacrifice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]