This study is concerned with the analysis of police and censorship responses to the economic, social and political preconditions of 1848 revolution in Vienna. It points out, how the reform of rural and suburban police in terms of establishing new police commissariats had failed to a large degree, depriving police authorities of permanent control of these insecure areas. Typical police measures like strict censorship of books, journals or songs, surveillance of places of tension like reforming Italian states neighboring with Habsburg province Lombardo-Venetia and precise registration of revolutionary elements, combined with competence clashes of Vienna authorities as well as personal failures of police leaders Muth and Sedlnitzky, proved to be more than insufficient in order to prevent the inevitable change of the rigid absolutistic regime in the Habsburg monarchy.
This study focuses on the memorial function of charters in the Late Middle Ages based on narrationes in Sigismund of Luxemburg's charters for Czech recipients from 1433 to 1437. This dramatic period saw the culmination of the Hussite Wars (the siege of Plzeň, the Battle of Lipany), while at the same time there were negotiations between the Hussites and the Council of Basel which resulted in the issuing of the Basle Compacts and the acceptance of Emperor Sigismund as King of Bohemia in July 1436. The author gradually describes narrationes in Sigismund's charters for Bohemian Catholics from 1433 to 1435 and 1436 to 1437, and finally also for the Utraquists from 1436 to 1437. He demonstrates that while from 1433 to 1435 the charters were a means of fixing the Catholic towns' and noble families' memory of their continued and gallant struggle against "Hussite heresy" in writing, from 1436 to 1437 Sigismund's chancery retrospectively modified the memory of the previous wars in an effort to harmonise the image created in these charters with the religious reconciliation of July 1436.
A medieval war demanded an officially written declaration. Polish war declarations from the time of war with the Teutonic Order are an integral part of war and political culture of that time. In construction the declarations were written analogically to ones in neighbouring countries. They were written in Latin, sometimes in German. In 1454 a gauche Polish language made its presence. In the last war of the Order (1519–1521), the documents were uniformly in Polish and the royal chancellery attempted with some success to establish a uniform model for the drafting of war declarations.
In Czech historiography, Prince Charles I of Liechtenstein personifies the process of the post-White Mountain confiscations and the political and social changes in the post-White Mountain Czech lands. Between 1918 and 1945 he even became the subject of historiographical and journalistic discussion within Czech historiography, which was directly linked to the foundation and strengthening of the Czechoslovak Republic. These attitudes also led to discussions between historians standing on the side of the emergent Czechoslovak Republic and historians from the circle of the Prince of Liechtenstein. Contemporary research shows that the role of Charles I of Liechtenstein was by no means straightforward. This was due to the personal ambitions of the ruler of the emergent princely house, but also because of the complex historical context, when the representatives of the Central European aristocracy were searching for a place between the estates' community and the ruling dynasty. Charles I of Liechtenstein's case was also different due to geography and the individual countries where the Liechtensteins held positions, functions and offices. In the Margraviate of Moravia in particular, Charles I of Liechtenstein was the victim of confiscation declared during the Estates' Uprising. After the uprising had been defeated he could return to the country and reclaim his land. In Bohemia, Liechtenstein was rewarded for his loyalty to the Austrian house during the rebellion by soon becoming the emperor's commissar and then the emperor's governor. It was in that capacity that he arrested and tried the main rebels and presided over their execution at the Old Town Square. In the 1620s he organised the imperial confiscations in Bohemia. In Opava, which was gradually moving towards the Silesian principality, Liechtenstein attempted to enter as the supreme ruler and organise his own confiscations from this position. However, this manoeuvre came up against the interests of Emperor Ferdinand II and his central offices, which did not agree with such a division of the monarchy. But Charles I of Liechtenstein did make gains in Moravia, where he was awarded a large amount of property from his erstwhile opponent, the rebel provincial governor Ladislav Velen of Žerotín, the most important being the domain of Moravská Třebová. Charles I of Liechtenstein died in 1627 when, from the emperor’s perspective, peace and normality had finally returned to the Czech lands. His role in the confiscation process, albeit with certain dark shadows, nevertheless contributed towards the great advancement of the Princely House of the Liechtensteins, which would last for centuries.
The present paper uses two case studies to scrutinize the many different documents emanating from the administrative needs of late medieval mercenaries and their employers. The analyzed documents come from the Moravian towns of Jihlava and Znojmo, both of which Duke Albert of Austria held in pledge during the Hussite War. The corpus consists mostly of receipts issued by the mercenaries confirming received pay, and documents, which pertain to transactions concerning compensations for damages. The sources are first classified and analyzed from the point of view of medieval diplomatics. Secondly, the study tries to reconstruct the overall expenditure for the Austrian garrisons in Jihlava and Znojmo. Thirdly, the paper discusses fruitful areas for further research based on the presented sources.
Not only the perception of the contemporary Lithuanians and Vytautas by Konrad von Jungingen (1393–1407) and the Teutonic Order, but also the Order's memory of the earlier actions of the Lithuanians under King Mindaugas were the background against which the policy of the beginning 15th century was conducted. There is a nexus between memory, perception and politics. The Order still perceived the Lithuanians around 1400 as pagans. The memory studies, especially the central ideas of Maurice Halbwachs' classical theories on collective memory and the "cadres sociaux" provide a plausible explanation.
The NAKI project "The Benedictine Monastery in Rajhrad as a Cultural Phenomenon", whose main aim is cataloguing books from the historic monastery library hall and compiling the history and cultural influence of this prominent Moravian monastic institution, involves digitization of title pages of catalogued books, collections of graphic art and photographs, maps and atlases, as well as archival documents from the property of the Benedictine Abbey in Rajhrad. Digital copies of all documents, along with detailed catalogue records, have been made available online through the catalogues Aleph and VuFind, web storage Imageserver and the digital library Kramerius of the Moravian Library in Brno.
Monografie představuje první komplexní pojednání o sporu mezi Řádem německých rytířů v Prusích a Polsko-litevskou unií na kostnickém koncilu (1414–1418), který je analyzován ze tří navzájem se prolínajících hledisek, diplomacie, práva a propagandy. V diplomacii hrála klíčovou roli poselstva a komunikace mezi nimi a rozhodovacími centry. Jednání o prodloužení příměří, arbitráži a nedokončený doktrinální proces tvořily právní rámec kostnického procesu. Propagandistické akce polsko-litevské delegace se soustřeďovaly kolem otázky, která koncepce christianizace východní Evropy je úspěšnější. Důležitou součástí publikace je obšírný katalog různorodých textů (traktáty, polemiky, žalobní články, kázání a letáky) vzniklých v souvislosti s tímto sporem během koncilu. ,This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the diplomatic and judicial controversy between the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the Polish-Lithuanian Union at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). This dispute is approached from three basic perspectives which intertwine with one another: diplomacy, law, and propaganda. The study of the envoys and their communication with the centres of decision-making serves to explore the diplomatic sphere of the conflict. The legal framework of the controversy was formed by the negotiations about the extension of the existing truce between the two rivalling powers, by diverse attempts of arbitration, and especially by the pending doctrinal litigation. The propaganda developed by the Polish-Lithuanian delegation revolved essentially around the question, whether the Polish or the Order's concept of the Christianization of Eastern Europe was more successful. An extensive catalogue of treatises, polemics, complaints, and other texts, which were composed in connection with the Constance dispute, forms a major part of the book.
This study attempts to illustrate the document production of the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava in the significant first phase of its rich history in the years 1920 to 1950. In this period, Comenius University in Bratislava underwent a fundamental change - its de jure demise and the subsequent establishment of the Slovak University in Bratislava. Paradoxically, however, this only had a slight effect on the internal organization and it did not fundamentally change documentation practices at the faculty. The article focuses not only on the written production of the faculty, but, in relation to the legislation in force at the time, it clarifies the faculty's activities and the functioning of its governing bodies and their mutual relations and powers. The work is based on information that was drawn mainly from preserved archival materials, which are now stored in the permanent archival custody and administration of the Archives of Comenius University in Bratislava. We also drew on archive documents from the National Archive in Prague.
The paper offers a short outline of the studies and achievements of German medievalists in Bohemia in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century with a special focus on editions of diplomatic sources as well as on Diplomatics itself.