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      • Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2018

        Danube Swabians

        German Settlers in Southeast Europe

        by Gerhard Seewann, Michael Portmann

        In the 18th century, ships regularly sailed downstream from German Danube ports. People who promised themselves a better future in Southeastern Europe allowed themselves to be embarked. Most of them came from the southwestern countries of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Their destination was the Kingdom of Hungary, where after liberation from Turkish occupation manpower was needed. The immigrants were called “Swabians” regardless of their origin. They were economically successful and left their mark on large areas of the country. After 1918 these groups, now called “Danube Swabians”, belonged to three different states: Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Starting in 1944, hundreds of thousands lost their homes and thousands their lives through flight, expulsion, persecution and deportation. The majority of the uprooted found refuge in southern Germany. Only the Swabians in Romania and a part of the Hungarian Germans were allowed to stay. Many of them came to Germany as late repatriates, the remaining ones today form active German minorities in their home countries.

      • September 2022

        Literary Travel Guide Galicia

        On the road in Poland and Ukraine

        by Marcin Wiatr

        Galicia is an integral part of the Habsburg myth and the epitome of worldly seclusion, Eastern Jewish cultural traditions, the Kakan way of life and indescribable poverty. Even if the supranational entity called the Habsburg Monarchy, to which Galicia belonged between 1772 and 1918, no longer exists, the region lives on in literature. In addition to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Iwan Franko and Karl Emil Franzos, Joseph Roth, Bruno Schulz, Mascha Kaléko, Stanisław Vincenz, Józef Wittlin, Hnat Chotkevych, Zygmunt Haupt, Stanisław Lem, and Isaak Babel dealt with Galician themes. Today, Sophia and Juri Andrukhovych, Andrzej Stasiuk, Olga Tokarczuk, Martin Pollack, Tanya Maljartschuk, Taras and Jurko Prochasko, Ziemowit Szczerek, Natalka Sniadanko, Maxim Biller among others, do so. The book takes you to places of European history in the Southeast of Poland and in the West of Ukraine - from Krakow via Tarnow to Brody and from Lviv via Drohobych, Stanislau/Iwano-Frankiwsk and Boryslau to Zakopane. Marcin Wiatr reminds us that Galicia has historical lessons to teach us all in Europe.

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