The goal of this paper is to discuss changes implemented in Danish early childhood education influenced by neoliberal ideology, and views concerning the new requirements for teachers (pedagogues) at private and self-owned kindergartens. The paper describes the historical tradition of Danish kindergartens based on children’s free play and democracy, allowing children to develop social skills and cognition through exploration and discovery, and giving practitioners a great deal of autonomy. The new trend in Danish early childhood education is towards detailed planning of work and accountability-based-assessment, which contradicts the traditional philosophy. It pushes teachers to create programs that develop children’s readiness for school and to implement teaching methods based on educational standards mandated by the government. The results of this research project, based on interviews conducted with teachers and educational experts, demonstrates the educators’ criticism of this new approach and their attempts to save democracy as a central value in education

The Gdansk chronicle by Bernt Stegmann was written in the East Central German language (Ostmitteldeutsch) in 1528 and is the oldest surviving historiographic artefact concerning Gdansk. The article sums up the author’s latest findings concerning the circumstances in which the chronicle was written and the probable addressee of the work. She also puts forward some hypotheses regarding the origin of the compiler, discusses the structure of the manuscript and the manner of its production.
The chronicle is a compilation of some older historiographic sources, which place the history of the Main City of Gdansk in world history: the Jerusalem rulers and the history of the Teutonic Order. It is a type of a universal town chronicle. The content is moralizing – the compilation is a collection of historical examples teaching how to rule the town properly. It was probably written for didactic purposes for young Hans Kremer, the future mayor of Gdansk.
Bernt Stegmann was a merchant trading in such places as Stockholm and Reval. The toponymic criterion indicates that his family could originate from the area of Brandenburg or Braniewo, while the dialect in which he wrote the chronicle as well as the numerous Silesian threads in the content also make it possible to be open to the hypothesis that Stegmann’s family could have come from Silesia. This question remains unresolved. The manuscript was written and made personally by Bernt Stegmann, as indicated by the atypical arrangement of its sections and non-professional binding.

The collections of the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences include a set of printed textes by Jan Seklucjan with a handwritten dedication to Albrecht Frederick, Duke of Prussia (†1618). Their binding is decorated with plaquettes with portraits of Albrecht von Brandenburg- Ansbach, Duke of Prussia (†1568) and his first wife Dorothea (†1547). The article analyses both compositions, providing the following conclusions: they were made in the Konigsberg circles of the so-called Formschneider between the end of the 1530s and the first half of the 1540s. Between the period in question and 1565, wooden plaquettes (blocks) with these portraits were kept by the Duke’s court bookbinder, Kaspar Angler. After his death they probably belonged to the workshop equipment of his pupil Wolff Artzt, although it is also possible that they were used by a local religious writer, bookseller and possibly also bookbinder – Jan Seklucjan. Both works are examples of adaptation in Konigsberg of a specific formula of Renaissance book binding decoration, being at the same time a bookplate, based on a rectangular portrait plaquette presented in the centre of the cover. Compositions of such works most often depended on the painted portraits – mainly from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Both Konigsberg portraits, however, are marked by prolonged proportions, a landscape background, and the display of coats of arms at the bottom. This fact should be explained by the painting models that were probably related to paintings in Albrecht’s Konigsberg residence. It is impossible to decide definitely whether they were made by a painter employed at his court (e.g. Crispin Herrant), or imported. Nevertheless, they are an indirect testimony to the existence of a gallery of portraits in the Konigsberg Castle, which was created on a long-term basis and with passion by the Duke of Prussia.