The aim of the article is depiction of the scientific cooperation between historians from Szczecin and Greifswald which is continuously developed in the beginning of the 21st century. The cooperation based primary on the DAAD guest professorship of Prof. Joerg Hackemann at the Institute for History and International Relationships at the University of Szczecin, lectures held by Prof. Lutz Oberdörfer from Greifswald, workshops at the EMAU lead by Dr. Paweł Migdalski, various research projects presented there by Dr. Rafał Simiński and Dr. Tomasz Ślepowroński. To mention be in this context the activity of Prof. Włodzimierz Stępiński and Prof. Jan M. Piskorski in the German scientific life and their participation at many debates and historical conferences. The rich contacts between the historians from both Pomeranian universities are referred to in a new and original form of a Szczecin–Gryfino postgraduate programme, started in the 21st century by the Institute for History and International Relationships at the University of Szczecin and Historisches Institut Ernst Moritz Arndt Universität Greifswald. Within this undertaking two meetings of postgraduates took place where their scientific output was presented: on the 3rd/4th November 2010 in Szczecin and on the 26th/28th Mai 2011 in Greifswald. This initiative is for young researchers of importance – it allows their development outside of the only one, native research milieu. Unfortunately, the project of postgraduates from Szczecin and Greifswald is one of only few initiatives within the Polish-German historical neighbourhood.

Theories about the evolution of information in time have begun to be used systematically and repeatedly by communities of scholars to fruitfully generate new knowledge about the past only in 1780, first in German faculties of Protestant theology, among classical linguists and then around the turn of the 19th century in comparative linguistics. Ranke used such theories in the second quarter of the 19th century to generate knowledge of history, and then similar methods spread to biology, geology and archaeology.

In this interview conducted at the XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences in Po-znan, Q. Edward Wang (Professor of History at Rowan University in the US and Changjiang Professor of History at Beijing University in China) addresses the main problems in global and comparative historiography. Elaborating upon the background and impact of his scientific con-tributions, Prof. Wang discusses the modernization of Chinese historical writing, the challenges of comparative historiography, the status of historical studies today, and the future of historical theory. In addition, he refers to his recent studies in culinary history as instances of a new model of global historiography.

Taking debates on the historiography of Quebec as the base of his considerations, the Author presents various reflections and postulates concerning comparative historiography. In particular His attention is drawn to the various types and aspects of historical identity. The awareness of those is necessary for the correct comparative analysis.

Taking debates on the historiography of Quebec as the base of his considerations, the Author presents various reflections and postulates concerning comparative historiography. In particular His attention is drawn to the various types and aspects of historical identity. The awareness of those is necessary for the correct comparative analysis.

This is a review article about historical evidences and new methodological proposals presented at the Congress Polish Historians in Olsztyn (2009), edited by Jolanta Kolbuszewska and Rałaf Stobiecki.

The Author discusses the 8th General Congress of Polish Historians in Cracow in 1958 in the context of the so-called Polish "thaw".

Article presents a broad review of recently published work: Nation and History. Polish Historians from the Enlightenment to the Second World War.

In her article the Author follows the gradual change in Feliks Koneczny's approach to history and its understanding. Feliks Koneczny, a Polish historian from the turn of I 9th/20th centuries, started as a professional historian, to include philosophical reflections in his works and end with a work devoted to moral issues.

The cooperation of the Polish and German historians from Greifswald and Szczecin was developed in the second half of the 20th century in different periods: in the times of German Democratic Republic and Polish People’s Republic and also after 1990, as the two states mentioned no more existed or rather when the social-political system in these states ceased to be. Idependently of the caesura 1990 the contacts of Polish and German historians still remained in the shadow of experiences of the 2nd W W a nd i ts e ffects. In the first phase the cooperation can be judged partially positive, in spite of its burden with a big political involvement and ideological servitutes, as the first move against the prevalent hostility between both nations till the middle of the 20th century. These contacts were not fully frank and spontaneous and inspired (especially on the East German side) through party and state factors which caused them being not very original. The both parties possessed a list of issues not to be discussed which allowed to minimize the possibility of starting a historiographic dispute. In the times of open wounds this procedure might be evaluated being positive. The output of this cooperation period seems to be rather limited and sometimes even embarrassing. This can be understood as the necessary way for both parties to achieve the access to archives or to get trust of authorities for realization other fields of research. After 1990, as the political and ideological restrictions no more existed, the mutual German-Polish investigations of the Pomeranian past could experience their development in full bloom, which can be estimated upon a rich amount of publications. In that time, one was not able to create a durable base for the cooperation which could allow the new generation of Pomerania researchers to abandon looking for new ways of communication and seldom used paths of mutual contacts.

Units of measurement appear as media of social confl ict in Witold Kula’s seminal study on metrication. Given the current discussions around political epistemology, Kula’s treatment of metrology is telling. He turns the supposedly neutral auxiliary science of weights and measures into a matter of concern. The reception of his concepts in the West is outlined (history of historical metrology, the Annales school, and the history of science), and the potential of this social history of measurement in times of accelerated data production is evaluated.

In the fi rst half of the 20th century, the German historiography of medicine created genuine ideas of methodology of research on the history of the medical sciences and medicinal practice. They were a continuation of the native historiographic tradition which was present in German university didactics and literature about the history of medicine in the 19th century. The uniqueness of German anti-positivist methodologies was based on a perception of cultural context in the genesis of medical theories and doctrines. They were researching cultural factors in the overall structure and analysing their infl uence on academics’ and common folk’s perception. There were two rival methodological trends — neoromantic and sociocultural ones, and the second gained wider infl uence in the historiography of medicine. The sociocultural trend had a few research schools, among them: Kulturgeschichte der Medizin, Sozialgeschichte der Medizin and Alltagsgeschichte der Medizin. The main purpose of this paper is to show the genesis of German anti-positivist trends in 20th century, the most important achievements of sociocultural historiography in Germany till 1933 and after 1945, and its infl uence on the standard American historiography of medicine in 20th century. The paper also presents a wide range of literature printed in both Germany and USA about the aforementioned historiographic trends.

This article discusses recently published conference papers Memory and Politics of History. Expeciemed by Poland and her Neighbors.

The article deals with the problem of the national consciousness of Polish peasants in the Congress Kingdom of Poland in the 19th century. Author's analysis is based on historical research carried out in the last century.

A review of the Chronicle of the Princes of Poland, translated and edited by Jerzy Wojtczak‑Szyszkowski. The Chronicle, composed in the fourteenth century by an unknown author, presents the history of the house of Piast and belongs to the most important sources of mediaeval Polish history, in particular the history of Silesia.

Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere has provoked a massive reaction in European historiography in the last thirty years. However, methodological debates driven by the new questions that it inspired in Germany, England, or France had no equivalent in Poland and more broadly in Eastern Europe. This essay suggests why this might have been the case and argues for the deeper engagement of Polish historians with the Habermasian theory. In the text, I reintro-duce the aims of the theory of the public sphere and look for the possible roots of its lacklustre reception among Polish historians in the idea about the Polish case’s supposed incompatibility with the course of modern history assumed by Habermas. I argue against this view, emphasising the flexibility and open‑endedness of the main Habermasian concepts, as well as underlining the necessity for a specifically Polish answer to Habermas’ theoretical enterprise. In the final part, I present the opportunities brought by adapting the theory to the Polish case, claiming that the original history of the Polish public sphere could be a prospective topic for both Polish historians and other historians of the public sphere.

In my paper I try to analyze Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty‑First Century as a history book. Thus, the following questions have been posed: at the intersection of which streams, tends, and traditions of the contemporary historiography could one place Piketty’s oeuvre? What can be said of those elements of the book that can be labeled as historical epistemology: source work, conceptualization of the object of study, etc.? As an attempt to revive serial history, does it inherit the baggage of “misdeeds” against which the entire movement of cultural history rose up? What role does the concept of longue durée play in the book? The historical aspects of Piketty’s thought have the potential to spark controversy among professional historians, but it is one of its many virtues.

In this article, I will sketch a particular way of thinking about existence in time, the consequence of which would be practicing historiography as a response to the voices of the dead coming from the past. This theoretical conception of history tries to understand history not so much as an unfolding process of succession over time but as some community of the living and the dead. If the voices of the dead, defined in terms of spectrality, are to be active somehow in the present, they cannot be prematurely suppressed by gestures of closing the past understood as blocking the transmission of these voices to the future. After analyzing the problem of false closures in history, I am trying to understand spectrality that would combine both past and present activity. The article aims to propose tasks for a historiography that would consist in regaining in con-temporary culture the ability to hear the voice, the gaze, and the expectations coming from the past, present in various forms which can be grasped by an encompassing notion of spectrality. Reflection on spectrality brings us closer to the meaning of the concept of counter‑time.

Referring to a book by A. Eriksen (Oslo 2007) the author discusses the development of the Norwegian historiography of the 17th–18th centuries and attempts to determine the role played by the so called “topographers”, who represented the antiquarian and/or erudite approach to historical writing.

In my review article of Solarska’s book Historia Zrewoltowana. Pisarstwo historyczne Michela Foucaulta jako diagnoza teraźniejszości i projekt przyszłości I’m trying to reconstruct and analyze possible way of speaking about Foucault’s historical writing proposed by author. This original manner shows that intellectual heritage of French philosopher endlessly presents an effective inspiration. Solarska conducts in three next chapters specific dialogue with Michel Foucault, being under his great charm. However this charm is not one-dimensional relation. It remains a multiple game, which result cannot be anticipate to the very end.

This article is an attempt to represent the aspirations of the Polish aristocracy during the First World War by imagining the dreams of Maria Lubomirska – wife of Prince Zdzisław Lubomirski, arguably the most important Polish politician in Warsaw at the time. Lubomirska and her circle attended séances led by a popular medium, and they saw what they wanted to see, just as they perceived the changing political tides in the same way. Though aristocrats were in some sense already anachronistic at this time, they still wished to maintain their superior social and political position into the future. Lubomirska in particular envisioned an independent Poland led by a king. The idea of Poland becoming a monarchy may seem absurd in hindsight, but as the article shows, if we return to this moment in history without teleological presumptions it was a likely outcome until the last days of the war. Text in italics comes directly from Lubomirska’s diary.

This article aims to look at the Roman interest in the past beyond the context of traditional historiography, focused on the great politics, events and individuals. It suggests that antiquarian writing was not so much a separate literary genre, but rather an alternative model of historical reflection focused on studying the distant past in all its manifestations: everyday life, culture, religion, language or law.

This study follows a postcolonial approach towards Polish and Ruthenian national master narratives in Habsburg Galicia by assuming that Galician historians placed past Polish-Ruthenian relations in a colonial setting and emphasized Ruthenian subalternity. The investigation focuses on one of the most controversial issues in Polish-Ruthenian historiography: the era of Casimir the Great and the incorporation of Red Ruthenia into the Polish Kingdom in the 14th century. The central question is how Galician historians depicted this period in their works and to what extent they interpreted it as the beginning of a hegemonic relationship between Poles and Ruthenians. Which discursive strategies were utilized either to justify a Polish civilizing mission in Red Ruthenia or to refute the necessity of Polish colonial rule in this region?

Jolanta Kolbuszewska: Some words about the most recent russian textbook of theory and methodology of history. The article is a presentation of two russian textbook published in Moskwa.