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Der facettenreiche griechische Ausdruck ‚Tyche‘ (Schicksal, Glück, Zufall; auch Name einer Göttin) hat im Werk des Plutarch von Chaironeia (ca. 45 bis 125 n. Chr.) einen großen Stellenwert. Diese Studie arbeitet durch vertiefte Quellenanalysen heraus, welche Bedeutungsfacetten bei Plutarch in verschiedenen Kontexten relevant sind, und verdichtet diese zu Typen. Sie schlägt für diese Typologie in ihrer Bedeutungsweite von göttlicher Vorsehung bis Zufall einen organischen Zusammenhang vor, der an Plutarchs Vorstellungen von den ‚Daimones‘ angelehnt ist. Ein besonderer Fokus ist auf die Erklärung der Geschichte durch Plutarch gelegt: Inwiefern geht er von menschlicher Tüchtigkeit aus und inwiefern sieht er ‚Tyche‘ im Spiel, wenn es um historische Prozesse geht?

In seiner um 1075 verfassten «Hamburger Kirchengeschichte» berichtet Adam von Bremen vom «Limes Saxoniae», der durch Karl den Großen und andere Kaiser eingerichtet worden sei. Eine im Jahr 2017 von der Kieler Abteilung für Regionalgeschichte durchgeführte Tagung «Der ‹Limes Saxoniae› – Fiktion oder Realität?» hinterfragte diesen Quellenbericht und damit die Grenzziehung überhaupt ausgehend von interdisziplinären Standpunkten der Archäologie, Sprach- und Geschichtswissenschaft. Der vorliegende Tagungsband bündelt die Beiträge und Diskussionen dieser Konferenz zu Aspekten wie der historischen Nachweisbarkeit der Existenz dieser sächsisch-slawischen Grenze, ihres möglichen Erscheinungsbildes oder den zeitgenössischen Grenzvorstellungen. Auch Fragen nach einer Fälschungsabsicht Adams, dem Slawenbild im Frühmittelalter und der späteren Rezeption des «Limes» finden sich darin wieder.

The book is a comparative case study of collective memory in two small communities situated on two Central-European borderlands. Despite different pre-war histories, Ukrainian Zhovkva (before 1939 Polish Żółkiew) and Polish Krzyż (before 1945 German Kreuz) were to share a common fate of many European localities, destroyed and rebuilt in a completely new shape. As a result of war, and post-war ethnic cleansing and displacement, they lost almost all of their pre-war inhabitants and were repopulated by new people. Based on more than 150 oral history interviews, the book describes the process of reconstruction of social microcosm, involving the reader in a journey through the lives of real people entangled in the dramatic historical events of the 20th century.

This is the first work in English to explore Manchukuo literature in its entirety. It provides comprehensive, in-depth, and thought-provoking research by placing the literary history of Manchukuo from 1937 to 1941 in specific cultural lineages and socio-political contexts and focusing on four major literary groups of that period—the Manshū rōmanha, the Sakubun writers, the Yiwenzhi intellectuals, and the Wenxuan School—to illuminate its underlying intellectual dynamics. As it turns out, Manchukuo literature notably featured multiplicity, ambiguity, and self-reflexivity, which enabled it to transcend the dichotomy of romanticism and realism and that of the colonizers and the colonized. Not unlike a coordinate system, it took modernity and national identity as its horizontal and vertical axes. The Manshū rōmanha and the Sakubun writers respectively adopted an anti-modern or a modernist perspective and unanimously headed towards the intellectual stance of denying their own national identity and merging into the indigenous society of the colony; in comparison, Manchurian intellectuals, as epitomized by the Yiwenzhi School and the Wenxuan School, started from the same purpose of promoting national consciousness, but at last embarked on a bifurcated path to either modernization or cultural regression. Moreover, although the literary writings of these four groups differed much from each other in topics, stylistic features, and narrative modes, they all showed a deep concern for the sufferings of the Manchurian people brought by colonialism, coincidentally directed their criticism or sarcasm against the colonial rule, and thereupon endowed Manchukuo literature with a keynote of darkness.

This book is devoted to the religiosity of the medieval Christian masses in Central and Eastern Europe and its relationship with the traditional cultures of that time. Addressing such topics as the common instruction of the three prayers and the Decalogue, "Christian" magic in everyday life, the Marian devotion, and various images of heaven and eternal damnation, the author never loses sight of his main topic: the complex and powerful interaction between medieval folklore and Christianity.

Bangladesh Divided: Political and Literary Reflections on a Corrupt Police and Prison State examines the totalitarian police regime of Bangladesh, responsible (since 2009) for hundreds and thousands of victims who have disappeared, been killed, and/or been imprisoned. This book is a contribution toward the need for autocratic Awami power to be openly examined and challenged. Bangladesh Divided calls for peace, tolerance, compromise, social justice, rule of law, and democratically free and fair elections with a level playing field for all concerned, especially the major political parties. This book will interest students and scholars of Bangladesh studies, as well as those specializing in South Asian (regional) studies all around the world.

A thorough work of contemporary history and a distillation of the complex web of the Iranian Kurdish political world, this biography of Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou depicts the character and passionate action of one of the twentieth century’s most exceptional and democratic leaders of a national movement.

Carol Prunhuber, who knew Ghassemlou from the early 1980s, shows us the many facets of a humanist leader of magnitude and worldwide scope. From revolution that toppled the Shah to the dark and treacherous alleys of the Cold War, Dreaming Kurdistan revives the Kurdish leader’s fated path to assassination in Vienna. We know how, why, and who murdered Ghassemlou—and we stand witness to Austria’s raison d’état, the business interests that put a lid on the investigation, and the response of silent indifference from the international community.

Professor of economics in Prague, bon vivant in Paris, clandestine freedom fighter in the Kurdish mountains, stalked by the Shah’s secret police, Ghassemlou is ultimately assassinated by the hit men of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic. Prunhuber takes us, through a murky world of equivocal liaisons, complicities, treachery, and undisguised threats, from Tehran to Vienna.

While the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to perturb and defy the West, Dreaming Kurdistan is essential for an understanding of Iran and the Kurds’ longing for freedom and democracy.

Japan has been moving toward a more independent security policy since the early 2010s, duplicating the military assets of the United States and reorganizing the Self-Defense Forces. In Japan’s Awakening, Lionel P. Fatton and Oreste Foppiani argue that the country faces an entrapment-abandonment dilemma in which any attempt to prevent abandonment by the United States vis-à-vis China negatively affects its national security by heightening the risk of entrapment in the Korean Peninsula, and vice versa. A move toward autonomy is the only way for Japan to solve this dilemma. The subject is at variance with both the insistence on the constraining effect of domestic norms on Japan’s security policy and the assumption of everlasting reliance on the United States for protection.

In recent elections across the European Union, parties adopting an anti-immigration stance and making use of populist rhetoric have been gaining electoral breakthrough. Against this backdrop, and in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of the connections binding migration and populism dynamics in Europe, this volume aims to trigger a discussion on the causes and consequences of the rise of populism in Europe, and deconstruct the rhetorical frames it uses to depict migratory flows as an exceptional phenomenon.