Mity etnogenetyczne w samoświadomości historycznej na przykładzie historiografii polsko-niemieckiego pogranicza w XVI w.

• Authors: Aleksander Małecki

Title variants

EN

THE MYTHS OF ETHNOGENESIS IN THE HISTORICAL IDENTITY — A STUDY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE POLISH-GERMAN BORDERLAND IN 16TH CENTURY

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The paper is an attempt at showing the context of important changes, which took place in the course of the 16th century, in the process of shaping the identity of German-speaking elites of the Western Pomerania and Silesia. At the time, the fledgling humanist historiography looked for arguments supporting the primary political independence, or ethnic distinctiveness, of the tribes inhabiting these territories vis a vis their neighbours, firstly in ancient authors (Tacitus), or neighbours (Albert Krantz, Johannes Dlugossius, Jost Ludwig Dietz). It was initially a successful venture, when the works of Johann Bugenhagen, Thomas Kantzow and Joachim Cureus put forward the theses on the ethnogenetical distinctiveness of the Pomeranians (as Vandals-Veneti-Wends) and Silesians (as Elysians) from Poland and Poles. In the mid-16th century, among others under the infl uence of the triumph of the “German religion” (influenced by the historical ideas of Melanchthon), the historiography of these “former Piast” territories rejected both the newly acquired individual perspective of depicting its earliest past and the “sarmatian” version documented by Martin Cromer. The decisive factor here was the, then dominant in the Reich, identifi cation of theearliest historic inhabitants of Pomerania and Silesia with German tribes inhabiting these lands, which was based on the works of Tacitus. According to this identification, the local historians, disregarding the effects of the migration of peoples, demonstrated the “precedence” of their own, Germanancestors in these territories. Slavs, in turn, were depicted as immigrants (“late” Kantzow and Klempzen) or invaders (Cureus).

Keywords

EN

MYTH; ETHNOGENESIS; HISTORICAL IDENTITY; HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE POLISH-GERMAN BORDERLAND IN 16TH CENTURY

• Publisher: Oficyna Wydawnicza Epigram
• Journal: Sensus Historiae. Studia interdyscyplinarne
• Year: 2011
• Issue: 2(3)
• Pages: 35-53

Contributors

author

Aleksander Małecki