WiSe 2022/23 Hauptseminar: Europeanisation or Colonisation? Migrations, social and religious transformations in the Eastern Baltic Sea Region (Prussia, Livonia, Finland and Gotland) 1100-1550

The Eastern Baltic Sea region experienced vast changes during the 12th and 13th centuries. Pagan territories were Christianised, new cities emerged, landscapes were transformed physically and in imagination, migrations took place that influenced political structures and religious lives. Missionaries, Crusaders and merchants from Northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden went to Livonia, Prussia and Finland.

This seminar will discuss the following questions: were these territories Europeanised or colonised? Was there just one model of ‘Europeanisation’ or there were other ways how to become ‘European’ (Gotland vs. Livonia, Prussia and Finland)? How the social and religious lives developed in these territories from the 13th century until the Reformation?

In the seminar we will discuss sources – primarily (but not only) medieval chronicles (translated in English) – and will have a thorough look on that how the scholarship between 19th and 21st centuries has viewed these complex processes.