European History Quarterly

Lockhart examines the role of the Danish clergy in defending the military intervention of King Christian IV in the Thirty Years’ War. The loyal clergy, with royal sanction, acted as the authors and distributors of propaganda in favour of the war, a war which was unpopular with the ruling aristocracy. Elsewhere, most wartime propaganda portrayed intervention in the war as political or confessional necessity; in Denmark, however, the clergy presented the war as the manifestation of divine wrath, brought upon the people of Denmark for their collective sins. Denmark’s enemies were no more than tools of God’s anger; the king, however, was portrayed as a pious national saviour, who would ultimately save his people from their own iniquity. This view was propagated through printed tracts, broadsides, and frequent ‘prayer-days’ at royal command. Lockhart suggests that this was an early manifestation of royalism, depicting the king as superior in virtue to his aristocratic Council of State. The author relies mainly on printed sermons and religious tracts.

The article discusses how the process and timing of urbanization as well as the consequent social cleavages related to the cultural division of labour affected the local politics of Greek and Bulgarian nationalism in the Ottoman provincial town of Monastir (now Bitola) at the turn of the century. It maintains the view that nationalism extensively exploited social divisions and individual aspirations, but could neither ignore the laws of the free-market economy nor hastily forge ethnic cohesion. The argument is supported by a presentation of the Macedonian economy, an examination of the labour market in particular, and an investigation of living conditions in the suburbs of Monastir. The basic source are three personal notebooks with family expenses which belonged to a wealthy Vlach merchant. They are most detailed, comprising some 7,000 entries, and cover day by day the period from September 1897 until October 1911.

This article examines the erosion of academic freedom at the University of Heidelberg on the eve of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. This analysis focuses on the role of informal social norms and academic conventions in the decision to dismiss the radical pacifist and socialist E.J. Gumbel from the Heidelberg faculty in 1932. Despite Heidelberg’s reputation for intellectual tolerance and the public view of the University as a bulwark of liberalism, Gumbel’s colleagues, including pro-republican sympathisers, considered his activities an irresponsible violation of their own norms of appropriate behaviour. By incorporating an analysis of these norms in Gumbel’s dismissal we can enlarge our understanding of how the Heidelberg faculty, which tolerated a wide spectrum of political opinion within its ranks, fell into a pattern of responding to public assaults against academic freedom by expelling its most controversial member.

Although communism’s role in European international affairs between the wars has garnered substantial attention, to this day we know very little about the much more important impact on the European state system exerted by communism’s internecine rival, socialism. By employing a multinational archival approach that draws on hitherto unused Austrian, Belgian, British, Czechoslovak, French, German, Polish and Russian materials, this article focuses on socialism’s critical contribution to Weimar German diplomacy and suggests that the international politics of the democratic left set the stage for the great powers’ later appeasement of Hitler’s Germany.