David A. Frick

Jerzy Pilch

Presents loosely connected novellas that depict Polish life and situations such as suicide, teacher infatuation, chess, and sexual fantasy from the male perspective.

My First Suicide

In the last days of the post-Stalinist thaw in 1963 Poland, Jerzyk becomes involved with an assassination plot arranged by his father, uncle, and their friend Mr. Traba in an attempt to take back their lives.

A Thousand Peaceful Cities

In the mid-seventeenth century, Wilno (Vilnius), the second capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was home to Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews, and Tatars, who worshiped in Catholic, Uniate, Orthodox, Calvinist, and Lutheran churches, one synagogue, and one mosque. Visitors regularly commented on the relatively peaceful coexistence of this bewildering array of peoples, languages, and faiths. In Kith, Kin, and Neighbors, David Frick shows how Wilno’s inhabitants navigated and negotiated these differences in their public and private lives. This remarkable book opens with a walk through the streets of Wilno, offering a look over the royal quartermaster’s shoulder as he made his survey of the city’s intramural houses in preparation for King Władysław IV’s visit in 1636. These surveys (Lustrations) provide concise descriptions of each house within the city walls that, in concert with court and church records, enable Frick to accurately discern Wilno’s neighborhoods and human networks, ascertain the extent to which such networks were bounded confessionally and culturally, determine when citizens crossed these boundaries, and conclude which kinds of cross-confessional constellations were more likely than others. These maps provide the backdrops against which the dramas of Wilno lives played out: birth, baptism, education, marriage, separation or divorce, guild membership, poor relief, and death and funeral practices. Perhaps the most complete reconstruction ever written of life in an early modern European city, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors sets a new standard for urban history and for work on the religious and communal life of Eastern Europe.

Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno

Kith, Kin, and Neighbors

Stefan Rohdewald

Stefan Wiederkehr

Der Band setzt sich zum Ziel, exemplarisch transkulturelle Kommunikationsprozesse im Grossfurstentum Litauen sowie in den ostlichen Gebieten der polnischen Krone im spaten Mittelalter und in der fruhen Neuzeit zu untersuchen. Die Beitrage richten das Augenmerk auf interkonfessionelle Vorgange, auf trans- oder uberkonfessionelle Interaktion und hybride, heterogene Entwicklungen. Auch Bereiche der ostslavischen bzw. ruthenischen, polnischen, litauischen, armenischen sowie der orthodoxen, unierten, katholischen, judischen und frankistischen Geschichte, die sich auf den ersten Blick von zwischenethnischen oder interkonfessionellen Interaktionsfeldern isoliert hielten, werden neu beleuchtet. Der Band fuhrt internationale Spezialisten zu Adel, Stadt, Kirche und Klerus, Kult, Gesang sowie Malerei zusammen und gibt Einblicke in die jeweiligen Forschungswerkstatten. The goal of this volume is to investigate examples of transcultural communication processes in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well as in the eastern territories of the Polish Crown in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. The essays focus on interconfessional contacts, trans- and supraconfessional interactions, and hybrid, heterogenous developments. In addition, fi elds of east Slavic, Ruthenian, Polish, Lithuanian, Armenian, as well as Orthodox, Uniate, Catholic, Jewish, and Frankist history, which might seem at fi rst glance isolated from interethnic or interconfessional fields of interaction, will be examined anew. The volume presents the work of international specialists on nobility, city, Church and clergy, liturgy, hymnography, as well as painting, and it offers insight into the respective research workshops.

David A. Frick

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