The period of the baroque (late sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries) saw extensive reconfiguration of European cities and their public spaces. Yet, this transformation cannot be limited merely to signifying a style of art, architecture, and decor. Rather, the dynamism, emotionality, and potential for grandeur that were inherent in the baroque style developed in close interaction with the need and desire of post-Reformation Europeans to find visual expression for the new political, confessional, and societal realities. Highly illustrated, this volume examines these complex interrelationships among architecture and art, power, religion, and society from a wide range of viewpoints and localities. From Krakow to Madrid and from Naples to Dresden, cities were reconfigured visually as well as politically and socially. Power, in both its political and architectural guises, had to be negotiated among constituents ranging from monarchs and high churchmen to ordinary citizens. Within this process, both rulers and ruled were transformed: Europe left behind the last vestiges of the medieval and arrived on the threshold of the modern.

In this pioneering new work, based on a thorough re-reading of primary sources and new research in the Austrian State Archives, Franz Szabo presents a fascinating reassessment of the continental war. Professor Szabo challenges the well-established myth that the Seven Years War was won through the military skill and tenacity of the King of Prussia, often styled Frederick "the Great". Instead he argues that Prussia did not win, but merely survived the Seven Years War and did so despite and not because of the actions and decisions of its king. With balanced attention to all the major participants and to all conflict zones on the European continent, the book describes the strategies and tactics of the military leaders on all sides, analyzes the major battles of the war and illuminates the diplomatic, political and financial aspects of the conflict.

Early modern Central Europe was the continent's most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe's most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region's Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration-one of the most debated questions of the early modern period-is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

This is the first major archivally based study of the political career of Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, State Chancellor of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1753 to 1792. Author of the diplomatic revolution of 1756 and brilliant foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, Kaunitz was also the most important statesman in the development of enlightened absolutism in central Europe. Virtually the third head of state under Maria Theresia and Joseph II, he was the driving force behind the many reforms which sought to modernise the monarchy. Using Kaunitz as a focus, the author explores the dynamic of the development of enlightened absolutism in the Habsburg Empire through its most influential proponent and spokesman. Enlightened absolutism in the Habsburg Monarchy produced some of the boldest innovations in eighteenth-century Europe, and this book analyses the full complexity of the decision-making process.

In this pioneering new work, based on a thorough re-reading of primary sources and new research in the Austrian State Archives, Franz Szabo presents a fascinating reassessment of the continental war. Professor Szabo challenges the well-established myth that the Seven Years War was won through the military skill and tenacity of the King of Prussia, often styled Frederick the Great. Instead he argues that Prussia did not win, but merely survived the Seven Years War and did so despite and not because of the actions and decisions of its king. With balanced attention to all the major participants and to all conflict zones on the European continent, the book describes the strategies and tactics of the military leaders on all sides, analyzes the major battles of the war and illuminates the diplomatic, political and financial aspects of the conflict.

The University of Alberta Libraries houses one of the most outstanding collections of Austrian, Habsburg and Central European materials in North America. This unique strength has at its heart the acquisition of two major Austrian collections: the famous "Priesterseminar" library of the Archbishop of Salzburg, purchased in 1965, and the library of Viennese Juridisch-Politische Leseverin, purchased in 1969. The Salzburg Collection, one of the most important collections in Canada for Central European law studies, consists of the original law collection of the Seminary library of the Archbishop of Salzburg. The Priesterseminar Library has its origins in the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council of Trent (1545-1563), at which the Catholic Church affirmed and clearly defined its dogmas in the face of the Protestant challenge. This catalogue, published to accompany a 2008 exhibit at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, provides a glimpse into the riches of these two collections.

This volume provides an historical overview of the relationship between Germany, German speakers, and successive waves of German colonists with their eastern neighbors over the period from the Middle Ages to the present. The collection of essays by 28 leading experts includes the most recent scholarship together with fresh perspectives on the subject. The problems and issues raised in this volume come as a result of different understandings of ""German"" and ""Germany"" from the Germanic tribes and German ""stem-duchies"" of the Middle Ages to the highly decentralized and multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire of late medieval and early modern times and the German Confederation of the 1815-1866 period to the various forms of the German state from 1871 to the present. The relationship of German-speakers to their eastern non-German speaking neighbors, as well as that of ""Germany"" both to those neighbors and to German-speakers living beyond the borders of the modern German state are covered. In addition, some attention is given to the German perception of the ""East"" during this unfolding relationship. The Germans and the East is divided into five sections. The first section covers the medieval period which saw the first German colonial expansion eastward. The second section, devoted to the early modern period, reviews the role of German speakers in the development policies of enlightened absolutism. The third section looks at the problem during the age of emerging nationalism in the ""long"" nineteenth century from 1789 to 1914. The fourth and longest section covers the era of the two World Wars, including their aftermaths, which saw the expulsion of German-speakers from Eastern Europe. The final section addresses the relationship of Germany and Austria and their eastern neighbors from the Cold War to the new era of European integration.