This book reconstructs the perceptions about mixed marriages across generations, starting from a detailed analysis of the statistical background and a description of this phenomenon in the historical past, and then focusing on the case history of families. As ethnic and religious diversity has long been an important source of social tension in Transylvania, mixed marriages have the potential to link the communities and act as a bridge between ethnic groups. Considering the multilevel analyses, the time frame from 1895 to nowadays as well as the historical past of Transylvania, this volume has a strong multidisciplinary character, predicated on a combination of historical, demographical and sociological methods.

At the XXIst World Congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS/CISH) in 2010 in Amsterdam, the International Commission for Historical Demography (ICHD) decided to write an overview of its own history. Fifty years had gone by since the CISH XIst World Congress in Stockholm 1960, when historians took the first tentative initiatives to create a wholly new interdisciplinary commission for historical demography, a meeting place for a budding discipline where researchers in letters and science could meet, exchange ideas, cultivate and develop a new field. This book is the outcome of that decision. Demography, past, present and future is a common concern for all inhabitants of this planet. The variation is great, however, with regard to sources, social and political conditions, state of the art, technological development, national and local initiatives. In the course of half a century many changes take place. Keeping abreast of the gigantic streams of information and innovation in the field is demanding, even more so for a discipline with global dimensions and ambitions. The book makes fascinating reading, and preparing it has been a rewarding and thought provoking experience. The thirty-seven articles in the book represent as many different stories.