This book presents the evolution of Germany's stance on the reform of the European Union in the years 2002-2016. The objectives of the book are threefold: first, to analyse the positions of the German government and parliamentary opposition on the reform of the European Union's political system in 2002-2009; second, to describe their stance on the system reform of the Economic and Monetary Union and the Eurozone in 2012-2016; and third, to analyse their positions on the EU immigration crisis in 2015-2016. The study employs a triangulation of a variety of qualitative methods: case-studies, analysis of official documents, literature, speeches and historic items. The result is an in-depth and multidimensional picture of the activities and positions of members of the German government and parliamentary opposition regarding the reform of the EU's political system.

The book depicts the phenomenon of cultural memory preserved in the Polish Romantic literature, predominantly in the works of Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Norwid (and other European poets). The primary objective is to reconstruct the cultural pattern of continuity established in Poland during the period of catastrophe. The author describes the call for a critical historiography and presents a "Slavic counterpoint" in the history of modern Europe. The key questions of the book are: Will the Romantic lesson about the transformation of history into memory and turning the past into an object of faith turn out to be a lesson about the future? The book is inspired by the German trend of contemporary reflection - "the culture of remembrance" (Erinnerungskultur) founded on the works of the Assmanns.

The aim of this book is to explain economic dualism in the history of modern Europe. The emergence of the manorial-serf economy in the Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary in the 16th and the 17th centuries was the result of a cumulative impact of various circumstantial factors. The weakness of cities in Central Europe disturbed the social balance - so characteristic for Western-European societies - between burghers and the nobility. The political dominance of the nobility hampered the development of cities and limited the influence of burghers, paving the way to the rise of serfdom and manorial farms. These processes were accompanied by increased demand for agricultural products in Western Europe