Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their...

Documents of the Soviet state security agencies, declassified in Ukraine, have become a real Klondike for researchers and journalists. Month after month, year after year, stories found by Eduard Andryushchenko in archival files were turned into articles for Ukrainian and foreign publications. And now they are published under one cover. The heroes of these stories were outstanding artists and...

The war divided families, took away lives, crippled destinies...It is important to know and remember at any time. Even after many decades, new details, memories and testimonies appear. The war is (not) ours — not only for the Motherland,but also for the interests of several totalitarian states. The war is ours - even after eighty years. The war is alive - we remember. The war is different - it...

Iryna Slavinska writes about everyday things that are definitely familiar to you: a change of wardrobe with the beginning of a full-scale invasion, childhood memories of turning off the lights and the reality of a blackout. Each story is a reflection on the life of the residents of the ‘rear’ cities, who now stock up on fast food and pay attention to the schedules of electricity blackouts in...

Many cultural phenomena, human destinies and literary works are hidden under the concept of ‘sixties’. This book offers the reader a journey into the microcosm of the Ukrainian sixties - young people who created a new culture during the Khrushchev ‘thaw’. Delving into the world, which, contrary to the rules of the Soviet totalitarian regime, was based on the principles of solidarity, mutual...

Anna Funder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of the resistance against East Germany’s communist dictatorship in these harrowing, personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain—and, especially, of life under the iron fist of the Stasi, East Germany’s brutal state security force. In thetradition of Frederick Taylor’s The Berlin Wall and Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to...

Killed by shrapnel as he served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Olesya Khromeychuk’s brother Volodymyr died on the frontline in eastern Ukraine. As Olesya tries to come to terms with losing her brother, she also tries to process the Russian invasion of Ukraine: as an immigrant living far from the frontline, as a historian of war and how societies respond to them, and as a woman, a civilian, and...

This monograph examines the development of relations between Persians and Arabs, as well as the genesis and current state of Iranian-Iraqi relations. The author traces the origins of Islamic civilization, the nature of Arab conquests, the historical destinies of Muslim peoples in the Middle Ages, and the course of modern and contemporary history in Iran and Iraq. The author analyzes the origins...

Die Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer in der Bernauer Straße ist der zentrale Erinnerungsort an die deutsche Teilung, gelegen im Zentrum der Hauptstadt. Neben der Ausstellung im ehemaligen Grenzstreifen informiert seit dem 9. November 2014 auch die Dauerausstellung »1961 – 1989. Die Berliner Mauer« über die politisch-historischen Zusammenhänge.

Between Anti-Fascist Society, Socialist Utopia and Lived Jewishness: What did it mean to be Jewish in the GDR? After the Shoah, many Jews made the conscious choice to live in East Germany, to be part of building a new, more equitable socialist society, hoping for greater justice and to overcome antisemitic structures. This volume looks at what became of their ideals, how Jewish life was newly...

Jürgen Ritter hat in den 1980er Jahren die Sperranlagen an der deutsch-deutschen Grenze sowie in und um Berlin in Zehntausenden von Bildern dokumentiert. An gleicher Stelle hat er nach der Deutschen Einheit die landschaftlichen und baulichen Veränderungen bis in unsere Tage fotografisch festgehalten. Die besten alten und neuen Aufnahmen, Bilder von damals und heute, sind im Buch...

In Thüringen greift die AfD nach der Macht und bringt die ganze Republik in Bedrängnis. Martin Debes erzählt die Geschichte eines Landes, das Experimentierfeld extremer politischer Strömungen war und wieder geworden ist: Genau ein Jahrhundert, nachdem in Weimar erstmals Bürgerliche mithilfe völkischer Extremisten regierten, steht die Demokratie in Thüringen vor einer neuen Herausforderung. 2024...