The sub-project is part of the international and interdisciplinary research project “The global pontificate of Pius XII: Catholicism in a divided world, 1945–1958,” which deals with the role of the Vatican in the reconstruction phase after the end of the Second World War, the emerging conflicts between the capitalist West and the communist East, and the simultaneously unfolding processes of decolonization..

First, this sub-project examines the Holy See’s policy towards the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church during and after its liquidation in the late Stalinist and Khrushchev periods. It also includes a study of the Vatican-Soviet relations regarding the Roman Catholics who permanently resided or were temporarily present (as missionaries or prisoners of war) in the USSR. Furthermore, since both the Vatican and the Soviet Union had interests throughout the world, this research project involves a cross-country comparative perspective with particular attention to the impact of global trends on national religious politics in the Soviet Union and the local situation there. At the same time, it attempts to give a voice to those catholic believers and priests in the USSR, who were far away from the high politics but were – at least in theory – a matter of concern to the Holy See’s officials. As a result, the study expects to assess  three levels: international, national, and local.

To understand the complex connections  between the religious and political aspects of the topic, the Vatican’s diplomatic instruments, its diverse ways of informal engagement, and sources of information are reconstructed. The question of the place that Soviet Greek- and Roman Catholic communities occupied in the Vatican’s diplomacy in comparison to its policy regarding the Russian Orthodox Church is of particular interest. It is also a crucial part of the project to establish what image the Vatican had of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church hierarchs and lay activists who were defending their Church within and beyond  the USSR. Thus, this research intersects diplomatic and political history, church history, the history of special services, as well as Alltagsgeschichte.

Renaissance humanist political thought is marked by the calls to reform customs and rejuvenate virtue. Among such social reformers was Andreas Fricius Modrevius (1503–1572), who criticized the inequality in the practice of ascribing wergild on the basis of social status and argued in favor of capital punishment. This argument was introduced in his oration Lascius sive de poena homicidii (1543) and reformulated in his Commentariorum de Republica emendanda libri quinque (1551), which attracted a wide readership in Europe. Among the followers of Fricius, Andreas Volanus (1530–1610) stands out. Volanus took up the aforementioned idea and criticized this “law that inflames criminal audacity” in his political treatise De Libertate politica sive civili (1572). His call for abolition of wergild and its substitution with capital punishment achieved limited success in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: capital punishment for premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances without recourse to social status was enacted into law in the Third Lithuanian Statute (1588). Volanus campaigned against the practice of ascribing fines for murder throughout his life, as exemplified by the address to the municipality of Riga, published as De lege Polonorum homicidii non capitali impia (1599). 

Fricius and Volanus studied at protestant universities and leaned towards radical reformation, their visions of social order were supported by the teaching of the Scripture. As such, this is a study in cultural transfer of political ideas from Holy Roman Empire to Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The project engages with the arguments laid out in the aforementioned texts by utilizing Cambridge contextualist methodology and takes a comparative perspective to evaluate the novelty of said argument within Renaissance Europe.

Although various aspects of the history of Nazi concentration camps have been well researched, there are still relatively few studies on prisoner functionaries. Existing studies tend to be biographical rather than analytical in nature.

With regard to Jewish functionary prisoners, research to date has focused primarily on the aftermath and the legal and psychological processing of this experience. However, there is still a lack of historical analysis that attempts to grasp the phenomenon as such.
The aim of this project is therefore to investigate the role and position of functionary prisoners in the “camp society” in more detail. 

How did the national and social profile of the Kapos, block and room elders, prisoner doctors, and other members of the so-called prisoner self-administration change with the development of the concentration camps? What tensions arose between the various national, social, and political prisoner groups? How did the camp SS play out these conflicts? And how were the functionaries evaluated by other camp inmates?

The analyses are based primarily on files from the post-war trials of functionary prisoners, including materials from the preliminary investigations, but also documents from camp archives, memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and press releases. The study is based on files from criminal proceedings conducted in Poland between 1944 and 1960 on the basis of the so-called August Decree. Especially in the early postwar years, many former Polish functionary prisoners were among the defendants. In addition, comparative material from other countries is used. The research aims to shed more light on the gray zone in the Nazi camps, which Tadeusz Borowski and Primo Levi have already written about. 

Until now, studies on political and ethnic violence in Polish villages during the interwar period have focused on anti-Semitic acts of violence. They pointed to external political influences, i.e., agitation by urban, right-wing extremist organizations. However, the transfer of ideologies and practices was much more multifaceted and complex, and radicalization in the provinces also had an impact on urban activists and their attitudes.

Therefore, the aim of this project is to examine the networks and multidirectional transfers of violence between metropolitan areas and provinces in Poland, Austria, and Romania during the interwar period. The aim is to explore the channels through which right-wing extremist radicalism and violence were transferred from the countryside to the city and from the city to the countryside. On the one hand, the role of right-wing extremist organizations and their contact networks will be analyzed; on the other hand, the focus will be on the role of subordinate groups such as farmers or petty bourgeoisie from small towns in the process of radicalization of political movements. 

The analysis focuses on selected local communities and their position within the networks of right-wing extremist political movements: in the case of Poland, the provinces of Krakow and Kielce in their relations with Krakow and Warsaw; in the case of Austria, Styria and its relations with Graz and Vienna; in the provinces of Kielce and Krakow in Poland; and in Styria in Austria. The activities of the Iron Guard in Romania and its broad support among Romanian farmers serve as a point of reference.

The research draws on a diverse range of sources. In particular, it analyzes archival materials (documents from local governments, police reports, instructions and brochures from political parties), local and national newspapers, and personal documents such as memoirs from farmers collected during competitions in the 1930s. This is supplemented by sociological studies from the interwar period, with a focus on analyses of rural areas during the Great Depression.