¹ The report World Urbanization Prospects. The 2007 Revision. Highlights was published by the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, available through: www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wup2007/2007WUP_Highlights_web.pdf. The cited first key finding of the 2007 revision is on p. 16.

² The bibliography on European urban history has become very large. Two recent surveys include Pinol, J.-L. (ed.), Histoire de l'Europe Urbaine, 2 vols. (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar, and Clark, P., European Cities and Towns, 400–2000 (Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar, with a short historiographic survey and bibliography. See also a series of (often nationally organized) specialized journals, in addition to this journal: Histoire urbaine (France), Stadsgeschiedenis (Belgium and the Netherlands), Città e Storia (Italy) with specific bibliographies.

³ See the remarks by Chittolini, G., ‘Urban population, urban territories, small towns: some problems of the history of urbanization in northern and central Italy (thirteenth–sixteenth centuries)’, in Hoppenbrouwers, P.C.M., Janse, A. and Stein, R. (eds.), Power and Persuasion. Essays on the Art of State Building in Honour of W.P. Blockmans (Turnhout, 2010), 233–7Google Scholar.

⁴ Clark, European Cities, 128 and 229. Quantitative data are treated and collected in the classic work by De Vries, J., European Urbanization 1500–1800 (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁵ This is the important central statement in a collection of essays concerning the urban history of the Low Countries (an English version is forthcoming with Taylor and Francis, London): Lucassen, L. and Willems, W. (eds.), Waarom mensen in de stad willen wonen, 1200–2010 (Amsterdam, 2009)Google Scholar (contributions on the Middle Ages by M. Boone and W. Blockmans).

⁶ See the remarks referring to several ‘national’ traditions in works such as Bentley, M., Modern Historiography. An Introduction (London and New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Lingelbach, G., Klio macht Karriere. Die Institutionalisierung der Geschichtswissenschaft in Frankreich und der USA in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 2003)Google Scholar; Melman, B., The Culture of History. English Uses of the Past 1800–1953 (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar; Delacroix, C., Dosse, F. and Garcia, P., Les courants historiques en France, XIXe–Xxe siècle, 2nd edn (Paris, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁷ Clark, P., ‘The city’, in Burke, P. (ed.), History and Historians in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2002), 38Google Scholar. As for the notion of modernity, see the all-encompassing definition by Giddens, A., Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity (Stanford, 1998), 94Google Scholar: ‘a shorthand term for modern society, or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as open to transformation, by human intervention; (2) a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society – more technically, a complex of institutions – which, unlike any preceding culture, lives in the future, rather than the past.’

⁸ The classic biography of Pirenne remains of course Lyon, B., Henri Pirenne. A Biographical and Intellectual Study (Ghent, 1974)Google Scholar. An important biographical note was written by Pirenne's most influential student Ganshof, F.L., Pirenne, Henri, in Biographie Nationale, 30 (1958)Google Scholar, electronically available at http://digitheque.ulb.ac.be/fr/digitheque-henri-pirenne/biographie/la-vie/index.html. A recent version by Prevenier, W., Marie, Pirenne Jean Henri Otto Lucien, in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, 19 (2009), cols. 753–70Google Scholar. A not so traditional and rather atypical appraisal of Pirenne as an urban and economic historian, reading as a kind of anti-Lyon, is the short but brilliant text of Mundy, J., ‘Henry Pirenne: a European historian’, Journal of European Economic History, 6 (1977), 473–80Google Scholar. See also Keymeulen, S. and Tollebeek, J., Henri Pirenne, Historian: A Life in Pictures (Leuven, 2011)Google Scholar.

⁹ Pyenson, L. and Verbruggen, C., ‘Elements of the modernist creed in Henri Pirenne and George Sarton’, History of Science, 49 (2011), 377–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ A recent reappraisal of the fundamental period of Belgian history in Witte, E., Hentenryk, G. Kurgan-Van and Lamberts, E. et al. , Nation et démocratie 1890–1921. Actes du colloque international Bruxelles, 8–9 juin 2006 (Brussels, 2007)Google Scholar, passim, and Deneckere, G., Les turbulences de la Belle Epoque 1878–1905 (Brussels, 2005)Google Scholar.

¹¹ ’I tried to do for a Belgian city what has already been undertaken during the recent years for so many German and French cities’, published in 1889 as Histoire de la constitution de la ville de Dinant au Moyen Âge in the series of monographs of the faculty of Letters of Ghent University where Pirenne had been appointed three years earlier in 1886 as professor of medieval history.

¹² Dhondt, J., ‘Henri Pirenne: historien des institutions urbaines’, Annali della fondazione italiana per la storia amministrativa, 3 (1966)), 81–129Google Scholar (reprinted in the collection of Dhondt's essays: Hommes et pouvoirs. Les principales études de Jan Dhondt sur l'histoire du 19e et 20e siècles (Ghent, 1976), 63–119, with a critical introduction by Wim Blockmans). The article's first chapter opens with a remarkable sentence which deliberately seems to recall the style of Pirenne, or tries to make a pastiche: ‘Henri Pirenne possédait une capacité incomparable à projeter son message dans les esprits individuels de ceux qui l'approchaient comme dans celui des ensembles intellectuels qui l'entendaient. Ce fut bien certainement son atout principal. Que l'on y joigne une intelligence véritablement somptueuse et le non-conformisme scientifique, caractéristique “sine qua non” du grand savant’ (‘Pirenne disposed of an almost incomparable capacity to inculcate his message in the hearts and minds of those who dealt with him, or of the intellectual groups he addressed. Without questioning this was one of his most important gifts. One should add to that a remarkable intelligence and a scientific non-conformism, the ultimate characteristic of any great scholar’): Hommes et pouvoirs, 65.

¹³ On the journal (first issue published in 1876) and Monod: Delacroix, Dosse and Garcia, Les courants historiques en France, 117–25.

¹⁴ The first translation in English, bearing the wrong, but given the specific circumstances of World War I understandable, title: Belgian democracy (Manchester, 1915), was afterwards repeatedly re-edited under the more correct title Early Democracies in the Low Countries. Urban Society and Political Conflict in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York, 1963).

¹⁵ Tollebeek, J., ‘“Au point sensible de l'Europe”: Huizinga et Pirenne’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, 74 (1996), 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar (re-edited in his De ekster en de kooi. Nieuwe opstellen over geschiedschrijving (Amsterdam, 1996), 243).

¹⁶ A testimony to the success and renown of Pirenne before the Great War is the booklet edited on the occasion of the birth of the Foundation Pirenne when he was honoured for 25 years of teaching in Ghent: Manifestation en l'honneur du m. le professeur Henri Pirenne. Bruxelles, 12 mai 1912 (Mons, 1912).

¹⁷ The comparison introduced by Pirenne continues to provoke historical questionnaires and research. For a recent evaluation of the question: Crouzet-Pavan, E. and Lecuppre-Desjardin, E. (eds.), Villes de Flandre et d'Italie (XIIIe–XVIe siècle). Les enseignements d'une comparaison (Turnhout, 2008)Google Scholar

¹⁸ The first English edition appeared in Princeton in 1925 – it is still a widely read book at American colleges. The French edition was published in 1927, immediately hailed by Lucien Febvre, one of the founders of the Annales (see infra), in the following words ‘Un de ses livres comme seuls sont capables d'en produire les hommes qui, ayant excellé toute leur vie dans une profession, ont par surcroît le don d'animer ce qu'ils touchent. Il est signé Henri Pirenne’ (‘One of the books written by an author who has dominated all his life his profession and who has been given the quality to breath life into all they touch upon’): Febvre, L., Vivre l'histoire (ed. Mazon, Brigitte) (Paris, 2009), 306Google Scholar.

¹⁹ This feeling is clearly brought to our attention in Violante, C., La fine della ‘grande illusione’. Uno storico europeo tra guerra e dopoguerra, Henri Pirenne (1914–1923). Per una rilettura della ‘Histoire de l'Europe’ (Bologna, 1997)Google Scholar; a review of this book by Toubert, P., ‘Henri Pirenne et l'Allemagne (1914–1923)’, Le Moyen Âge, 107 (2001), 317–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently, a German version was published containing an important introduction on Violante by Giorgio Cracco: Violante, C., Das Ende der ‘grossen Illusion’. Ein europäischer Historiker im Spannungsfeld von Krieg und Nachkriegszeit, Henri Pirenne (1914–1923) – Zu einer Neulesung der ‘Geschichte Europas’ (Berlin, 2004)Google Scholar

²⁰ Clark, ‘The city’, 40–1.

²¹ For Belgium, see Billen, C. and Boone, M., ‘L'histoire urbaine en Belgique’, Città e Storia, 5 (2010), 3–22Google Scholar. In Germany, the paradigm change occurring after World War I led to a reappraisal of the ideas already formulated in the second unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (untimely meditations) by Friedrich Nietzsche, published in 1874 ‘Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben’ (On the use and abuse of history for life): see Oexle, O.G., ‘Staat – Kultur – Volk. Deutsche Mittelalterhistoriker auf der Suche nach der historischen Wirklichkeit, 1918–1945’, in Moraw, P. and Schieffer, R. (eds.), Die deutschsprachige Mediävistik im 20. Jahrhundert (Ostfildern, 2005), 72–4Google Scholar. For the remarks concerning Scandinavia, see the discussion following the presentation of parts of this text at Helsinki in April 2009 (see n. *).

²² Cited and put into the intellectual context of Weimar Germany in Evans, R.J., The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2004), 121Google Scholar. The citation from Spengler: Spengler, O., Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. I: Gestalt und Wirklichkeit (Vienna, 1918), 73–5Google Scholar.

²³ Named after the French review founded in 1929 for which not surprisingly its two famous founders, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, had in vain tried to have Pirenne accept to act as its first president, see Delacroix, Dosse and Garcia, Les courants historiques en France, 200–95; on the link between Pirenne and Bloch and Febvre: Lyon, B., The Birth of Annales History: The Letters of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch to Henri Pirenne (1921–1935) (Brussels, 1991)Google Scholar. An Anglo-Saxon view on the Annales school is offered by Stoianovitch, T., French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca, 1976)Google Scholar.

²⁴ On this bible of historicism: Delacroix, Dosse and Garcia, Les courants historiques en France, 145–53.

²⁵ See, in the abundant literature on Bloch, how this interest was developed during the close contacts with British colleagues whose interest in agrarian history as we have seen following Clark's analysis (see n. 2) had taken over in the post-war period: Touati, Fr.-O., Marc Bloch et l'Angleterre (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar. On Bloch: Dumoulin, O., Marc Bloch (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar.

²⁶ See the abundant proof in one of the few reliable studies on Braudel so far: Daix, P., Braudel (Paris, 1995), 91–5, 273Google Scholar. After having heard a lecture in Algiers on 29 Jan. 1931 by Pirenne on his Mahomet and Charlemagne thesis, Braudel went so far as to adapt the subject of his own thesis, putting forward the Mediterranean instead of Philip II of Spain.

²⁷ Braudel, F., Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, Xve–XVIIIe siècle. Tome 1: les structures du quotidien: le possible et l'impossible, 2nd edn (Paris, 1979), 423Google Scholar.

²⁸ Park, R. (with R.D. MacKenzie and E. Burgess), The City: Suggestions for the Study of Human Nature in the Urban Environment (Chicago, 1925)Google Scholar. On the Chicago school: Plummer, K. (ed.), The Chicago School: Critical Assessments, 4 vols. (London, 1997)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Clark, ‘The city’, 42–3.

³⁰ See the entries and reference to further literature on Gierke and Schmoller by Rüdiger vom Bruch in Bruch, R. vom and Müller, R. A. (eds.), Historikerlexikon von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd edn (Munich, 2002), 108–9, 279–80Google Scholar. On Tönnies, see references on the website of the Tönnies Gesellschaft: www.ftg-kiel.de/; his complete works are edited by Walter De Gruyter (Berlin and New York), first vol. 1998.

³¹ On Lamprecht, see the entry by Louise Schorn-Schütte in Historikerlexikon, 189. With regard to the ‘Methodenstreit’, the 12 volumes of his Deutsche Geschichte triggered from 1891 on: Oestreich, G., ‘Die Fachhistorie und die Anfänge der sozialgeschichtliche Forschung in Deutschland’, Historische Zeitschrift, 208 (1969), 320–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruch, R. Vom, Wissenschaft, Politik und öffentliche Meinung. Gelehrtenpolitik im wilhelmischen Deutschland (1890–1914) (Husum, 1980)Google Scholar. Raphael, Lutz, ‘Historikerkontroversen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Berufshabitus, Fächerkonkurrenz und sozialen Bedeutungsmustern. Lamprecht-Streit und französicher Methodenstreit der Jahrhundertwende in vergleichender Perspektive’, Historische Zeitschrift, 251 (1990), 325–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Concerning his relation to Pirenne, see, apart from Lyon's biography of Pirenne, the following source editions: Lyon, B., ‘The letters of Henri Pirenne to Karl Lamprecht’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire, 132 (1966), 161–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar, to be completed by Van Werveke, H., ‘Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire, 138 (1972), 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Boone, M., ‘“L'automne du Moyen Âge”: Johan Huizinga et Henri Pirenne ou “plusieurs vérités pour la même chose”’, in Moreno, P. and Palumbo, G. (eds.), Autour du XVe siècle. Journées d’étude en l'honneur d'Alberto Varvaro. Communications présentées au Symposium de clôture de la chaire Francqui au titre étranger (Liège, 10–11 mai 2004) (Geneva, 2008), 36–7Google Scholar.

³² Lyon, B., ‘The war of 1914 and Henri Pirenne's revision of his methodology’, in Tollebeek, J., Verbeeck, G. and Verschaffel, T. (eds.), De lectuur van het verleden. Opstellen over de geschiedenis van de geschiedschrijving aangeboden aan Reginald de Schryver (Leuven, 1998), 511–12Google Scholar.

³³ Lyon, B., ‘Guillaume Des Marez and Henri Pirenne: a remarkable rapport’, Revue Belge de philologie et d'histoire, 77 (1999), 1068–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Des Marez: Billen, C. and Boone, M., ‘Pirenne in Brussels before 1930. Guillaume Des Marez and the relationship between a master and his student’, Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis. Revue belge d'histoire contemporaine, 41 (2011), 459–85Google Scholar.

³⁴ Bloch served the full years of the war as a soldier in the French army, on different fronts; Pirenne lost one of his sons in the war, was imprisoned because of his resistance to the German cultural and educational policies imposed on the occupied part of Belgium; see the already cited biographies of both men.

³⁵ On this manifesto: Jürgen, and von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang, Der Aufruf ‘An die Kulturwelt!’ Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der deutschen Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1996)Google Scholar, passim.

³⁶ A recent reappraisal of German historiography and of Weber's position concerning urban history is to be found in Hirschmann, F.G., Die Stadt im Mittelalter (Munich, 2009), 62–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Italian communes of the so-called ‘popular type’: Vigueur, J.-Cl. Maire, Cavaliers et citoyens. Guerre, conflits et société dans l'Italie communale XIIe–XIIIe siècles (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar, and Vigueur, J.-Cl. Maire and Faini, E., Il sistema politica dei comuni italiani (secoli XII–XIV) (Milan and Turin, 2010)Google Scholar, passim.

³⁷ Schreiner, Kl., ‘Die mittelalterliche Stadt in Webers Analyse und die Deutung des okzidentalen Rationalismus. Typus, Legitimität, Kulturbedeutung’, in Kocka, J. (ed.), Max Weber, der Historiker (Göttingen, 1986), 119–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dilcher, G., ‘Max Webers Stadt und die historische Stadtforschung der Mediëvistik’, Historische Zeitschrift, 267 (1998), 91–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more recent with abundant references to an equally abundant literature on Weber and his theories: Scheller, B., ‘Das herrschaftsfremde Charisma der Coniuratio und seine Veralltäglichungen. Idealtypische Entwicklungspfade der mittelalterlichen Stadtverfassung in Max Webers “Stadt”’, Historische Zeitschrift, 281 (2005), 307–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Weber's text, see the relevant sections of his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, most conveniently in Weber, M., The City (Glencoe, IL, 1958)Google Scholar (part of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft; critical edn: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (Cologne, 1956)).

³⁸ Lexikon des Mittelalters adds to a sense of confusion and even contradiction as is convincingly argued in Dilcher, G., ‘Einheit und Vielheit in Geschichte und Begriff der Europäischen Stadt’, in Johanek, P. and Post, F.-J. (eds.), Vielerlei Städte. Der Stadtbegriff (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2004) 20–1Google Scholar.

³⁹ See several contributions to Moraw and Schieffer (eds.), Die deutschsprachiche Mediävistiek im 20. Jahrhundert; Oexle, O.G., L'historisme en débat. De Nietzsche à Kantorowicz (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar (translation of his Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeichen des Historismus (Göttingen, 1996)), passim; and Oexle, O.G., ‘Das Mittelalter und das Unbehagen an der Moderne. Mittelalterbeschwörungen in der Weimarer Republik und danach’, in Burghartz, S., Gilomen, H.-J., Marchal, G., Schwinges, R.C. and Simon-Muscheid, K. (eds.), Spannungen und Widersprüche. Gedenkschrift für Frantisek Graus (Sigmaringen, 1992), 125–53Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ See the fundamental discussion in Oexle, ‘Staat – Kultur – Volk’, 73 and 75, where he takes the very influential book by Kantorowicz (1895–1973) on Frederik II as the example for this evolution. The same Kantorowicz in his address at the Historikertag in Halle (Grenze, Möglichkeiten und Aufgaben der Darstellung mittelalterlicher Geschichte) had formulated the programme of the group around Stefan George. Note that for this ‘creative’ use of his philosophy Nietzsche himself cannot be held responsible. See in general: Galindo, M. Zapata, Triumph des Willens zur Macht. Zur Nietzsche-Rezeption im NS-Staat (Hamburg, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 411–12.

⁴² See the analysis by Oexle, O.G., ‘Vom “Staat” zur “Kultur” des Mittelalters. Problemgeschichten und Paradigmenwechsel in der deutschen Mittelalterforschung’, in Fryde, N., Monnet, P., Oexle, O.G. and Zygner, L. (eds.), Die Deutung des mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft in der Moderne (Göttingen, 2004), 40–7Google Scholar.

⁴³ An overview of the reappraisal of the notion Volksgemeinschaft in German historiography: Mommsen, H., ‘Changing historical perspectives on the Nazi dictatorship’, European Review, 17 (2009), 76–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the historiographic debate during and after the Nazi period: Oexle, O.G., ‘Von der völkischen Geschichte zur modernen Sozialgeschichte’, in Duchhardt, H. and May, G. (eds.), Geschichtswissenschaft um 1950 (Mainz, 2002), 1–36Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Oexle, ‘Staat – Kultur – Volk’, 92–4, and M. Werner, ‘Zwischen politischer Begrenzung und methodischer Offenheit. Wege und Stationen deutscher Landesgeschichtsforschung im 20. Jahrhundert’, in Moraw and Schieffer (eds.), Die deutschsprachige Mediävistiek im 20. Jahrhundert, 251–364.

⁴⁵ The image of the Rhine's two banks is taken from Oexle, ‘Staat – Kultur – Volk’, 96–7, who borrows it from Ulrich Raulff, the reputed biographer of Marc Bloch.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 100–1.

⁴⁷ The question was posed in a provocative way, recalling the fierce attack on German historiography and science in general by Henri Pirenne in one of his public addresses as rector of Ghent University in 1922 ‘Ce que nous devons désapprendre de l'Allemagne’ by Oexle, O.G., ‘Was deutsche Mediävisten an der französischen Mittelalterforschung interessieren muss’, in Borgolte, M. (ed.), Mittelalterforschung nach der Wende 1989 (Munich, 1995), 89–127Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Planitz, H., Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter. Von der Römerzeit bis zu den Zunftkämpfen (Graz and Cologne, 1954)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See the fundamental overview by Johanek, P., ‘Stadtgeschichtsforschung – ein halbes Jahrhundert nach Ennen und Planitz’, in Opll, F. and Sonnlechner, Ch. (eds.), Europäische Städte im Mittelalter (Innsbruck and Vienna, 2010), 49–50Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Werner, ‘Zwischen politischer Begrenzung und methodischer Offenheit’, 336. On the founding of this institute, in the context of German historiography: Hirschmann, Die Stadt im Mittelalter, 70.

⁵¹ See the essay by one of the former directors of the Munsterian institute Peter Johanek, ‘Zu neuen Ufer? Beobachtungen eines Zeitgenossen zur deutschen Mediävistik von 1975 bis heute’, in Moraw and Schieffer (eds.), Die deutschsprachige Mediävistiek im 20. Jahrhundert, 168–9, with references to the atlases published so far.

⁵² A short but penetrating assessment of their role in World War II: Rusinek, B.-A., ‘“Westforschungs”-Traditionen nach 1945. Ein Versuch über Kontinuität’, in Dietz, B., Gabel, H. and Tiedau, U. (eds.), Griff nach dem Westen. Die ‘Westforschung’ der völkisch-nationalen Wissenschaften zum nordwesteuropäischen Raum (1919–1960), 2 vols. (Münster and New York, 2003), vol. II, 1150–1Google Scholar.

⁵³ This was particularly the case in the University of Ghent, looked upon as an outpost of Germanic culture in the West since it was ‘germanized’ in the sense that the Dutch language was imposed as the language in which teaching was done in 1930, a development which pushed Pirenne to leave Ghent for Brussels. Franz Steinbach appointed during the first winter semester of the occupation in 1940–41 to teach in Ghent noted however in an official report to the military command in Belgium that Pirenne still was revered in Ghent and that a vast majority of both professors and students were supporters of Belgium and rather hostile to ‘völkische’ points of view. One student he quoted told him that ‘scientific truth has no Vaterland (home country)’: see M. Nikolay-Panter, ‘Geschichte, Methode, Politik. Das Institut und die geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande, 1920–1945’, in Dietz, Gabel and Tiedau (eds.), Griff nach dem Westen, vol. II, 713.

⁵⁴ Petri published his thesis on the linguistic border in Belgium and the Germanic elements in Wallonia and northern France in 1937. This thesis, so many sources confirm, had an important personal influence on Hitler who adapted his policy towards Belgium and the Netherlands after reading it (after the war, as many German university professors, Petri was easily at work again after a short period of denazification, became professor at Münster between 1951 and 1961, and returned afterwards to Bonn). In his Nazi period, he had criticized Pirenne abundantly (his review of the last part of Pirenne's Histoire de Belgique numbered 110 pages!) and was co-responsible for the remarkable ‘translation’ of Pirenne's great posthumous book, his Mahomet et Charlemagne of 1937, a translation falsified in a way to glorify the Germanic influence in early medieval Europe; see Schöttler, P., ‘Henri Pirenne, historien européen, entre la France et l'Allemagne’, Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 76 (1998), 877–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Petri: Ditt, K., ‘Die Kulturraumforschung zwisschen Wissenschaft und Politik. Das Beispiel Franz Petri (1903–1993)’, Westfälische Forschungen, 46 (1996), 73–176Google Scholar, and the more critical assessment of Westforschung by the Dutch sociologist Derks, H., Deutsche Westforschung. Ideologie und Praxis im 20. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 2001)Google Scholar, passim, who develops a more critical stance towards the work and activities of Petri. The same author added new elements not very favourable to Petri's role to the dossier in 2005: Derks, H., ‘German Westforschung, 1918 to the present. The case of Franz Petri, 1903–1993’, in Haar, I. and Fahlbusch, M. (eds.), German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing 1919–1945 (New York, 2005), 175–99Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Fundamental research concerning these activities is presented by Schöttler, P., ‘Die historische Westforschung zwischen “Abwerhkampf” und territorialer Offensive’, in idem (ed.), Geschichtschreibung als Legitimationswissenschaft 1918–1945 (Frankfurt, 1997), 204–61Google Scholar. See also the (impressive) collection of essays: Dietz, Gabel and Tiedau (eds.), Griff nach dem Westen; two essays concern Franz Petri: the one by Martina Pitz and one by Karl Ditt.

⁵⁶ Though ‘this made little difference in reality: the profession was already extremely hierarchical’: Evans, R.J., The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939 (London, 2006), 312–13Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ See Borgolte, M., Sozialgeschichte des Mittelalters. Eine Forschungsbilanz nach der deutschen Einheit (Munich, 1996), 9–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ See the unfinished and postumously published chapter ‘Pirenne und die Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft’ in Sproemberg, H., Mittelalter und demokratische Geschichtsschreibung. Ausgewählte Abhandlungen (ed. Unger, M.) (Berlin, 1971), 377–446Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Borgolte, Sozialgeschichte des Mittelalters, 12.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 278–89, the references to both seminal books: Engelmann, E., Zur städtischen Volksbewegung in Südfrankreich: Kommunefreiheit und Gesselschaft, Arles 1200–1250 (Berlin, 1959)Google Scholar, and Engel, E., Die deutsche Stadt des Mittelalters (Munich, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Borgolte, Sozialgeschichte des Mittelalters, 280–1.

⁶² On the intellectual evolution and gradual unification (though of course important intellectual and ideological divides remained in place): Borgolte, Sozialgeschichte des Mittelalters, 287–312, and a direct testimony by Engel, E., ‘Bürgertum – Bürgerkampf – Bürgerstadt. Probleme beim Versuch einer Synthese deutscher Stadtgeschichte des Mittelalters’, in Borgholte, M. (ed.), Mittelalterforschung nach der Wende 1989 (Munich, 1995), 407–25Google Scholar.

⁶³ Oexle, ‘Vom “Staat” zur “Kultur” des Mittelalters’, 57–8. Oexle refers to Dilcher, Gerhard, ‘Die Rechtsgeschichte der Stadt’, in Bader, K.S. and Dilcher, G., Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. Land und Stadt – Bürger und Bauer im Alten Europa (Berlin, Heidelberg and New York, 1999), 249–827Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Isenmann, E., ‘Gesetzgebung und Gesetzgebungsrecht in spätmittelalterlichen Deutscher Städte’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 28 (2001), 1–94Google Scholar and 161–261. In his synthesis Die deutsche Stadt im Spätmittelalter (1250–1500) (Stuttgart, 1988), Isenmann makes his the characteristics Max Weber used to qualify the medieval city.

⁶⁵ Blickle, P., Kommunalismus: Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform, 2 vols. (Oldenbourg, 2000)Google Scholar; see the collection of essays in the context of the ESF (European Science Foundation) programme: Blickle, P., Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ The effects of comparisons and of differences between these two highly urbanized regions of medieval Europe were different for each of them: see the contributions (on the demographic aspects and on comparisons) by G. Pinto, P. Stabel and W. Blockmans in Crouzet-Pavan and Lecuppre-Desjardin (eds.), Villes de Flandre et d'Italie (XIIIe–XVIe siècle). I developed some of these aspects further in Boone, M., A la recherche d'une modernité civique. La société urbaine des anciens Pays-Bas au bas Moyen Âge (Brussels, 2010), 109–21Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Schulz, Knut, ‘Denn sie lieben die Freiheit so sehr. . .’ Kommunale Aufstände und Entstehung des europäischen Bürgertums im Hochmittelalter (Darmstadt, 1992)Google Scholar. On the importance of this work see the remarks concerning its place in a re-evaluation of the communal movement by Dilcher, ‘Einheit und Vielheit in Geschichte und Begriff’, 21.

⁶⁸ See the websites: www.lamprecht-gesellschaft.de/ and http://www.eniugh.org/ the latter of the European Network in Universal and Global History of which the Lamprecht Gesellschaft is part. In 1993, a collection of essays in which Leipzig-based historians sought to renew their link to Lamprecht was published: Diesener, G. (ed.), Karl Lamprecht weiterdenken. Universal- und Kulturgeschichte heute (Leipzig, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ See the references referring to Weigel, Sigrid, ‘On the “topographical” turn: concepts of space in cultural studies and Kulturwissenschaften. A cartographic feud’, European Review, 17 (2009), 187–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁰ Habermas, J., Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied and Berlin, 1962), 16–21Google Scholar, rejects the possibility of defining the existence of a public political space for the late Middle Ages and early modern period, reflecting in doing so the historical knowledge of the period in which he conceived his ideas (the early 1960s).

⁷¹ See among others the collections of essays concerning different parts of Europe, which all were published in a remarkably short span of time thus testifying to a historiographic impulse: Kundert, U., Schmid, B. and Schmid, R. (eds.), Ausmessen – Darstellen – Inszenieren. Raumkonzepte und die Wiedergabe von Räumen in Mittelalter und frühen Neuzeit (Zürich, 2007)Google Scholar; Boucheron, P. and Mattéoni, O. (eds.), Les espaces sociaux de l'Italie urbaine (XIIe–XVe siècles). Receuil d'articles (Paris, 2005)Google Scholar; Deligne, C. and Billen, C. (eds.), Voisinages, coexistences, appropriations. Groupes sociaux et territoires urbains (Moyen Âge–16^e siècle) (Turnhout, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monnet, P., Villes d'Allemagne au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁷² Rubin, M., ‘Identities’, in Horrox, R. and Ormrod, W. M. (eds.), A Social History of England, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 2006), 402ffGoogle Scholar.

⁷³ R. Britnell, ‘Town life’, in Horrox and Ormrod (eds.), Social History of England, 163–8.

⁷⁴ See the life-long research by Herman Pleij, synthesized in his recent magisterial contribution to a new general history of Dutch literature: Pleij, H., Het gevleugelde word. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur, 1400–1560 (Amsterdam, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Putnam, R.D., Leonardi, R. and Nannetti, R., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993)Google Scholar; an important critique (among many others): Terpstra, N., ‘Republics by contract. Civil society, social capital and the Putnam thesis in the papal state’, Storicamente, 2 (2006) (see: www.storicamente.org)Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ See the collection of essays on the ‘bonum commune’ as an ideological tool developed and discussed in late medieval cities in Lecuppre-Desjardin, E. and Van Bruaene, A.-L. (eds.), De Bono communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European city (13^th–16^th c.) (Turnhout, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ Gourevitch, A., Les catégories de la culture médiévale (Paris, 1983), 210–11Google Scholar. Albeit originally dating from 1972, his text has become widely known since its translation into French and the preface by Georges Duby from 1983.

⁷⁸ See Boone, M. and Prak, M., ‘Rulers, patricians and burghers: the great and the little traditions of urban revolt in the Low Countries’, in Davids, K. and Lucassen, J. (eds.), A Miracle Mirrored. The Dutch Republic in European Perspective (Cambridge, 1995), 99–134Google Scholar, and Boone, M., ‘The Dutch Revolt and the medieval tradition of urban dissent’, Journal of Early Modern History, 11 (2007), 351–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ Bloch, Marc, L'histoire, la guerre, la résistance, ed. Becker, Annette and Bloch, Etienne (Paris, 2006), 879Google Scholar.