LFU:online

Students deal with new themes in selected key areas. They understand and evaluate them as well as argument with regards to scientific dynamics and trends of the respective key areas. They understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different methodological approaches. They gain competences in independent formulating of questions and argumentations.

Wars are usually unleashed and peace often has to be sought laboriously. But who actually wages war and who seeks peace? Wars and their depiction determine large parts of historiography, while their opposite, the search for peace and the analysis of peace processes (from the armistice to the negotiations, to the conclusion of peace and finally its implementation) is often neglected. In the wake of the Peace of Westphalia, the notion of an international law of nations or states began to take root in Europe, and the position of war and peace in society is based on it, even if since February 2022 some certainties seem to have faltered.
Since the last third of the 17th century, the Habsburg Monarchy has fought numerous wars with varying outcomes, and at the same time the functioning and meaning of the state itself changed. In the course of the 19th century, the (constitutional) state we are familiar with today emerged from a pre-modern society of estates in which the decision on war or peace was incumbent on a tapered elite, represented in the person of the sovereign. Although the question of war or peace was left to a few - as the First World War showed - the 'place of war in society' shifted noticeably.
In the Master's seminar, this pair of opposites and its role in the respective dominant social order will be analysed and discussed on the basis of a theoretical discussion using the concrete example of the Habsburg Monarchy from the end of the 17th century to the end of the First World War.

theme centered inputs and reading, discussions and oral presentations.

Course examination according to § 7, statute section on "study-law regulations".

Active participation, reading, presentation, written final paper

Continuous assessment (based on written and oral contributions by participants).