This is the second revised and expanded edition of the highly successful Lexikon, published in 2004. As a genre, the lexicon occupies an important place in German academe that does not have an exact counterpart in the English-speaking world. Somewhere between vocabulary and encyclopedia (but closer to the latter), it offers concise, summarizing entries, adjusted to contemporary scholarship. Closer then to the genre of encyclopedic dictionary, it also differs from the Handbuch, which (at least in theory) is more focused on a particular theme. It is also different from the Keywords of Raymond Williams that has its counterpart in the Begriffsgeschichte compendia of Reinhardt Koselleck.
This new Lexikon has 603 entries and has swollen from the previous 770 pages to 1102. It is supplied by ten excellent maps as well as by a detailed, cross-referenced index that immensely facilitates work with this enormous tome. The Lexikon takes the broader meaning of southeastern Europe that is dominant in the German space, thus encompassing also Hungary and Slovakia. Accordingly, it has two lemmata, both for southeastern Europe and for the Balkans. Its chronological span is from the early modern period to the present. Its coverage of special terms is comprehensive: empires (Byzantine, Ottoman, Venetian, Habsburg, Russian, Holy Roman), states (Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia), as well as a huge number of sub-regions (Rumelia, Dobrudzha, Oltenia, Vojvodina, Bačka, Thrace, Dalmatia, Lika, Moravia, Carpatho-Ukraine, Srem, Epiros, Styria, and so forth).
It has first-rate lemmata on large abstract concepts with region-wide significance in which the authors excel in their comparative approach: absolutism and neo-absolutism, enlightenment, reformation, feudalism, capitalism, imperialism, colonization, fascism, populism, socialism, communism, and many others. It covers important historical events: wars, (both world wars, the Crimean war, the Balkan wars, the so-called Turkish wars, and others); revolutions and uprisings; treaties and pacts; international relations concepts, like the Eastern Question, the Berlin congress, the Congress of Vienna, the Little Entente, and many more. It pays close attention to social groups: nobility, elites, estates, classes (workers, peasants, bourgeoisie), monks, and more specific ones, like Phanariotes, ayans, Levantines, hayduks, uskoks, župan, skupština, patrisans, and so on. Equally, institutional terms are well represented, both larger region-wide ones like constitutions, educational systems, universities, slavery, guilds, dualism, trialism, and others, as well as smaller nation-specific ones, like exarch, zbor, divan, or harem, among them the comprehensive coverage of the party systems in the separate nation-states. The treatment of religious terms is wide-ranging, from the general ones (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Islam, Calvinism) to more specific ones of events, denominations, and sects (schism, Bogomils, Uniates, Alevites, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Jesuits, Old Believers, and so forth).
The volume is especially strong and comprehensive in offering information on the numerous ethnic groups, which is one of the differentia specifica of the southeast European region. It is impossible to even begin to enumerate them all (there are several dozens to the count of this reviewer, whose horizon was pleasantly broadened). Very welcome are also the entries on historiography that offer concise typologies of historical writing in the region. The brief, but well-written entries on women are compensated by the comprehensive bibliographies. There is, however, no entry on feminism, alas, but there are ones on patriarchy and family forms. All articles in this volume are supplied by excellent bibliographies, but they reflect primarily German- and less so English-language scholarship, with rare French titles, and extremely sparse references to the extensive and not to be underestimated scholarship from the region proper.
What is missing, but this is a conscious and informed omission, are entries on individuals, with the exception of the most important dynasties. This is offset, of course, by the four-volume Biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte Südosteuropas (Munich, 1972–81). While this decision is perfectly understandable as a measure to keep the volume wieldy and prevent redundancies, there is little reason, despite the proleptic note in the introduction, to not include a name index, which would have allowed more efficient searches. On the other hand, readers would wait with anticipation for the digitized version of the biographical lexicon, being prepared at present by the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg (http://www.biolex.ios-regensburg.de), which is also the birthplace of the present volume.
It is obviously not possible to go in depth about the separate entries, but some clearly stand out. For example, the concept of nation has three entries, with two long additional ones on nation-building and nation-state-building. This differentiation is crucial, in order to stress the constructedness in both cases, and disentangle their often assumed superimposition. Outstanding is the entry on modernization, which is both theoretically sophisticated and concrete. Especially impressive are the lemmata on urban life. After a general one on the definitions of the city, there are special typological entries on the Byzantine, Ottoman, Dalmatian, Hungarian and Balkan cities, as well as on urbanization, and good, brief surveys of the capital cities and major towns in the region. Given the overwhelmingly rural character of the region until the mid-twentieth century, very important are the entries on peasants, peasant revolts, peasant emancipation, village communities, and segmentary society.
Lexica are collective enterprises and a most difficult undertaking in the historical profession, which is overwhelmingly individual. All contributions, written by an international team of over 70 scholars, are of invariably high professional quality. A good number of the best entries are penned by Holm Sundhaussen, the late retired professor for southeastern Europe at the Free University in Berlin, which used to be one of the pillars of German east European scholarship. Sundhaussen was the co-editor of this volume when he suddenly passed away in February 2015, and the Lexikon is the last monument of his illustrious career. It is to the credit of the other co-editor, Konrad Clewing, also author of excellent entries, to have ably brought this arduous task to a successful conclusion. The result is a sophisticated and significant contribution to southeast European studies that merits translation into English.
