• Vita

    Prof.  Dr Jürgen Heyde works as Principal Investigator / Senior Scholar at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) at the University of Leipzig. He teaches East-European History  and Jewish History at Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, where he was nominated “Außerplanmäßiger Professor” (“Extracurricular Professor”) in 2016. He studied Eastern European history, Polish/Slavic studies and medieval history from 1987 to 1993 in Giessen, Mainz, Warsaw, and Berlin, and completed his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin in 1998.

  • Research Project

    The “Armenian Statute” in the Kingdom of Poland (1519). Legal Compatibility and Social Difference in a Legal Codex

    The project analyzes examines a collection of Armenian law in the Kingdom of Poland ("Armenian Statute") from the early 16th century, against the background of earlier Armenian legal compilations and asks about the compatibility of the statutes with Magdeburg Law (MR) and Polish land law. Both elements, i.e. the connection to the Armenian tradition and the functioning of the Polish legal system, were necessary to ensure the success of judicial self-government.  I my work I will focus on normative as well as performative aspects: the comparison of the legal texts as well as on the staging of difference and compatibility vis-à-vis the king, the citizens and the members of the Armenian community.

    The Armenian Statute represented a dynamizing element in an established but politically controversial legal pluralism. The codification addressed the Armenian community as well as the Polish authorities; it integrated Armenian law into the Polish legal system and at the same time retained the claim to social difference. In its reception, precise and restrictive glosses supplement individual laws without interfering with the texts themselves. With the question of legal compatibility, the project takes up current discussions about practices of "multinormativity" as well as about the production and reception of normativity knowledge.

  • Selected Publications

    „Das neue Ghetto“? Raum, Wissen und jüdische Identität im langen 19. Jahrhundert, (Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden; 52) Göttingen: Wallstein 2019.

    Transkulturelle Kommunikation und Verflechtung. Die jüdischen Wirtschaftseliten in Polen vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert, (DHI Warschau: Quellen und Studien; 29) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2014. 

    Geschichte Polens (Beck’sche Reihe; 2385), 5. überarbeitete Auflage, München: C.H.Beck  2023). 

    Bauer, Gutshof und Königsmacht. Die estnischen Bauern in Livland unter polnischer und schwedischer Herrschaft 1561–1650 (Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte; 16), Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau 2000.

    (Mitherausgeber:) Polen in der europäischen Geschichte. Ein Handbuch in vier Bänden. In Verbindung mit Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg (Gießen), Paulina Gulińska-Jurgiel (Halle), Jürgen Heyde (Leipzig), Karsten Holste (Halle), Dietlind Hüchtker (Wien), Igor Kąkolewski (Berlin), Christian Lübke (Leipzig), Grzegorz Myśliwski (Warschau) und Robert Traba (Warschau) herausgegeben von Michael G. Müller (Halle / Saale). Band 1: Mittelalter. 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert. Herausgegeben von Jürgen Heyde, Karsten Holste, Igor Kąkolewski, Grzegorz Myśliwski und Christian Lübke, Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann 2025

    (Mitherausgeber:) Imaginations and Configurations of Polish Society: From the Middle Ages through the 20th Century, hrsg. von Yvonne Kleinmann, Jürgen Heyde, Dietlind Hüchtker, Dobrochna Kałwa, Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Katrin Steffen, Tomasz Wiślicz-Iwańczyk, Göttingen: Wallstein 2017