Dr. Gustavs Strenga

Gustavs Strenga is a historian and researcher at the University of Greifswald. Gustavs received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Latvia (2004), Master’s degree in Medieval studies from the Central European University (2006) and defended his PhD Thesis “Remembering the Dead: Collective Memoria in Late Medieval Livonia” at the Queen Mary University of London (2014). Gustavs Strenga is also affiliated with the National Library of Latvia where he has been active as a senior researcher and exhibition curator. Gustavs has been fellow (2009-2012) at the PhD research group (GRK 1288) "Friends, Patrons, Clients. Practice and semantics of friendship and patronage in historical, anthropological and cross-cultural perspectives" at the University of Freiburg and a post-doc research fellow (2018-2020) at Tallinn University where he worked on the project "Economy of symbolic exchange. Gift-giving as a social, cultural and political practice in the late medieval Livonia." Gustavs’ main research interests include the history of medieval Livonia, memory studies, gift giving as a historical phenomenon and book history. At the University of Greifswald he is part of the project “Saints and Heroes from Christianization to Nationalism: Symbol, Image, Memory (Nord-West Russia, Baltic and Nordic countries).”

Upcoming / Erscheint demnächst:

Published / Veröffentlicht:

Monograph:

Remembering the Dead. Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia (Memoria and Remembrance practices, vol. 5), Turnhout: Brepols 2023, 318 p. Link

Edited Volumes:

The Baltic Battle of Books: Formation and Relocation of European Libraries in the Confessional Age (c. 1500–c. 1650) and Their Afterlife (Library of the written word 116, The Handpress World 94), ed. by Jonas Nordin, Gustavs Strenga, and Peter Sjökvist, Leiden: Brill, 2023, 342 p.

Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600. Gifts as Objects, ed. by Gustavs Strenga and Lars Kjær, London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 272 p.

Mittelalterliches Livland und sein historisches Erbe/ Medieval Livonia and its Historical Legacy, ed. by Andris Levāns, Ilgvars Misāns, and Gustavs Strenga (Tagungen zur Ostmitteleuropaforschung Bd. 41/1), Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2022, 226 p.

Luther. The Turn Catalogue of the exhibition “Luther. The Turn”, National Library of Latvia, Riga, 01.11.2017 – 04.02.2018, ed. by Andris Levāns and Gustavs Strenga, Riga: Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, 2017.

Articles:

Gifts and Conflicts: Objects given during the Entry of Archbishop Silvester Stodewescher in the Riga Cathedral (1449). Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600. Gifts as Objects, ed. by Gustavs Strenga and Lars Kjær, London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 77-102.

Repulsion and Attraction. The Middle Ages at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Mittelalterliches Livland und sein historisches Erbe/ Medieval Livonia and its Historical Legacy, ed. by Andris Levāns, Ilgvars Misāns, and Gustavs Strenga (Tagungen zur Ostmitteleuropaforschung Bd. 41/1), Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2022, 179-190.

Donations, Discipline and Commemoration. Creating Group Identity in the Transport Workers Guilds of Mid Fifteenth-Century Riga, Journal of Medieval History, 48.1 (2022), 103–128. 

Donations, discipline and commemoration. Creating group identity in the transport workers guilds of mid fifteenth-century Riga, Journal of Medieval History (2021), DOI: 10.1080/03044181.2021.2012502

Turning Transport Workers into Latvians? Ethnicity and Transport Workers’ Guilds in Riga Before and After the Reformation. Journal of Baltic Studies, 52:1 (2021), 61-83.

Cistercian Networks of Memory Commemoration as a Form of Institutional Bonding in Livonia and Beyond During the Late Middle Ages. Making Livonia: Actors, Institutions, and Networks in Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region, ed. by Anu Mänd, Marek Tamm. London: Routledge, 2020, 212-231.

Die Formierung der Letten als ethnische Gemeinschaft zur Zeit der Reformation in Riga. Reformation und Ethnizität. Sorben, Letten und Esten im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, edited by Madlena Mahling, Susanne Hose, and Friedrich Pollack, Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag, 2019, 77–97.

Distorted Memories and Power. Patrons of the Teutonic Order in the Fifteenth Century Prayer of the Livonian Branch. Journal of Baltic Studies, 50:2 (2019), 143-161,

Distance, presence, absence and memoria. Commemoration of deceased Livonian merchants outside their native cities during the late Middle Ages. Hansische Geschichtsblätter 136 (2018): 63-92.

Bonding with “Friends” and Allies. The Teutonic Order’s Confraternity and Networking Strategies of the Livonian Master Wolter von Plettenberg. Letonica 36 (2017): 136–160.

Remembering the common past: Livonia as a lieu de mémoire of the Teutonic Order in the Empire. Livland - eine Region am Ende der Welt? Forschungen zum Verhältnis zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie im späten Mittelalter = Livonia - a region at the end of the world?: studies on the relations between centre and periphery in the later Middle Ages, ed. by Anti Selart and Matthias Thumser, Köln: Böhlau, 2017, 347–370.

Faith, Politics, Languages and Books. The Reformation in Riga (1521–1525). Luther. The Turn Catalogue of the exhibition “Luther. The Turn”, National Library of Latvia, Riga, 01.11.2017 – 04.02.2018, ed. by Andris Levāns and Gustavs Strenga, Riga: Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, 2017, 138-146.

"Afterlife of Cistercian Nuns in Riga: Memory of a Medieval Convent, Nuns, and Their Books". Lecture at the session 339 "In Search of Monastic and Mendicant Medievalism?: Texts and Narratives, III" at the International Congress on the Study of the Middle Ages, July 1, 2024 in Leeds.

"Facing the Evil: Role of the Muscovites in the Creation of Wolter von Plettenberg’s Heroic Image". Lecture at the workshop "The Role of the Anti-Heroes and Evil in the Construction of the Late Medieval Northern European Heroes", September 14, 2023 in Hamburg.

"Der Krieg gegen die Ukraine und die Geschichtskultur in Ostmitteleuropa".  Podiumsdiskussion gemeinsam mit Mart Kuldkepp, Valters Nollendorfs, Eva-Clarita Pettai.im Rahmen des 75. Baltischen Historikertreffen: „Aktualisierungen der Vergangenheit: Die Gegenwart in der baltischen Geschichte“, June 4, 2023 in Göttingen.

"Livonian founding bishops and medieval indigenous 'heroes' during the age of nationalism". Lecture at the conference "Remembering a pre-modern past in a modern world: Medieval saints and heroes as realms of memory in 19th and 20th Century Central, Eastern and Northern Europe", October 19, 2021 (online).

SoSe 2023: The Baltic cities between Middle Ages and modernity: Lübeck, Riga, Gdansk and Stockholm (c. 1200-1650) (Hauptseminar, 4006102)

WiSe 2022/23: Europeanisation or Colonisation? Migrations, social and religious transformations in the Eastern Baltic Sea Region (Prussia, Livonia, Finland and Gotland) 1100-1550 (Hauptseminar, 4006127)

WiSe 2021/22: Creating Imagined Communities: Collective Memory between the Christianisation and the Nationalism in the Baltic Sea region (Hauptseminar, 4006091)