<b>Traces of German settlement</b> in the contemporary cultural landscape

Abstract Most of the articles in this volume focus on German settlement in the Carpathians. The opening article provides a comprehensive overview of the subject, offering readers a thorough introduction. Two in-depth studies examine the Polish Forest German community, which traces its origins to medieval German settlers, while another explores the well-documented Saxon colonization of Romanian Transylvania. The final two articles are more loosely connected to the main theme of the volume – one discusses settlement in the Carpathians (more precisely in the Western Beskids, in the area of the former Silesian duchies on the border of Silesia and Lesser Poland) without a German context, while the other addresses German colonization but in a different geographical area, focusing on Pomerania in northern Poland. This volume thus provides a broad perspective on the issue of German settlement in the Carpathians – also in the context of other social changes that took place in past centuries.