Karin Friedrich


Karin Friedrich is a German historian, a professor in history at the University of Aberdeen King's College.
Friedrich received an M.A. in history and political science from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1989 and a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University in 1995. From 1995 to 2004, she worked as a lecturer and senior lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London/University College London. From 2001 to 2006, she was co-editor of the academic journal German History. At Aberdeen she is co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. She is also member of several editorial boards.
Specialising in Polish, German and Prussian history, she wrote The Other Prussia. Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772, shedding light on the history of the Western part of Prussia in which German-speaking Protestants were subject to the elected King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
She also stayed at the Free University of Berlin in 2000, gained a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and several guest scholarships, an AHRC fellowship, and served as advisory committee member of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw and as member of the Working Group on the Baroque, Herzog August Library, Wolfenbuettel. She was recently elected member of the Council of the Royal Historical Society, London.

Work (selection)

  • The Other Prussia. Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772, Cambridge, 2000,
  • Citizenship and Identity in a Multi-national Commonwealth: Poland–Lithuania in Context, 1569–1795 The Cultivation of Monarchy and the Rise of Berlin. Brandenburg 1700, co-authorship with Sara Smart
  • Festivals in Germany and Europe: New Approaches to European Festival Culture, ed. by Karin Friedrich 396 pp
  • Brandenburg-Prussia, 1466–1806 Palgrave Macmillan 2012, as part of Studies in European History,
  • Die Erschließung des Raumes: Konstruktion, Imagination und Darstellung von Räumen und Grenzen im Barockzeitalter, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung Bd. 51, 2 vols, Göttingen: Harrasowitz, 2014, 978-3-447-10055-7.
;Articles :
  • Polish-Lithuanian Political Thought, 1450–1700: in Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, Simon Hodson, History of European Political Thought, 1450–1700, 409–47.
  • German History 22:3, special issue: Polish Views of German History articles: "Pomorze" or "Preussen": Polish Perspectives on early modern Prussian History, pp. 190–217, and Introduction, 155–168.
  • Zwischen zwei Adlern. Kulturelle und ideologische Einflüsse Polen-Litauens auf das herzogliche Preußen vor 1701 , in: Preußen in Ostmitteleuropa , ed. by Matthias Weber, 115–141.
  • Nationsbewußtsein im Schlesien der frühen Neuzeit , in: Die Grenzen der Nationen. Nationale Identitätenwandel in Oberschlesien in der Neuzeit, edited by Kai Struve and Philipp Ther, 19–44.
  • The Development of Prussian Towns, 1720–1815, in P. Dwyer, ed., The Rise of Prussia: Re-thinking Prussian History, 1700–1830,, 129-150