Norbert Kersken is honorary doctor of the University of Pécs since 16 November 2017.
Studying history (focused on medieval history and history of Eastern Europe), Slavic philology and philosophy at the University of Münster I was staff of „Glossary on the early medieval history in Eastern Europe (initiated by Manfred Hellmann, Münster and Herbert Ludat, Gießen). Here I got deeply in touch with the broad spectre of Latin historiography of the Middle Ages especially with problems of tradion and dependence of texts. In this connection prepared for print 99 Lemmata (I should highlight the voluminous lemma „Danubius“). The dissertation, supervised by Peter Johanek, tried to collect, analize and compare those historiographic texts presenting the history of a country or people from the very beginnings to the present. A two years employment at the town archiv of Coesfeld brought out amongst others a comprehensive annotated bibliography on the history of Coesfeld. During the years 1993/95 I worked at the Berlin-based Institute on the history and culture of East Central Europe (forerunner of the GWZO in Leipzig) on a project on Early modern estates in East-Central Europe (directed by Winfried Eberhard). Since 1996 I am member of research staff of the Marburg Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe. For more than ten years I headed a work group providing a online-database on the history of East Central Europe in ccoperation with associated institutes; above that I do university teaching continously first in Hamburg and since 1998 in Gießen. Besides this it was possible on the one hand to go on working on comparative studies on the history of historiography and on the other hand to publish studies on special topics on the history of the single regions and countries concerning the medieval and early modern history of East Central Europe (in detail on Pomorania, Livonia, Upper Lusatia, Silesia, Bohemia, Polan and Hungary). A three years research stay at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw was dedicated to issues of the foreign relations of Piast Poland.
Above that, in Berlin, Warsaw and Marburg, I organized conferences to kick off new research and to stimulate exchange between colleagues in the countries of East Central Europe. These conferences featured different topics as the politics of the Estates, medieval historiography, the political and cultural networks of Piast Poland, late medieval foreign politics, medieval interregna, influences of the Reformation in East Central Europe or the crusading movement in late medieval Europe.