This volume provides an historical overview of the relationship between Germany, German speakers, and successive waves of German colonists with their eastern neighbors over the period from the Middle Ages to the present. The collection of essays by 28 leading experts includes the most recent scholarship together with fresh perspectives on the subject. understandings of German and Germany from the Germanic tribes and German stem-duchies of the Middle Ages to the highly decentralized and multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire of late medieval and early modern times and the German Confederation of the 1815-1866 period to the various forms of the German state from 1871 to the present. The relationship of German-speakers to their eastern non-German speaking neighbors, as well as that of Germany both to those neighbors and