Podrobný výpis o publikaci

The issue of office-holding elite within the Central European cities of the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era represents a relatively frequent research theme. Research in this area can build on a long tradition. The paper focuses on the members of the Wroclaw bourgeois family Banck, which, after almost ten generations (from the end of the 14th to the beginning of the 17th century), represented a significant political and economic power not only in Wrocław, but also in the Principality of Wrocław and Silesia at all. In an example of analysing the strategic behaviour of its members on the field of career advancement, the establishment of purposeful political alliances and marriage policy, it demonstrates the utilization of approach of a micro-prosopography for monitoring developmental tendencies within urban society structures and the strategic actions of members of bourgeois governing elites. The aim of the paper is to point out the possibilities of new approaches to existing sources and also the possibilities of the utilization of sources, which are still used insufficiently. The subject of the analysis and the starting point for defining the term "office-holding elite" itself for the Wroclaw environment became official sources of formal character - lists of members of colleges of three institutions - two of them operating within the structures of municipal self-government (colleges of the town council) and one institution with powers covering the entire Principality of Wrocław (Vassal court).