Ordinary Prussians
Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840

"...a powerful, evocative, and much-needed account." Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"...with its rich mines of data and insight on rural political, economic, gender and social history, this will be an essential text for years to come." H-Net Review

"This first intensive study of Prussian landowning is pathbreaking in scope. Essential." Choice

"Hagen's masterpiece deserves to become the definitive English-language work of social history." Eric Kurlander, German Studies Review

"This work is a major achievement that not only revises conventional interpretations of Prussia and modern Germany, but also challenges the conventional agrarian dualism that distinguishes sharply between an increasingly free rural population in the west, and enserfed villagers in the east." Journal of Social History

" Ordinary Prussians is a major study, of the sort that comes along perhaps once every decade; it deserves to be read by every historian of modern Germany and by all students of the early modern era."

"Ordinary Prussians should be of great interest to anyone studying agrarian society or early modern social or everyday history. Given the book's revolutionary implications for Prussian and German political/cultural history, the book should be required reading for anyone in the field." Comitatus

"...this is an excellent, thought provoking book...Each chapter brims with compelling stories about local experience while making a larger point about the transition to modernity. All in all, this is a model study and fruitful ground for future comparative work." Sixteenth Century Journal John Theibault, voorhes, New Jersey