This work, originally published in German, documents and describes just how extensively crucial personal and social bonds influenced political life in Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages. Political life in the Middle Ages was significantly influenced by the bonds people had to one another, and the bonds of kinship, friendship and lordship were by far the most important. Gerd Althoff, a renowned medieval scholar, demonstrates how the nature and importance of these bonds changed, as did the rules and norms which governed them.