News

During our regular team seminar in March, we watched and discussed the 1961 film Złoto, directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has. We selected this film because it addresses multiple themes that align with our own research interests. The narrative follows a young man, portrayed by Władysław Kowalski, who seeks happiness and a sense of refuge in post-war Bogatynia. Located in the southwestern corner of Poland, near the German and Czech borders, Bogatynia is a community shaped by the displacement of the German population and its coal-mining history. Consequently, the film serves as a portrait of the emerging postwar society and socialist industrialization.

Although Złoto is not considered Has’s most acclaimed work, we found it valuable to analyze through a hauntological perspective. The film repeatedly emphasizes that all characters are newcomers to a place full of distinct German materiality, yet the reasons for this newness remain unaddressed. The protagonist, along with other characters, searches for gold and treasure, which symbolize both material aspirations and the longing for a new life that people were dreaming of in post-war Poland. 

Still from the film Złoto. The landscape of the open coal mine is a strong visual element of the film.

Still from the film Złoto. The film was shot in Bogatynia, where at the beginning of the 1960s its German history was still visible.

At the end of March, a thematic evening dedicated to the European Capital of Culture Trenčín 2026 project took place at the premises of the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Berlin. The event, organized by the Slovak Institute in Berlin in cooperation with the Deutsches Kulturforum östliches Europa, offered a diverse program focused on history, cultural memory, and contemporary interpretations of the city and its region.

The evening program was divided into several thematic blocks. Particular attention was given to Jewish heritage, with the history of the Trenčín synagogue presented within the broader context of the history of the Jewish community in Slovakia. A strong personal dimension was added by Eva Umlauf, who shared her memories of growing up in Trenčín and her experience as a Holocaust survivor. The literary segment introduced contemporary works connected to the city, while the musical accompaniment enhanced the atmosphere of the event and underscored its multicultural character.

The historical segment of the evening then focused on Slovak–German cultural heritage in the region. In this context, our researcher Michal Korhel presented the issue of German settlement in the so-called Hauerland region, using the town of Handlová and its surroundings as a case study. The presentation was based on his field work and explored the traces of German heritage in the region, as well as contemporary forms of remembrance and reinterpretation of the German presence. In his contribution, Michal highlighted the ambivalent nature of this heritage, which oscillates between historical continuity and discontinuity shaped by post-war developments. In conclusion, he emphasized that German heritage should not be seen solely as a closed chapter of the past, but as a dynamic element of the present.

Following the presentation, Michal engaged in a discussion with Brunhilde Reitmeier-Zwick, Federal Chairwoman of the Carpathian German Association in Germany. Together, they addressed broader questions of cultural heritage preservation, identity, and the intergenerational transmission of memory within the context of the Carpathian German community. The discussion highlighted the importance of dialogue between historical research and the perspectives of those who actively carry this tradition forward.

In her latest blog post, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska reflects on how seemingly distant regions can reveal strikingly familiar historical patterns. Using Nice as a case study, she explores how shifting borders, layered identities, and post-displacement experiences, often associated with Central and Eastern Europe, also shape parts of Western Europe.

Blending travel reflection with scholarly insight, the post invites readers to reconsider what we think of as “unique” in European history and to look beyond regional frameworks.

Link to the blog post you can find here.

The March issue of the Czech cultural magazine A2 focuses on the Sudety region and features an interview with our researcher, Karina Hoření. In the interview, Karina shared insights from our Spectral Recycling project and spoke with journalist Alžběta Medková about common stereotypes surrounding the Czech borderlands. They discussed the widespread belief that people in the borderlands are ‘without roots.’ Karina explained that this view assumes the region has not changed since 1945 and that even the third generation of “new” residents cannot form a connection to the place where they grew up. She also noted that this idea relies on an idealized image of other Czech regions and their communities. To show how borderland residents build strong ties to their homes, she shared quotes from her interviews where people described deep emotional, physical, and spatial connections to the area.

Link to the interview you can find here.

In mid-March, our team met for a seminar dedicated to the book The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators by Michael Rothberg, a scholar of American literature and memory studies.

During the meeting, we reflected on how the concept of implicated subjects might be applied to the post-displacement areas that our team studies. Rothberg proposes a perspective that goes beyond the traditional division between perpetrators and victims, pointing to a space between them — a sphere of implication. In this view, individuals and groups may be connected to injustices or forms of violence in different ways, even if they were not their direct perpetrators. At times, such implication may also bring certain benefits. At the same time, Rothberg emphasizes that recognizing one’s own implication can become a starting point for transformation — encouraging reflection on responsibility and solidarity that goes beyond a simple distinction between the guilty and the innocent. In his book, Rothberg develops this theory through analyses of examples from film and other fields of art.

During our seminar, we attempted to bring these reflections into the context of research on post-displacement regions, which our team investigates. Together, we considered what forms of “implication” can be observed in the histories and experiences of people living in these areas and how such a perspective might help us better understand the complex relationships between past and present, as well as the role of material culture that is the central focus of our project.

Our researcher Karina Hoření was invited by the Písek Municipal Library to share her thoughts on the 2021 documentary “Jak jsem se stala partyzánkou” (“How I Became a Partisan”). The film, made by Vera Lacková, tells the story of her great-grandfather, Ján Lacko, who joined the antifascist resistance during the Slovak National Uprising in 1944. It explores not only his experiences during the war, but also how his story is remembered by the women in her Romani family, as well as the ongoing presence of anti-Romani prejudice in Slovakia today. Karina contributed insights from her own field research in central Slovakia, the same area where Vera’s family once lived. In this region, Romani, German, and Slovak partisans, along with members of the pro-Nazi home guards, all operated in ethnically mixed villages, and the memory of these events still shapes personal relations of people nowadays. 

In late winter, our team met for a regular seminar to explore a new genre. For the first time, we listened to an audio documentary. The documentary Kořeny se hledají v zemi (“Roots Are Found in the Ground”) follows artist Lucie Králíková as she and her colleagues invite participants of one of her projects to Northwestern Bohemia. Together, they explore the region’s former German heritage, visible in abandoned villages and in the remaining fruit trees that recall the vibrant life that existed before the Second World War.

While listening to the documentary, which focuses on memory work typical of the Czech borderlands, we discussed the strong visual elements and stereotypes associated with the region. We also considered how perceptions of post-displacement areas differ in Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland.

If you would like to experience the atmosphere of a post-displacement fruit feast, you can listen to the documentary here.

In this blog post, Michal Korhel explores the March of Gratitude dedicated to the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) as a present-day form of commemoration that blends physical participation with mediated remembrance. Drawing on participant observation and informal conversations with attendees, he reflects on how walking through historically significant landscapes can foster a form of experiential memory. At the same time, this dimension of memory often remains subtle and unarticulated.

Michal points to a tension between immediate, lived experience and the symbolic frameworks that seek to give the event a clear commemorative meaning. He suggests that the significance of the march tends to emerge retrospectively, if it emerges at all, rather than being fully realized in the moment of participation.

Link to the blog post you can find here.

In February, our team had the pleasure of hosting a seminar with Brett Ashley Kaplan, Professor and Conrad Humanities Scholar in the Program in Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. During the seminar, our guest presented not only a portion of her research but also offered insight into the creative process behind her recent book on the now-vanished village of Seneca Village, located in the nineteenth century on the grounds of what is today Central Park in New York City.

Together, we reflected on what “haunting” truly means—whether it should be understood solely as a feature associated with figures (“human” ghosts), or whether it may also belong to objects. This question resonated particularly strongly in the context of our project, which explores the agency of things and the material traces of the past. The conversation then expanded to the issue of memory tied to specific spaces—how bringing new information about the past to light affects contemporary communities and what kinds of reactions it can provoke. We also considered the differences between the work of writers and scholars—how both groups gather and interpret data, construct narratives, and combine facts with imagination.

For our team, the seminar only broadened our research perspective but also opened up new questions about the relationship between place, memory, and that which—though seemingly absent—continues to shape the present. We particularly appreciated that our guest introduced us to the context of New York City, with its entangled memories of Indigenous and Black communities, erased from the white history.

Is there a mathematical formula for the most cohesive territorial shape a state can have? In the Czech literary magazine “Tvar”, our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, explores this very question in her essay on postwar Polish efforts to conceptualize such a model.

The whole issue of the magazine, titled The Polish Ends of the World, is devoted to recent Polish literary attempts to answer the question about geographical and cultural scope of Poland as Central European state. Karolina engages with this theme as well, and mentions the work we are doing within the Spectral Recycling project!

A link to the full text you can find here.