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The Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies is a research center in Halle, Germany, which focuses on Polish history as well as the current issues related to the Polish politics, society, language, and culture. Aside from the research, carried out by its own research fellows, the Center offers Interdisciplinary Polish Studies Master’s programs for the students of the universities in Halle and Jena. A part of this programs is the lecture series entitled “Was Sie schon immer über Polen wissen wollten (oder sollten)” [Everything you always wanted (or should) know about Poland]. Our researcher Michal Korhel was invited to give a lecture about his research on German ghosts in West Pomerania.

In his presentation entitled “Geisterlandschaften? Deutsche Spuren in der Kulturlandschaft Ostmitteleuropas” [Spectral Landscapes? German Traces in the Cultural Landscape of East Central Europe] Michal introduced the theoretical concepts guiding his research, as well as sketched an overview of the West Pomerania region, where he conducts his fieldwork. Consequently, he presented the various categories of ghosts he encountered in the cultural landscape of the region of Goleniów and Nowogard. The following discussion with students and external participants focused predominantly on Michal’s findings during his fieldwork in Poland and Slovakia, but also on the general reception of this topic in Germany.

Before the holidays, we decided to discuss another movie (here you can find link to the note about the previous one) – this time Karolina suggested a Polish classic, a popular comedy from the 1960s entitled “Sami swoi” (literally “Only our Own” but the English title was “All Friends Here” and the film was released in Czechoslovakia under the name “Ahoj, sousede”).

The movie (1967) directed by Sylwester Chęciński follows two quarreling families, the Pawlaks and the Karguls. The plot consists of a series of pranks, prepared mainly by the heads of the peasant families, Kazimierz and Władysław. Compared to other Central European productions, which denounced and ridiculed the “small nature” of these nations, the setting of “Sami Swoi” is specific. The two families were resettled from the eastern regions Poland lost after the war (so called Kresy) to the “Recovered Territories” (Ziemie Odzyskane), the regions it gained from Germany and from which the German-speaking inhabitants were expelled. Against the backdrop of a comedy, the film depicts phenomena we encountered in our research, such as abandoned German cemeteries, remaining German priests, and looting in towns that became “ghost towns” after the forced transfer of German-speaking inhabitants.

Our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, recently gave a couple of radio interviews following the National Science Centre Award. We encourage you to listen to three of them, on the air on Radio TOK FM, Radio Kraków, and on Radio 357, where Karolina, alongside another laureate, Łukasz Opaliński, tells about her research, including the ghosts from our project, and the award.

If you are interested in the research of young scientists, do not hesitate to listen:

Radio Tok fm

Radio Kraków

Radio 357 

The new blog post traces back the fate of the “lion monument”, erected as a war memorial in Deutsch Krone in 1925, and toppled down in the postwar Wałcz. The author asks the question of the meanings inscribed into the monument by both, prewar German inhabitants of the town and postwar Polish inhabitants. She delves into the question of what was the aim of erecting war memorials, and what happened to the German heritage in the years following the incorporation of Central Pomerania into Poland.  

Link to the text you can find here.

Although we associate the German settlement in the Czech Republic primarily with the borderlands, a significant German-speaking minority also used to live in Prague. Our researcher, Karina Hoření, spoke about the prominent female figures of Prague’s German community, and why they have been forgotten, at a panel discussion organized by the Czech organization Gender Studies. Together with another discussant, Zuzana Schreiberová, director of the non-profit organization Multicultural Centre Prague, they introduced the audience to interesting women such as photographer Grete Popper, politician Irene Kirpal or activist Kate Frankenthal, but also discussed how their life paths were influenced by their gender and ethnicity. Recording of the debate is available here.

For some time, the Spectral Recycling team helps with a local project in Goleniów, where Michal Korhel does his fieldwork. The project, Goleniowskie Fotohistorie (here you can find their webpage as well) contributes to the local post-war history through the prism of photography and family histories. They have already managed to collect hundreds of glass negatives and identify some of the people on them. The next steps are the interviews about the life stories of those identified persons. Michal Korhel has already done one interview (you can watch it here).

Lately, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska joined and conducted a video interview as a part of this project as well. Karolina listened to the story of Mrs. Bronisława Filipczyk, who came from Germany to Goleniów with her mother as a six-year-old girl. The interlocutor recalls the first moments after coming to Goleniów, how the city, their apartment and the life of her and her peers looked like. Moreover, Mrs. Filipczyk tells us whether there were any Germans at that time (and for how long they stayed) and what the relations with them looked like.

Link to the interview on Youtube you can find here.

As the conducting of interviews is a central part of our research methodology, in November 2023 our team held an internal seminar on the topic of oral history and oral history interviews. Our guest speaker was Jakub Gałęziowski from the University of Warsaw and the Polish Oral History Association.

As an introduction Jakub offered us an overview about the history and development of oral history in Poland. His presentation was followed by a lively discussion. Jakub as well as our team members shared their experiences in conducting interviews in various contexts and discussed the difficulties they had encountered. However, the main focus of the discussion was the issue of what distinguishes oral history from other methods of conducting interviews. As Jakub stressed, interviews are used as a tool in various disciplines, but not every conducted interview can be classified as an oral history one. Among the main characteristics of this interdisciplinary method and practice is its aim to produce historical sources. The emphasis of oral history interviews is not (or not only) on the content but mainly on the narrator and dialogue they create.

For our team this presentation and discussion was an important basis for future reflections regarding the methodology of the Spectral Recycling project. We are very thankful to Jakub for accepting our invitation and joining our seminar. We also congratulate him on an award-winning book “Niedopowiedziane biografie. Polskie dzieci urodzone z powodu wojny” [Untold Biographies. Polish Children Born of War], where he shows how the oral history method can be of great importance.

Within the series of lectures “Science at the Centre”, delivered by the NCN Award winners, and launched by the Copernicus Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and the National Science Centre, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska shared her insights into looking in the post-displacement regions of Central Europe.

Following the research methodology we expore in our project, Karolina proposed to consider ghosts not as spiritual entities, but rather to see them as material remnants that shed light on forgotten histories and allow us to understand different experiences. Specifically, the mass migrations after World War II, when German and German-speaking communities were forced to migrate from present-day Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, and new settlers came. 

Karolina started her presentation by taking us in a time machine and transporting us to the spring of 1945 in Central Pomerania. If you are interested in what has followed, you can watch the recording on the YouTube Channel of the Copernicus Center (link here).

In November, our team participated in two training sessions, during which we learned basic and advanced options for working with MAXQDA software. MAXQDA is one of the programs for processing qualitative data such as interviews or archival materials that our team works with on a daily basis. Training sessions were led by Piotr Binder, a certified trainer of MAXQDA, and also an academic who could therefore show us many functions useful for our work. We are enthusiastic about the possibilities this software offers us and looking forward to start using it! 

As for other members of our team, research stays in the field are part of Karin’s work. We usually go to two countries for longer periods of time. For Karin, it is northern Bohemia and central Slovakia, two regions where the German past is still palpable. The field stays are intense, but at the same time often lonely. Ethnographers write down not only what they find out but also their feelings and experiences. To get you familiar with this particular experience, this time we present an excerpt from Karin’s diary from her second stay in central Slovakia. One Saturday in October, she went to Hadviga, originally a large village where mostly German Slovaks used to live, but which after the war became depopulated. Today, there are only a few summer cottages. Karin traveled with E., whom she had met in Hadviga already in the summer.

You can read blog post in Czech here.