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On June 11th, 2024, Karina Hoření held a public lecture for a wider audience at the café Boršov in Prague, in Czech Republic. Her presentation was entitled “Myths, Ghosts, and Treasures of Czech Borderlands – Hauntological Perspective” and invited guests to re-think established narratives about Czech borderlands and the expulsion of ethnic Germans.

Karina was invited by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a Prague-based group of scholars interested in popular culture topics as an important factor for societal imagination, to close this year’s series of lectures called “The Magic Year”. Despite the sunny weather, this lecture attracted a wide audience who learned about Karina’s findings from her field research in the Northern Bohemian city of Liberec (formerly German Reichenberg). She enclosed, for example, how villas of the German-speaking industrialists were repurposed as sanatoriums for the masses during the communist period and why, now abandoned, they could be interpreted as ghosts of former utopias. 

Within the lecture, Karina also presented stories of several objects owned by expelled Germans and what the current inhabitants of the town think of them. 

According to the active discussion, the lecture proved highly successful. Members of the audience shared their own family stories but also discussed the current peripheral status of the Czech borderlands. The debate showed that the topic of expulsion is relevant also outside the post-displacement regions.

250 years ago, Czech was not widely spoken or respected. It was considered a language of the lower class, an ethnographic curiosity. German was the language of choice for those seeking success and social advancement in the Habsburg Empire. However, the national revival movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries changed the status of the Czech language. This cultural and political movement sought to revive not only the language, but subsequently also culture and as a result, to create Czech national identity. This was the topic of the new episode of the Czechostacja podcast. Host, Jakub Medek, together with our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, delve into the various stages of the revival, with a focus on Czech history and culture. They explore the lesser-known issues of linguistic formation, as well as the mystification of the manuscripts and the disputes about defining the Czech identity. The question of the Czech-German relations is present as well throughout the episode. By examining these topics, the podcast provides listeners with a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances of Czech history and culture. 

You can listen to the podcast (in Polish) here.

Photography as hauntological art carries the idea of capturing and preserving fleeting moments, memories and emotions that haunt the present. During her fieldwork, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska stumbled upon a photograph in a family archive that depicted a sense of longing, absence and nostalgia. This sparked her interest in exploring the role of photography in post-displacement heritage. Link to the blog post about her thoughts you can find here.

The Goleniowskie Fotohistorie project, which our team collaborates with, delves into the use of photography as means of reconstructing and preserving the memory of displaced communities, shedding light on their history and cultural identity. If you want to find out more about the project, visit their web page.

Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska has been appointed to the Council of the Wałcz Land Museum by the Wałcz City Council. The primary purpose of the council is to ensure that the museum fulfills its obligations to the community and its mission. Karolina will work alongside other council members, including dr Henryk Paweł Dąbrowski, Piotr Wojtanek, ks. bp dr Arkadiusz Trochanowski, Adam Biernacki, and Paweł Łakomy.

Karolina’s cooperation with the museum includes her involvement in the “Wałcz DNA” project, which aims to gather stories about the postwar history of Wałcz and collect memorabilia of the first settlers. More information about her work with the museum and the project can be found here and on the museum’s website.

We are pleased to share that on Wednesday, May 28th, we convened a seminar to delve into Magdalena’s doctoral research project. As a member of our team, Magdalena is also pursuing her PhD at the Anthropos Doctoral School in Warsaw, which emphasizes the presentation of research proposals to a committee in the first year of study. The committee, consisted of esteemed academics such as Prof. Dr. Magdalena Zowczak, who provided valuable theoretical insights to refine the project, Dr. Anna Engelking, Prof. IS PAN, who contributed her expertise on the ethnographic aspects, and Dr. Izabela Mrzygłód, who offered her historical perspective to enhance Magdalena’s project. The collective expertise facilitated a thorough review and constructive feedback for Magdalena to consider. We are thankful for the enriching dialogue and the guidance offered to Magdalena by the committee members.

The second day of the Spectral Recycling Team’s stay in Vienna (May 23rd) was dominated by the interactive workshop. Thanks to the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna we could meet in a beautiful Lanckoroński hall in the 3rd district to discuss, analyze, and interpret together with a wonderful group of researchers. 

In the first part of the meeting, led by Karolina, we delved together into theoretical aspects, such as how one can analyze ghosts, and how we can define them within the project and in a broader context. Recycling was also discussed, one of the examples was the Viennese monument to Karl Lueger, the pre-WW1 mayor of the city. The monument became controversial after the anti-Semitic views of Lueger were reminded to the inhabitants of the city by the waves of protests regarding the commemoration. Thus, the monument is regularly doused with paint and covered with inscriptions as a form of protest. This act repurposes the monument as a platform for expression. The latter sparked debate on whether certain actions could be considered as recycling, prompting participants to question and differentiate the phenomenon in their analyses. 

The method of exchanging ethnographic postcards was presented by Karina Hoření. It is a methodological experiment developed by Endre Dányi, Lucy Suchman, and Laura Watts that our team also adopted. Besides sharing within the team photos accompanied by a brief written commentary in the form of a postcard, we also show them to outsiders and ask them to find a common trace for chosen examples. The goal is to assess how different groups interpret the postcards. We were astonished by the brilliant interpretations that stemmed from this part of the workshop, as well as the rich and robust discussion between the participants on the individual postcards.

Michal Korhel led the final part of the workshop, drawing on the experiences of all team members and addressing challenging and intriguing issues in their work, focusing on what it means to work within the scope of spectral ethnography. He used the theme of the coal mine in Handlová and the German past present in the area, referring to stone houses, the language used in mines, or remnants of fruit orchards hidden in the forest that he frequently encountered in Handlová. 

Overall, the workshop provided a platform for insightful discussions and critical thinking on the project’s key concepts. We would like to express our gratitude to all the guests and workshop participants who joined us in exploring the possibilities hauntology provides for research. Your active participation, insightful suggestions, and engaging discussions truly enhanced the overall experience for everyone involved. We look forward to further opportunities to collaborate with you in the future!

On May 22nd, we had the pleasure of presenting our project at the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna. We were very happy to welcome invited commentators from the Department of History at the University of Vienna, Professors Claudia Kraft and Kerstin von Lingen, who kindly agreed to provide their insights about our presentation. 

The gathered guests were welcomed by the director of the Center, Piotr Szlanta. After a brief introduction by our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, the presentation began with an explanation concerning the research design, terminology, and team composition. What followed was the four parts where we delved into the details concerning the chosen case studies we decided to present to the Viennese audience.

Firstly, Karina Hoření presented her fieldwork in Liberec, formerly German Reichenberg, in Northern Bohemia. She tackled the question of the attitudes of individuals towards the objects left behind and presented how we understand ghosts within the project. She recounted stories of families and institutions using formerly German villas while seeking to attain the status once held by the German bourgeoisie. The story of the instruments stored in one of the villas in Liberec during the war, confiscated and subsequently asked to be returned in 1947 is a fascinating tale of how the regulations concerning the redistribution in Czechoslovakia looked like. Karina followed the attempts of the Austrian owner to recall the fate of the instruments and showed how archival research is complemented by ethnography. Thus, she presented her attempts to trace where one of the instruments, namely a piano, may have been stored. If you are interested in Karina’s research, please visit our blog where she recently presented (in Czech) an intriguing case of another confiscated piece of property, a Sinti wagon.

What followed was Karolina highlighting the post-war history of recycling various items and objects in the Central Pomerania region in Poland, in Wałcz county (formerly German Deutsch Krone) reminding that their acquisition and modification were often carried out with the consent of the authorities at that time, in accordance with the decree of 1946 regarding abandoned and formerly German properties. She focused on how the cemeteries in the town were reused, showing how recycling can be understood as a literal strategy of living with remnants. If you are interested in what happened to the German heritage in the years following the incorporation of Central Pomerania into Poland, you can read Karolina’s blog post (in Polish) about the fate of the monument of the lion, erected as a war memorial in Deutsch Krone in 1925, and toppled down in the postwar Wałcz. 

Third part of the presentation was Magdalena Bubík discussing the transformation of former Protestant churches and objects in Piła (formerly German Schneidemühl) in the Northern Wielkopolska region. These church properties were repurposed as elements in private homes, such as a baptismal font being used as an ashtray. This demonstrates a shift in the use and significance of religious artifacts in the community. Magdalena’s presentation shed light on the fate of these objects and the impact of cultural and historical changes on their perception and value. It prompts reflection on the evolving religious and social landscape in the region. If you want to see what other ghosts Magdalena has traced since she joined our team, look at her blog post  (in Polish) about ghosts on the Most Przyjaźni [the Friendship Bridge] connecting the towns of Český Těšín and Cieszyn.

Finally, Michal Korhel discussed the town of Handlová and how we can follow human-nonhuman relationships in post-displacement Slovakia. To do this, he focused on a natural catastrophe of the 1960s, namely the landslide, that happened in the town. He emphasized the changes brought about by these events that are still visible in the landscape.  Michal argued that it was a result of the negligence of the know-how and skills cultivated by the resettled German community of Handlová (formerly German Krickerhau). Suppose you want to know how the settlers and the generations of their children and grandchildren recycled the formerly German things according to their needs and beliefs in West Pomerania, where Michal carries out Polish part of his research. Then you should read his blog post (in Polish) about the (former) monument to the fallen soldiers of the First World War in Maszewo.

After the presentation, our esteemed guests Claudia Kraft and Kerstin von Lingen shared their thoughts on the research examples presented earlier, as well as asked general questions about the project. Thanks to their valuable insights, we were able to elaborate on the Central European context of our research, or selected methodologies we use, as well as attempts to describe the quality of being formerly German in Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia.

We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna. We are especially grateful to Monika Gromala and Marcin Kaim who facilitated our visit. We believe that our cooperation will bring positive outcomes for all participants. We appreciate the insightful input from our guests and value the enriching discussion that took place during the event and afterwards.

May was a busy month for our team. In the mid of the month, our PI Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska and researcher Karina Hoření attended the conference “Postcolonial, Decolonial, Postimperial, Deimperial” organised by the ERC CoG “Revenant—Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation”, affiliated at the University of Rijeka.

In their presentation titled “Industrial Specters Interwoven with a Carpet: a Story of Post-Imperial Nostalgia in Northern Bohemia”, Karina and Karolina presented a case study of a carpet produced in Vratislavice/Maffersdorf in the 1920s, that was lost after World War II but recently found. Currently, it is displayed in the new local library. They argued that the story of the carpet, seen as a ghost of the past, could be interpreted as a story of forgetting and remembering not only the Austro-Hungarian, but also German heritage in Central Europe. They pointed out both physical patterns on the carpet and its meanings but also the patterns of remembering the carpet and its producers, showing how the stories of success and missing glory, comprised with this object, are entangled with one another. 
The conference hosted many acclaimed scholars who shared our interest in the entangled history of European empires and their material remnants. You can watch keynote speeches on the YouTube channel of Center for Advanced Studies of University of Rijeka.

Our team members participated in lively discussions after each presentation. You can browse presentation summaries (including ours) in the booklet available here.

PhD students are obliged to present a prospectus of their individual research plan in an open seminar, which is intended to be a public defence of that prospectus, including an exercise in discussion and argumentation skills. Our collegue, Magdalena Bubík, is going to have such presentation in Polish on May 28, from 3 to 5 PM on Zoom, her subject is: Protestanckie przedmioty kultu w regionach post-przesiedleniowych słowiańskiej Europy Środkowej (Protestant Objects of Worship in the Post-Displacement Regions of the Slavic Central Europe).

If you would like to join the seminar and the discussion, please send us a message here.

When Polish settlers arrived in the so-called “Recovered Territories” after World War II, they encountered unfamiliar items, such as the monument to fallen soldiers of the First World War in Maszewo, West Pomerania. Michal Korhel demonstrates how the settlers and subsequent generations repurposed these former German possessions to suit their own needs and beliefs. This cultural adaptation and reuse of historical artifacts reflects the enduring impact of the settlers on the region’s identity and landscape.

Link to the text you can find here.