We are happy to announce that in the course of her fieldwork in Wałcz, our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, is collaborating with the new initiative of the Wałcz Land Museum, namely the project “Wałcz DNA”. You can read more about it here. The project aims to gather stories about the postwar history of Wałcz and collect memorabilia of the first settlers. By writing down the stories about the lives of the postwar inhabitants of the town and its surroundings, the Museum wants to create a memory room in the building of the Wałcz Land Museum, which will tell about the post-war everyday life of the new inhabitants of Wałcz and the surrounding area.
Since the Museum initiative, funded by the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage as part of the National Institute of Museums’ program “Memory Rooms”, is focused on the objects that the newcomers brought with them, it perfectly aligns with the aims of the SpectralRecycling project. As we want to uncover the stories behind the objects left behind by the previous German inhabitants of the region, we can easily join forces.
Thus far, we have conducted several interviews together. Karolina was also able to dive into the rich collection of the Museum archival sources, connected with the German past of Wałcz. On February 21, 2024, Karolina gave a lecture at the meeting of the local club for international collaboration. We are looking forward to further collaboration and the outcomes! We can’t wait to see the exhibition that will come from this project.