In the latest issue of the Zeitschrift für Slawistik you can find an article written by Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska titled “Memory-making and Vampire-hunting: A Hauntological Study of the “Recovered” Pomerania in the 1950s”.
This article examines how memory and materiality were managed in the Recovered Territories, lands incorporated by Poland after 1945, through a case study set in Central Pomerania. It juxtaposes Bram Stoker’s Dracula with 1958 bureaucratic documents concerning the trade in cemetery stones from former German graveyards near Koszalin. The study reveals how local and central authorities in People’s Poland navigated the legal, political, and symbolic challenges of dealing with remnants of German heritage. By exploring tensions between top-down directives from Warsaw and local interpretations, the article sheds light on broader post-war memory processes and the contested legacy of German material culture in the 1950s.
Link to the article you can find here.
fieldwork in Pomerania, photo: Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska