Nationalization campaigns and teachers' practices in Belgian–German and Polish–German border regions (1945–1956)

This contribution looks into nationalization and education in European borderlands inthe early post-World War II period. Belonging to Belgium and Poland, respectively, inthe interwar years, the Eupen – St. Vith – Malmedy and the East-Upper Silesia regionscame under German rule during World War II. Returned to the Belgian and Polishnation-states once the war was over, the regions experienced a pronounced upheavalin the population profile as a result of population transfers and reorientations ineducation curricula. The aim of these measures was to guarantee the nationalreliability of borderland inhabitants, with a special role being designated forteachers, who were perceived as crucial in the raising of children as national citizensimbued with certain core values. This contribution compares the methods employedby the authorities in selecting educational personnel for their borderlands, thenationalizing role teachers were to play and the way teachers gave meaning to theirprofessional practices

Biographical and scientific notes about Mark Lidzbarski (1868-1928): A translation from Ludmila Hanisch, Aufzeichnungen von Mark Lidzbarski (1868-1928), edited by Pierre Motylewicz and Ute Pietruschka. Halle-Wittemberg: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothe

In 2015 Ludmilla Hanisch published a study featuring the outcomes of a survey she had conducted in the legacy of Mark Lidzbarski. This legacy is housed in the archive of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft in Halle/Saale (Germany) and includes documents and evidence related to both the personal life and academic research of the renowned Semitist. In a terse and fluent style, the author provides an overview of the contents of the legacy interweaved with the life of Lidzbarski. The present translation aims at making this important contribution accessible to a wider audience and represents a tribute to the author, who passed away before it was published

Modernity and the Jewish Stigma. Julian Tuwim, Alfred Döblin and Kurt Tucholsky: Biographies and Work

The paper deals with biographical, ideological and artistic links between Julian Tuwim, Alfred Döblin and Kurt Tucholsky. On the one hand, the basis of comparison are biographical similarities, the Jewish origin of those three writers, their family dramas, the experience of politically opressive school, the trauma of revolution or war, and the exile to name just a few. On the other hand, the article demonstrates the ways the modernity has influenced the attitudes and texts of Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim. While talking about modernity, the author focuses on such phenomena as secularisation and urbanisation processes, mass political movements, and new cultural challenges.Tuwim, Döblin and Tucholsky were born into assimilated Jewish families. Their perspective on the stereotypical Jews (the orthodox Jews as well as Jewish bankers or manufacturers) is marked with antipathy, or even contempt. The writers’ ambivalence towards the diapora and towards their own origin illustrate “Jewish self-hatred”; however, all three authors change their opinion on Jewry in the face of the growing anti-Semitic and Nazi danger, and especially the Holocaust. Döblin is proud of being Jewish after his visit to Poland in 1924, Tucholsky warns German Jews against the consequences of their passivitivy, and Tuwim publishes in 1944 his agitating manifesto We, Polish Jews. Last but not least, the three authors go into exile because of their Jewish ancestry and sociocultural activities. Therefore, it is no coincidence thatone cannot help having associations with Heinrich Heine: his biography can be interpreted as a prefiguration of a Jewish artist’s biography.Furthermore, Tuwim, Döblin and Tucholsky are notably sensitive to social questions, and their sensitivity to such issues results to some extent from their difficult childhood and youth. Especially significant seem in that respect family conflicts and the moving from city to city, since such experiences increase the feeling of loneliness and the vulnerability to depression. Nevertheless, Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim come with impetus into the cultural life of Germany and Poland and work in the areas of literature, cabaret (satire) as well as journalism. They share sympathy for the political left and fears of the orthodox communism. They are simultaneously advocates and ardent critics of great cities. They pay attention to new phenomena (the popularity of cars, the role of the press, the new morality) and react to them. Their aim is creating a culture which appeals to the masses and educates them in a non-intrusive way. However, the awareness of their own intellectual superiority imposes distance towards lower social groups. The distance stems, firstly, from the universal ambivalence artists feel towards the masses, and secondly, from the ideological moderation characteristic of petit bourgoisie and of the political centre. In general, Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim are idealists who hope for a humanitarian world which is impossible in the era of extrem political violence leading to the Holocaust.Zadanie „Stworzenie anglojęzycznych wersji wydawanych publikacji” finansowane w ramach umowy nr 948/P-DUN/2016 ze środków Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę

Child Forced Labour. An Analysis of Ego Documents Thoughout Time

This article centralises a unique collection of ego documents created underCommunism in which Polish former child forced labourers articulate their warexperiences. A comparative analysis of them with recent testimonies reveals that theseego documents offer a more nuanced depiction of Germans and display richerinformation on the specific working conditions and daily routine for children than thecontemporary ones. A comparative reading of the archival testimonies with theirpublished equivalents shows how the streamlining of a publicly acceptable version ofthe past under Communism went both ways, that is, at times foregrounding thepropaganda content of autobiographical wordings, but also at other momentsdownplaying this element. The collection increases our understanding of child forcedlabour experiences during the Second World War, specifically the ways in whichchildren perceived that experience, and offers insights into the negotiated appropriationof Communist ideology at the individual level

re_form: OSTRALE-Biennale, 11. Internationale Ausstellung, Dresden, 28.7.-1.10.2017

Diese Publikation erscheint anlässlich der 11. Internationalen Ausstellung zeitgenössischer Künste Dresden und der 1. OSTRALE-BIENNALE vom 28. Juli - 01. Oktober 201

A Three-Dimensional Model of Enlarging the Mnemonic Conflict: The Case of Poland Under Second Law and Justice Government

The second Law and Justice (PiS) government, in power in Poland since 2015, reintroduced memory politics atop the policymaking agenda. However, within its strategy, mnemonic policymaking has reached beyond historical policies and commemorative initiatives. PiS represents a new, previously unseen, radical type of mnemonic actor - a memory excluder. It has used politics of the past not instead of politics of the present, but as its integral part - thus past, present, and future blur into one. Most of all, it has consciously enlarged the scope of collective memory dispute in Polish society, incorporating chronologically more distant events, policymaking dimensions previously never examined from the angle of memory, and more local and personalised instances of collective memory narratives. This paper aims to explain the mnemonic tactics of the second PiS government, proposing two novel concepts for the field. First, it defines the memory excluder as a new type of mnemonic actor, and later it explains its demeanours through a complex, three-dimensional model of enlarging the mnemonic conflict. This will be done using available evidence, examples, and ethnographic research on memory politics implemented in Poland in the years 2015-2017

Development of cold-water coral mounds in the southern Alboran Sea (Western Mediterranean Sea) since the last interglacial

Cold-water coral (CWC) mounds are formed due to the sustained growth of CWCs over geological timescales (thousands to tens of thousands of years). These seabed structures are discovered along continental margins of the Atlantic Ocean and its marginal seas. They are important archives for reconstructing the long-term development of CWCs and coral mounds. However, our knowledge about the coral mound formation and associated sedimentary processes is still limited. In the Mediterranean Sea, most CWC mounds were discovered in the so-called West and East Melilla CWC mound province (WMCP and EMCP, respectively). Particularly, coral mounds in the EMCP are arranged into four sub-clusters, each marked by specific morphologies and dimensions. The coral mound formation in the northern and westernmost sub-clusters of the EMCP has been reconstructed, whereas little is known about the history of coral mounds formation in the other unexplored sub-clusters of the EMCP, as well as the entire WMCP. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the CWC mound development in the southern Alboran Sea and the dominant environmental factors favoring the coral mound formation

Justifying the Margins: Marginal Culture, Hybridity and the Polish Challenge in Fontane\u27s Effi Briest

This dissertation argues that the interpretive framework from which Fontane\u27s Effi Briest is commonly approached limits discussion to metropolitan core culture and fails to address Fontane\u27s path-breaking accomplishment. After outlining limitations of some prominent approaches to Effi Briest in chapter one, my next four chapters explore alternative reading strategies that instead situate the novel in the imperial context of the new German state inflected by transnational relations and problematize the tendency to see Germany as a space territorially and culturally homogenized and stable. Chapter two reads the novel through Foucault\u27s notion of heterotopia to demonstrate Fontane\u27s heterotopic strategies as a counter-model to the monolithic mapping of novelistic space. In chapters three and four I use Bakhtin\u27s chronotopic strategies to show how Fontane fuses together fictional time and space into a productive force for depicting society in motion and change. I demonstrate how this spatial turn breaks with the traditional time-paradigm and opens up space for polyphony and dialogism. Chapter five discusses Fontane\u27s Wanderungen contrapuntally to draw attention to Fontane\u27s counter-strategies, which break with the master narrative in favor of small-scale ones, to show their relevance for Effi Briest. The rest of my dissertation focuses on the novel\u27s Eastern Pomeranian/Kessin-based chapters. Chapter six addresses the spatial arrangement of Hinterpommern from the viewpoint of the ruling elites. Chapter seven treats Kessin as a hybridized third space that both resists the dominant and represents an unstable and ambiguous alternative to paralyzing dichotomies of opposites. I also look into Hinterpommern as a contested space between Germans and Poles - and their competing claims over the Kasubians, inhabitants of the strategically important Baltic area. In chapter eight I show how the Polish margins impinge on Fontane\u27s fictional representation of Prussia and are articulated in both the content and structure of Effi Briest. In chapter nine I discuss Fontane\u27s representation of Polish/Slavic-hyphenated characters in terms of their different responses/resistance to anti-Slav/Polish prejudices and measures. In revealing the creative and transformative powers of margins this dissertation models alternative ways of approaching canonical writers and contributes to the transnationalization of German studies in particular and cultural studies in general