Zwischen Stettin und Greifswald – Hauptmotive der historiographischen deutsch- -polnischen Zusammenarbeit in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

The cooperation of the Polish and German historians from Greifswald and Szczecin was developed in the second half of the 20th century in different periods: in the times of German Democratic Republic and Polish People’s Republic and also after 1990, as the two states mentioned no more existed or rather when the social-political system in these states ceased to be. Idependently of the caesura 1990 the contacts of Polish and German historians still remained in the shadow of experiences of the 2nd W W a nd i ts e ffects. In the first phase the cooperation can be judged partially positive, in spite of its burden with a big political involvement and ideological servitutes, as the first move against the prevalent hostility between both nations till the middle of the 20th century. These contacts were not fully frank and spontaneous and inspired (especially on the East German side) through party and state factors which caused them being not very original. The both parties possessed a list of issues not to be discussed which allowed to minimize the possibility of starting a historiographic dispute. In the times of open wounds this procedure might be evaluated being positive. The output of this cooperation period seems to be rather limited and sometimes even embarrassing. This can be understood as the necessary way for both parties to achieve the access to archives or to get trust of authorities for realization other fields of research. After 1990, as the political and ideological restrictions no more existed, the mutual German-Polish investigations of the Pomeranian past could experience their development in full bloom, which can be estimated upon a rich amount of publications. In that time, one was not able to create a durable base for the cooperation which could allow the new generation of Pomerania researchers to abandon looking for new ways of communication and seldom used paths of mutual contacts