Nation-Building and the Linguistic Situation in Upper Silesia

Language became the basis of nation-building in Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During the same period Czech, German and Polish nationalists had contested Upper Silesia as a multilingual region before the nation-states of Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland took over this role. In the first half of the twentieth century, this land was divided and redivided among these nation-states. Each change entailed an alteration in language policies aimed at ennationalising Upper Silesia's inhabitants into one nation or another. Standard national language being the yardstick of nationality, the local non-standard language forms were earmarked for eradication because they could spur further emergence of Upper Silesia's ethnic groups or serve as a springboard for new nationalism(s). The Central European strain of ethnic nationalism steeped in language clashed with other loci of identity such as religion, the monarch or state. Sometimes this helped ethnic groups to survive despite ennationalising pressure exerted by the established nation-states. Officially, during the communist period, Warsaw managed to homogenise Upper Silesia into an indistinguishable part of the Polish nation-states. After 1989 it proved an illusion, as Upper Silesia seems to be the most ethnically and nationally diversified region in post-communist Poland.     

The Joint Polish--German Commission for the Revision of School Textbooks and Polish Views of German History

The Joint Polish–German Commission for the Revision ofSchool Textbooks was set up in 1972, bringing together historiansfrom Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany in view of reopeninga scholarly dialogue after decades of almost complete noncommunication.Until the late 1980s, the commission played a prominent roleas a forum for cross-national discussions on Polish-German Beziehungsgeschichte,and most of the leading Polish experts in German history participatedin its proceedings. For the development of Polish historiographyon Germany the work of the commission seems to have been relevantin at least two respects. The commission's regular conferenceson controversial or methodologically complex issues of Polish-GermanBeziehungsgeschichte contributed, on the one hand, to defininga new agenda for Polish historiography on Germany. The interestin explicitly comparative approaches to German and Polish historyincreased, and the focus shifted from specifically ‘Polishinterests’ in German history to more general issues. Onthe other hand, these conferences provided Polish historianswith the opportunity to make their research more visible toGerman historians (even outside the field of specialised EastEuropeanists)—a fact that encouraged Polish historiographyon Germany to pursue more ambitious tasks.     

The Annaberg as a German--Polish Lieu de Memoire

This essay analyses a fiercely contested transnational lieude mémoire in twentieth-century Polish—German history:the Annaberg. Historiography has thus far largely neglectedthe role played by this ‘holy mountain’ of UpperSilesia, a symbol that has stood at the heart of a number ofcompeting identity-forging narratives. The competition overthe Annaberg as a site for multiple collective memories occurredon three distinct but often overlapping levels: first betweennation-states, secondly between ideological camps, and thirdlybetween national- and local-level actors. Drawing on a substantialbody of primary sources, this article contributes both to thescholarly investigation of a political myth that cast a longshadow over German—Polish relations and to the growingacademic interest in transnational ‘realms of memory’.     

A Duty to Forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49

In Soviet-occupied East Germany during the mid- to late 1940s,a remarkable but scarcely remarked-upon transition took place.Hundreds of thousands of young Germans who had previously beenmembers of the Nazi youth organizations, the Hitler Youth (HJ)and the League of German Girls (BDM) flocked to join the Communist-ledFree German Youth (FDJ), a unisex ‘united youth organization’founded under Soviet auspices in March 1946. This paper examinesthe experiences of this ‘twice betrayed’ generation,whose members rapidly—though with varying degrees of enthusiasm—switchedallegiance from Nazism to Communism after the Second World Warand ultimately exchanged life in one authoritarian youth organizationfor life in another. Drawing on archival and interview material,it first seeks to outline Communist attitudes towards denazificationamong the young in the postwar period, before going on to examinefrom a grass-roots perspective the experiences, motivations,and attitudes of those who exchanged their HJ or BDM membershipbooks for those of the FDJ. Despite, or perhaps because of,East Germany's strongly-espoused and rigidly dogmatic ‘anti-fascism’,open discussion of the Nazi past was—for a variety ofreasons—taboo during the immediate postwar period, particularlyamong the young. This paper concludes by discussing the reasonsbehind this ‘pact of silence’ between the Communistsand the ‘Hitler Youth generation’—and howit impacted upon subsequent generations of young people ‘borninto socialism’.     

'Pomorze' or 'Preussen'? Polish Perspectives on Early Modern Prussian History

The attitudes of Polish historical scholarship towards the historyof early modern Prussia has been deeply marked by the partitionsof Poland and the anti-Polish coalition between Prussia, Russiaand Austria, which denied Poland its own statehood for wellover a century. In contrast to nineteenth-century German ‘Landesgeschichte’,which focused on local research and archival resources, historiansfrom Poland have usually opted to stay more within patternsof national history-writing. When the Polish state was reconstitutedafter the First World War, hostilities built up between Germanand Polish historical schools on Prussia, expressed in the NationalDemocratic-influenced myl zachodnia (Western thought) on thePolish side, and a not less expansionist Ostforschung on theother side of the border. It was only after the catastropheof the Second World War, the redrawing of national borders ineast central Europe, and under the influence of Marxist historicalconcepts in the People's Republic of Poland that nationalistapproaches as well as the ‘black legend’ of thePrussia's past were temporarily suppressed and finally replacedby a more research-led scholarship. During the second half ofthe twentieth century, Polish historiography was in fact muchquicker and more thorough than its German counterpart to forgethe history of Prussia into a major academic subject. Sincethe 1980s, if not earlier, an extremely fruitful dialogue hasdeveloped between scholars—a dialogue which does not alwayspenetrate journalistic and public awareness, as recent polemicssurrounding the controversially planned ‘Centre for Expulsions’in Berlin have shown.     

Not Just a 'Dating Game': Origins of the Holocaust at Auschwitz in the Light of Witness Testimony

Historians now view Auschwitz as marginal to the origins ofthe Holocaust. In a surprising volte-face from a generationago, Historians now accept what can be called a ‘transformationnarrative’. That is, most accounts cast Auschwitz, notas first mover, but as late comer to the destruction of theEuropean Jews. This fits a much larger historiographical movementattributing the Final Solution to a local initiative withina disorganized, even ‘debureaucratized’ German state.Once again, this departs completely from, say, Raul Hilbergor Hannah Arendt, who defined the Holocaust as a crime uniqueto modern, organized society. Thus, in the case of Auschwitz,what some have come to ridicule as the ‘dating game’—thealmost obsessive attempt to identify a precise microchronologyof the final solution—has larger implications. It cutsto the heart of whether we see the Holocaust as a crime of amodern, dynamic industrial state or as a haphazard initiative. This article uses testimony from the three most relevant professionalgroups that built the genocidal factories of Auschwitz to reassessthe current consensus. Contrary to the ‘transformationnarrative’, little evidence supports the argument thatthe SS and its independent contractors were somehow divorcedfrom efforts to mechanize genocide from Minsk to Lublin to Oswiecimin the autumn of 1941. The testimony as a whole—drawnfrom civilian managers, SS architects, and prisoner-engineers—leaveslittle doubt that the new crematoria of Birkenau were intendedfrom the beginning (that is, from October 1941) as gas chambers.The ‘transformation narrative’, ironically enough,finds support in only one account: the internally contradictoryand almost desperate testimony given by one former SS architectat his own trial. To put a fine point on it, the ‘transformationnarrative’ hews most closely to a dubious defence narrativegiven by a perpetrator, in which neither his lawyers nor hisfellow defendants placed much credence.     

Seeking labour's aristocracy? The ‘Westphalian incident’ and Polish nationality policy in the immediate aftermath of war*

ABSTRACT. In the immediate aftermath of World War II the Polish state placed a high value on national homogeneity. The Polish Committee of National Liberation signed population exchange agreements with its socialist neighbours in September 1944 and expelled the German population who remained within the new Polish borders. Far less frequently discussed are the Polish state's efforts to persuade ‘Poles’ in Western Europe to move to Poland. This paper analyses how Polish policy towards ‘Westphalian Poles’ and the British reaction to Polish claims offer insight into both Polish and British nationality and citizenship policy in the immediate post‐war period. I argue that the quality of potential labour played an important role in both British and Polish thinking. The paper also contends that the ‘Westphalian incident’ gives useful insights into the emergence of the Cold War.     

The Emancipation 'Pantheon of Heroes' in the German-Jewish Public Memory in the 1930s

The decline of the emancipation of the German Jews in the early1930s and its ending under the Nazi regime motivated their variousspokesmen to reevaluate their past, by discussing the heritageof the major emancipation heroes. Based mostly on the Jewishpress, which was quite free to handle an internal Jewish dialogueuntil 1938, the article examines the representations of MosesMendelssohn, David Friedländer, Rahel Varnhagen, HeinrichHeine and Gabriel Riesser in the Jewish public of this time.It demonstrates how spokesmen of the major German-Jewish politicalcamps—the liberals, the Zionists and the Orthodox—referredto these figures in different ways in their effort to createa useful past for their readers. Thus, whereas radical Zionistand Orthodox Jews presented Mendelssohn's legacy as the beginningof the process of assimilation which was doomed to fail, others,who were mostly but not only liberals, portrayed a much morepositive Mendelssohn. For them, Mendelssohn did not demonstratethe roots of the 1930s German-Jewish decline, but rather thesources of its potential recovery. Friedländer, Varnhagenand Heine were frequently mentioned as betrayers of Jewish honour,but certain spokesmen referred to them differently. Riesser,whose nineteenth-century heroic struggle for emancipation seemedin the 1930s to be a total failure, was still embraced by certainJewish liberals as a hero who did the best for his time. Thearticle also shows how the escalation of the late 1930s moderatedinternal Jewish historical polemics, almost creating a Jewishconsensus about the past.     

The Medieval Colonization of Central Europe as a Problem of World History and Historiography

The author of this article asks two main questions. First, whatwas the nature of the so-called medieval colonization in theeastern half of central Europe? Secondly, which factors decidedthat in the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentiethcentury, during the era of a rising modern nationalism and imperialism,colonization became the—not always conscious—toolof manipulation in the fight for so-called ‘historic rights’in certain territories and the battle for the ‘forgingof nations’. In particular, in German historiography themyth of medieval colonization was born, which had very littlein common with medieval reality. Even German peasants were supposedto have marched East, not in order to seek out better livingconditions, as one Flemish song went, but to subject for Germany‘empty space’ in the barbaric East. At the sametime, the author presents the thesis that several ideas aboutthe topic of medieval colonization developed under the influenceof the colonization of North America, especially in California—contemporaryto many of these German scholars. This found its expressionin the terminology used, in numerous comparisons, and even inthe fundamental suggestion that German law legitimized the Germanclaim for almost the whole of central and eastern Europe. Thebasic conviction among German historians and politicians wasthat these territories should belong to the Empire under thesame conditions as India ‘belonged’ to the English,and Algeria to the French.     

For the Community: Scottish Historical Archaeology and the Politics of Land Reform

In Scotland, land reform is, historically and still today, a defining political issue and a subject of debate. Central to this debate are different ideological understandings of the rural past. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Scottish land question and explore several of the main—sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting—ideologies concerning land, as put forward or supported by different constituencies: politicians; landowners; crofters; Scots more generally; and members of the Scottish diaspora. I consider the histories to which these ideologies relate and seek to locate the historical archaeology of rural Scotland in its political and social contexts.     

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

National and Regional Population Trends in Kyrgyzstan, 1989-1999: Results from the Recent Census of Kyrgyzstan and 2001 Update

A specialist on population change and urbanization in the countries of the former USSR examines nationwide and regional total, urban, and rural population change in Kyrgyzstan for 1989—1999—the period between the last census of the former USSR and the first census of independent Kyrgyzstan—with selected updates to 2001. Of particular interest is the availability of oblast-level nationality data making possible the detailed investigation of changes in the regional and rural-urban populations of major nationality groups in Kyrgyzstan. A focus is on the decreasing sizes of Russian, Ukrainian, and German populations and population growth among ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, R12, R23. 4 figures, 17 tables, 41 references.     

The Boer War and the Media (1899-1902)

The South African War that broke out in October 1899 was bothvery old and very new. It was a traditional war, the last ofthe old-fashioned British imperial wars, with cavalry playinga significant part. But it was also a very modern war, for instancein the British Army's use of railways to subdue the Boers inthe early months of 1900, or the use of trench warfare by theBoers along the Modder river. It was disturbingly new in theway that it changed in the autumn of 1900 from a war betweenarmies to a guerrilla war against a civilian population, mostdistastefully so in the British concentration camps set up tohouse Boer women and children. Above all, it was a distinctlycontemporary war in its impact on the media, especially thenewspapers, and in the interaction between the media and thoseparticipating in the fighting. It was a significant war, farbigger than originally expected, and was therefore big news.The British Army, ill-prepared for the original Boer invasionof Natal, at first numbered 75,000 troops. In the end, the Britishand imperial forces totalled 450,000 with contingents from Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and India. The British lost 22,000 men,13,000 of them from disease. The Boers lost about 7,000 in thefield, while another 27,000 (many of them very young children)are estimated to have died in the concentration camps. Therewere also about 20,000 black and ‘coloured’ Africanswho died in concentration camps, though this was little reportedat the time. So it was a major episode in British military history.The impact on British opinion of the relief of Ladysmith andespecially of Mafeking in 1900 was quite overwhelming. In afrenzy of ‘jingo’ celebration, the verb ‘mafficking’entered the language. In these circumstances, the consequencesof the Boer War on the media and its representation of war wereinevitably massive.     

The Forging of the Polish Army, 1918-1919

ABSTRACT

With the regaining of independence by Poland in November 1918 it was essential to create a unified homogenous army, the more so that Poland was faced by conflict from its neighbours at a time when the borders of Poland were by no means formed let alone finalised. There were at least four seperate Polish armies and a plethora of local formations springing up all over the country. From these four formations: the Polish Military Organisation, the Polnische Wermacht, the Greater Poland Army and the Polish “Blue” Army in France. Moreover, the officer and NCO corps came from four distinct traditions. Those of the wartime Legions (Polish tradition) and of the three partitioning powers. All had different military traditions and training. An important factor was also that many of the them had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish language having served in garrisons far from the Polish lands. Faced with wars with the Ukrainians for Lwów and the south eastern lands, with the Germans over the Province of Greater Poland, Pomerania and Silesia, with the Czechs over Teschen and above all with Bolshevik russia in the east it was essential that the Polish Army unified as quickly as possible. That this was done within the year and eventually resulted in Poland winning the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920 and securing its borders and independence was in no small measure a result of the rapid unification and creation of an homogenous Polish Army with a single command structure and organisation. The binding glue was the deep rooted sense of national pride and desire to live and work in a free Poland.     

Beyond the Regnum Teutonicum

The essay evaluates the distinctiveness and importance of thework of Timothy Reuter, based on a major recent collection ofhis writings. It suggests that Reuter's roots in both the Germanand English scholarly traditions, combined with his unusuallybroad historical interests, enabled him to bring unique perspectivesto bear upon the development of European political institutions,mentalities, and modes of behaviour during a period—theninth to twelfth centuries—which is still often ascribedfundamental formative importance in European life. In particular,Reuter succeeded in transcending some of the structural limitationsof both the English and (post-war, West-) German historiographiesof the central medieval period.     

West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977

In 1944 we received, hidden in a tube of toothpaste, a circular from the Central Committee of the French Communist Party addressed to party members in prisons, prisoner of war and concentration camps. It gave guidance on the tasks of the party in such places, stressing particularly the need for national and international solidarity, clandestine propaganda and preparation for escape. We had already acted on similar lines, nevertheless the letter was fully discussed by our committee, accepted and distributed, with appropriate caution to other camps. I delivered a copy to the women comrades in Rajsko, one of the subsidiary Auschwitz camps.Account by Jonny Huttner, a Jewish and Polish-German prisoner in Auschwitz-Monowitz 1 ¹Len Crome, Unbroken: Resistance and Survival in the Concentration Camps (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 102. ?Peter Meyer Filardo is the archivist at the Tamiment Library, New York University responsible for US radicalism collections. See the Library's website for additional information: http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/index.html      

The Rise of Vo¨lkisch-Nationalism and the Decline of German Liberalism: A Comparison of Liberal Political Cultures in Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia 1912-1924

Historians have tended to focus on political economic and political organisational factors in order to explain the rise of liberalism in the nineteenth century and the decline of liberalism in the twentieth. But these factors tell only part of the story, particularly in the German case. For the precipitous decline of German liberalism after 1890 cannot be understood without examining the rise of Austro-German völkisch (ethnic) nationalism in the same period. Comparing Germany's two most liberal regions, Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia, this article argues that liberalism became increasingly dependent for its political survival on an accomodation with ethnic nationalism. It is hoped that such a comparison will lead to a reexamination of the conventional ways in which German liberal success and failure are understood, and a re-evaluation of what it meant to be a liberal in Germany and Europe during the first third of the twentieth century.     

The contentious sovereignties of the camp: Political contention among state and non-state actors in Italian Roma camps

The global proliferation of camps manifests an alarming phenomenon of burgeoning marginalization, and shows that the concept of ‘camp’ is today increasingly crucial to grapple with current changes in the world’s geographies of exclusion and inclusion. Specifically, this article focuses on ‘institutional camps’, i.e. created by government agencies in alleged emergency situations and aims to conceptualize sovereignty over this type of camp. After critically reviewing the ongoing scholarly debate on camp sovereignty, I situate my approach within the work of scholars who see political authority over the camp as comprising a multiplicity of both state and non-state actors. The article contributes to this perspective by drawing on the theory of ‘contentious politics’ advanced by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001). Through this analytical framework, I suggest construing camp sovereignties as contentious, i.e. inherently constituted by conflicting and ever-evolving power relations that change according to framing strategies, political opportunities, resources and repertoires of action. In order to show the benefits of such approach, the paper focuses on the empirical case of the Italian Roma camps in Rome, through which I show that camp sovereignty is not only fragmented into a multiplicity of actors but is also the result of conflict, compromise, negotiation, and co-optation among actors whose frames, opportunities, resources, and repertoires constantly change over time.