'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.