WBZ

This is the first monograph that explores the postwar history of the border cities Görlitz and Zgorzelec.

The book was presented on 25^th November 2009 in the WBC:

Kontinuitäten und Brüche deutsch-polnischer Erinnnerungskulturen. Görlitz/Zgorzelec 1945-2006 (Continuities and Disruptions in German-Polish Remembrance Cultures)

Elżbieta Opiłowska, Neisse-Publishings Dresden, September 2009

Participants: Professor Helga Schultz, Ph.D. (emeritus) from the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and Professor Zbigniew Korcz, Ph.D. from the Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław

Although the remembrance of the divided cities is the major topic of the book, theories of remembrance culture and collective remembrance as well as historical politics in the GDR and Poland play an important role. The regional policy provides a chronological insight – division of the city, story of displaced people, the Görlitz agreement, opening of borders in the 1970s until today; the example of certain remembrance sites: Ruhmeshalle, Stalag III A, Greeks and synagogue.

The hypothesis stated by the author is the existence of a cleavage in the field of cultural and communicative remembrance (J. Assmann) in Görlitz and Zgorzelec. And indeed the remembrance of people was part of the resistance against the tabooing and suppression from above as proven by the analysis of memories and biographical reports. The relocation and the loss of the homeland remained as traumatic experience core of the identity of the older generations surveyed. The author proves that the remembrance politic was of importance too. The rhetoric of politics in the GDR with the ‘peace boarder’ and German-Polish friendship as well as the myth of antifascism left traces in the memories of the citizens in Görlitz just as the Polish myth of ‘regained territories’ influenced the identity of the citizens in Zgorzelec. Opiłowska postulates, that although the friendship between the GDR and the People’s Republic of Poland was forced and is called ‚forced friendship‘ by historians, life in the border area offered possibilities for inhabitants to break-through the contact ban. The forced partnership between schools and cooperation of enterprises often led to private meetings and facilitated an easier ‘new beginning’ after 1989.

“This work is the most substantial social study about the inhabitants of the German-Polish boarder cities Görlitz and Zgorzelec, a study that until now has not been done neither by German nor by Polish sociologists.”(Professor Zbigniew Kurcz, PhD)

http://www.neisseverlag.de/Neuerscheinungen-Details.38+M56bc071aa47.0.html?&L=0&cHash=a83b5a9686