Object structure
Title:

When the Mnemonic Actors Become Storytellers : The Lore of the ‘Recovery’ in 1970s Poland

Subtitle:

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 128 (2023), Mnemonic Wars in Poland

Creator:

Ćwiek-Rogalska, Karolina ORCID

Institutional creator:

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla ISNI ; Fundacja Instytutu Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk ISNI

Contributor:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Publisher:

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Date issued/created:

2023

Description:

p. 181-204

Subject and Keywords:

Recovered Territories ; myth ; lore ; formerly German lands ; Związek Osadników Wojskowych ; Związek Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację

Abstract:

The article examines the memoirs of Polish soldiers who settled in the lands that Poland acquired after the Second World War, the so-called Recovered Territories. The author argues that these memoirs reflect different forms of conveying the stories about the ‘recovery’, i.e. the acquisition of the formerly German lands by the Polish state in 1945. Depending on the historical and political context, as well as the personal and collective experiences of the settlers, she identifies its two main forms: myth and lore. The myth involves stories that are considered authoritative and obligatory, while lore is a type of storytelling that involves stories that are considered flexible and optional by the people who tell or listen to them. She further analyses how the myth of the ‘recovery’ subsequently transformed over time into lore from the immediate post-war period up to the 1970s.

References:

Assmann Aleida, Między historią a pamięcią, ed. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (Warszawa, 2013).
Curp T. David, A Clean Sweep? The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Western Poland, 1945–1960 (Rochester–New York, 2006), vii.
Etkind Alexander, ‘Hard and Soft in Cultural Memory: Political Mourning in Russia and Germany’, Grey Room, 16 (2004), 36–59.
Grzechnik Marta, ‘Recovering’ Territories: The Use of History in the Integration of the New Polish Western Borderland after World War II’, Europe-Asia Studies, lxix, 4 (2017), 668–92.
Kersten Krystyna, ‘Osadnictwo wojskowe na Pomorzu Zachodnim’, Przegląd Zachodnio-Pomorski, 2 (1964), 29–61.
Mink Georges and Laure Neumayer (eds), History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Memory Games (Basingstoke, 2013).
Service Hugo, Germans to Poles: Communism, Nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing after the Second World War (Cambridge, 2013).
Sindbæk Andersen Tea and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, Disputed Memory: Emotions and Memory Politics in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (Berlin, 2016).
Traba Robert and Rafał Żytyniec, “Ziemie Odzyskane/utracony Heimat”, in Robert Traba and Hans Henning Hahn (eds), Wyobrażenia przeszłości. Polsko-niemieckie miejsca pamięci (Warszawa, 2017), 237–59.
Wawrzyniak Joanna, Veterans, Victims, and Memory: The Politics of the Second World War in Communist Poland, transl. Simon Lewis (Frankfurt am Main et al., 2015).

Relation:

Acta Poloniae Historica

Volume:

128

Start page:

181

End page:

204

Resource type:

Text

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

2450-8462 ; 0001-6829 ; 10.12775/APH.2023.128.08

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. A.295/128 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. A.296/128 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Projects co-financed by:

Ministry of Education and Science

Access:

Open

×

Citation

Citation style: