Transnational spaces in national places: early activists in Polish–West German relations

Abstract

This article investigates a legacy of transnational activism in Polish–West German relations during the 1950s and 1960s, connected to the borderlands/expellee background of several of the early activists who initiated the relations. At a time when the Polish and West German states maintained no official diplomatic relations with each other, the importance of non-state initiatives and dialogue breaking with the antagonistic nationalism of the two world wars grew disproportionately. These individuals' expellee background, bilingualism, cross-border networks and loosened national identities contributed to their effectiveness in Polish–German relations. Taking exception to the popular conceptions of expellees as necessarily identical with the negative or anti-Polish opinions commonly associated with the expellee organizations, the article also focuses specifically on how certain expellees and former borderlands inhabitants attempted to renegotiate their postwar roles, political stances and even identities by associating themselves with Polish–German relations. They challenged the dualistic and polarizing nature of media discussions about German expellees in politics. In addition, the article and these individuals pose a challenge to international relations/conflict resolution research to look to cross-border communities as key elements in postwar/post-genocide dialogues.

Keywords:

• Polish–German relations
• media
• transnational
• national

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was made possible through funding from the University of North Carolina University Center for International Studies, the Institut für Europäische Geschichte Mainz and the German Academic Exchange Service. I wish to thank Miriam Aronin, Steven Seegel and Vejas Liulevicius for careful editing and critical commentary on the article. Finally, I am grateful to Michał Smoczyński at Archiwum Jerzego Turowicza in Kraków and Birgit Bernard at the HA-WDR in Cologne for their assistance, and to Klaus Otto Skibowski, Winfried Lipscher, Karlheinz Koppe and Stanisław Stomma for allowing me to interview them.

Notes

See, for example, Iriye or Berghahn.

The elite media included Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Catholic circles were connected to journalists Walter Dirks and Eugen Kogon, as well as to author Heinrich Böll. For research on this media and intelligentsia network, see Hodenberg.

These circles were connected to the journals Więż, Znak and Tygodnik Powszechny. See Wolff-Powęska; and Friszke.

See K. Bismarck, Aufbruch aus Pommern; Dönhoff, Kindheit in Ostpreussen; Koppe; and Skibowski.

For more on Marion Dönhoff's life, see the three biographies about her: Schwarzer; Kuenheim; and, most recently, Harpprecht. See also Jansen.

For more on Catholic cross-border connections, see Żurek.

Examples of this included Hansjakob Stehle, a journalist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung specializing in Eastern European Catholicism and Polish–German relations, as well as Walter Dirks, the liberal Catholic editor of Die Frankfurter Hefte.

Immigration research has dealt with the issue of whether transnational identities exist and are quantifiable but has generally concluded that aspects of national identities also strengthen in an immigrant/migrant setting. See, for example, Mandaville; and Thapan. I define identity as the personal narratives, based on cultural, political, social, religious or national belonging, experiences, and background, that a person uses to locate him- or herself in his or her current context. A transnational identity, in my definition, is an identity that is not founded exclusively in the national context. The person has a loosened national identity or an alternative regional or supranational identity that is more determining than the national identity. In most cases, the case is not clear-cut, and a transnational identity may overlap or be interwoven with the national identity.

In Bismarck's case, this identification with German history was particularly strong since he was the great nephew of the famous German chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

They were officially classified as Aussiedler in Germany, having arrived after 1949. Lipscher may be referring to media and common categorizations of the newcomers, however.

In general, Ahonen, in People on the Move, argues that the expulsions seemed like minor tragedies compared to the Nazi mass extermination and labor programs in Poland. In addition, he argues, the communist and Stalinist censorship of Polish life in the “Kresy” distorted and suppressed expellee memories or narratives from Polish public space.

Stomma spent 1941–1944, the years of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, in Vilnius, working for the underground press. He left the city when the Red Army returned in 1944. See Stomma, Pościg za nadzieją 88–89. It should be added that German benevolence in Lithuania did not extend to the Jewish population, of which 95–97%, the highest number in Europe, was killed. For example, Merkatz; or Schwartz 2.