A cautionary tale for the generations. The reconstruction of the former border-check-points in Poland

ABSTRACT

Relict borders may long remain tangible in the field and in people’s behaviour. However, in recent times, a process of the deliberate ‘re-creation’ of these borders has developed, with a view to their serving tourist, heritage-related and remembrance functions. The author here illustrates the processes involved by reference to the border once separating the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires – as one of those associated with Poland’s erasure from the map of Europe for more than a century. Empirical research finds at least five different old check-points now playing the role of tourist attractions. There are three leading themes being loss of independence thanks to the Partitions; the regaining of that independence for Poland (in 1918) and remembrance of the heroes responsible for that; and information regarding local conditioning of border operations and controls, also in the wider context of its significance for everyday life and hence possibilities for the border to be crossed. The overriding premise on which the re-creation of relict border check-points is based is that people should go on recalling negative aspects of the past, and treat them as cautionary tales.

KEYWORDS:

• Relict border
• heritage
• tourism
• Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Russian Empire
• Poland

Acknowledgments

The Author wishes to the anonymous Reviewers and Editors for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The large estates of magnates.

2 Jerzy Drzewi (Head of the Association) offered this message as the reconstructed object was opened.

3 Insurrection leader (1746–1817).

4 The Primate of Poland throughout the communist era – from 1948 to 1981 (born 1901, died 1981).

5 A very important tourist attraction in Lubelskie Voivodeship.

Additional information

Funding

The paper was prepared as part of project 2018/29/B/HS4/02417 financed by the National Science Centre, Warsaw, Poland. 10.13039/501100004281

Notes on contributors

Marek Więckowski

Marek Więckowski is the Professor and deputy director for science at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the editor-in-chief of the Geographia Polonica and a member of the IGU Commission for the Geography of Tourism, Recreation and Global Change. His field of research is political geography (borders, cross-border collaboration), tourism geography, transport geography (accessibility) and territorial marketing. He has been the PI of many international and national scientific projects (the recent is about Polish borders as resource – between heritage and tourism products, founded by the National Scientific Center in Poland).