Overview

Upper Silesia, one of Central Europe’s most important industrial borderlands, was at the center of heated conflict between Germany and Poland and experienced annexations and border re-drawings in 1922, 1939, and 1945. This transnational history examines these episodes of territorial re-nationalization and their cumulative impacts on the region and nations involved, as well as their use by the Nazi and postwar communist regimes to legitimate violent ethnic cleansing. In their interaction with—and mutual influence on—one another, political and cultural actors from both nations developed a transnational culture of territorial rivalry. Architecture, spaces of memory, films, museums, folklore, language policy, mass rallies, and archeological digs were some of the means they used to give the borderland a “German”/“Polish” face. Representative of the wider politics of twentieth-century Europe, the situation in Upper Silesia played a critical role in the making of history’s most violent and uprooting eras, 1939–1950.

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9781785338144

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Reviews

This welcome study, deeply researched in archival and printed sources and in secondary literature, examines cultural and political conflict in the region of Upper Silesia, primarily between 1922 and 1953... His argument is subtle, seeking successfully to give equal attention to each side in this period, but also to show the interaction between them... Polak-Springer presents details and conclusions that add greatly to understanding the history of this famously disputed region, and contribute powerfully to understanding disputed lands and cultures in other times and places. Numerous illustrations and good maps effectively reinforce the author's points... Highly recommended. * Choice

Author Information

Peter Polak-Springer is an assistant professor of modern and contemporary history at Qatar University. His major interests are in cultural, transnational, and comparative history, as well as borderlands, nationalism, and the 20th century. His more recent research focuses on nationalism after World War I in Central Europe and the Middle East.

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