During the 1990s, the relationship between Poland and Germany has been reframed within the process of European integration.
However, the beginning and the actual course of this process have been perceived differently in Poland and Germany. For Poland, the
“return to Europe” has started in 1989 by peacefully overcoming Soviet-backed Communist rule. Poland’s emphasis on 1989 highlights the role of the trade union “Solidarity” in the process of overcoming the communist regime and, thus, providing the groundwork to overcome the division of the continent soon after, initiating a process of Europeanization for Poland.55 Already before 1989, the reference to Europe had been a discursive pattern to voice criticism of the communist government and express distance towards the Soviet Union. 56 Ever since, there is a lively on-going discourse within Poland, whether or not there was, indeed, any need for Poland to
“return” to Europe, as according to some political actors, the country had never left it in the first place. As evidence, they quote Poland’s process of geographical position in what they see as the centre of the continent as well as Poland’s long-standing contribution to the (Catholic) Christian heritage of Europe. 57 While Poland’s Europeanness seems to be beyond doubt in those discussions, the exact nature of its past and future relationship with the continent has
55 Cf. Paulina Gulinska-Jurgiel, “Zwischen Peripherie und Zentrum: Europabilder und Selbstverortungen des polnischen Parlaments nach 1989,” in Frank Bösch, Ariane Brill and Florian Greiner (eds.), Europabilder im 20. Jahrhundert. Entstehung an der Peripherie (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), pp. 279-302, here p. 284 and 296.
56 Cf. Frank Bösch, “Entstehung an der Peripherie. Europavorstellungen im 20.
Jahrhundert,” in Frank Bösch, Ariane Brill and Florian Greiner (eds.), Europabilder im 20. Jahrhundert. Entstehung an der Peripherie (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), pp. 7-24, here p. 18.
57 Cf. Paulina Gulinska-Jurgiel, “Zwischen Peripherie und Zentrum: Europabilder und Selbstverortungen des polnischen Parlaments nach 1989,” p. 285f and 301.
been up for debate. For Germany, Poland’s European ambitions were taken seriously only from 1992 onwards, after Poland had signed a treaty of association with the European Union in 1991 and France, Germany and Poland had started loose consultations within the framework of the so-called “Weimar Triangle” in that year. The foreign ministers of the three countries had met in the East German city to facilitate Poland’s post-socialist transition. Conveniently drawing on Weimar’s image as an icon of the culture of the Enlightenment, this was meant to further what at least many politicians in (Western) Europe saw as crucial for a new East-West integration of the continent, i.e. Polish-German reconciliation, in a conscious effort to replicate the French-German reconciliation of the 1960s.58 The difference in perception of Poland’s integration into the EU appears marginal but it is still very telling in terms of which of the two countries played the active part in overcoming the division of the continent and who raised Poland’s political profile with a view to continental integration.
On the European level, it appears that the German perception has prevailed. Initially, the revolutionary developments of 1989 certainly possessed a Europeanizing quality. However, due to the long and winding accession process of the Eastern European states to the EU and the eroding trust of peoples across Europe in Brussels’ rule since the millennium, 1989 as a historical point of reference will rather be remembered for triggering a drive towards re-nationalization.
Consequently, the chance to create a new European foundation myth out of the peaceful revolutions of 1989 was missed; 59 or rather, it has
58 Cf. Annika Frieberg, “Reconciliation Remembered: Early Activists and Polish-German Relations,” in Justyna Beinek and Piotr Kosicki (eds.), Re-mapping Polish-German Historical Memory: Physical, Political, and Literary Spaces since World War II (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2012), pp. 127-157, here p. 142.
59 Cf. Adam Krzeminski, “Erinnern für die Zukunft – Deutsche und Polen gemeinsam in
resulted mainly in focussing on greater recognition for Germany as its reunification in 1990 symbolized the desired merging of Europe’s East and West on a national level. This view found its official expression in 2009, when the European Union celebrated the 5th anniversary of its eastward extension and the 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe with a video that largely ignored the simultaneous anniversary of Poland’s round table talks and the path-breaking elections in the summer of 1989. These events had been milestones on the country’s way towards democratization.
This negligence sparked fears that Poland’s democratic achievements would be overshadowed by the remembrance of the symbolically more evocative fall of the Berlin Wall.60
In 2004, when Poland was finally able to join the EU, it was still wary of a renewed “German push eastward” as it insisted on an initial 12-year-ban for fellow EU members – basically targeting Germans – to purchase land in Poland. This was part of tough negotiations in which Poland eventually had to accept a seven-year transitional period before it could fully benefit from the free movement of labour to EU member states while it had to lower the duration of the ban on purchasing land from the originally planned eighteen years.61 Ever since joining the European Union, Poland is actively trying out where and what its place in Europe might be and what role historical memory might play in there as its need to gain more international recognition and renew national self-confidence after the end of forty
Europa,” p. 5.
60 Cf. Stefan Auer, “Contesting the origins of European liberty. The EU narrative of Franco-German reconciliation and the eclipse of 1989,” Eurozine [10 September 2010], URL: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-09-10-auer-en.html (accessed 9 January, 2017), p. 4.
61 Cf. Philipp Ther, “Der deutsche Imperialismus in Polen,” p. 107; Olga Barbasiewicz and Justyna Turek, “Memory in the Process of Polish-German Reconciliation. Theory, History, and Reflections,” p. 30f.
years of communist rule are still obvious, especially in the country’s culture of remembrance.62 This can also be gauged from a host of recent museum projects that have either already been finished or are in the process of realisation. The founding stone was a very imposing museum on the Warsaw Uprising. Inaugurated in 2004, it actually took up the function to define for the foreseeable future the outcome of an extended period of debate and conflict over Poland’s recent past that had started already in the mid-1980s and to bring at least temporal closure to what had been one of Poland’s great historical sore spots during the Cold War era.63
Another major part of these efforts is the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk that opened only in 2017. There, visitors could find a pretty Europeanized version of World War II, emphasizing the combined influences of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union in bringing about global conflagration.64 This emphasis, on the one hand, has strengthened Poland’s historical identity of a victim caught in between the forces of the two big neighbours. On the other, this perspective enables a re-reading of the half-century between 1939 and 1989 as the fateful bracket of Polish 20th century as a counter-conception against the Western European narrative of the epochal turn towards peace and prosperity on the continent after 1945. The content and presentation in the Gdansk museum were meant to present a Europeanized pluralistic, dialogical approach to Polish history.
Already before its inauguration, this museum had raised the
62 Cf. Christian Gudehus, “Germany’s meta-narrative memory culture. An Essay on sceptic narratives and minotaurs,” German Politics and Society, 26: 89, 4 (winter, 2008), pp. 99-112, here p. 108.
63 Cf. Florian Peters, “Polens Streitgeschichte kommt ins Museum. Wie neue Museen in Danzig und Warschau die polnische Geschichtskultur verändern,” p. 2f.
64 Cf. Joachim von Puttkamer, “Europäisch und polnisch zugleich. Das Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Danzig,” Osteuropa, 67: 1-2 (May, 2017), pp. 3-12, here p. 12.
incumbent government’s suspicion due to what it perceived as the museum’s neglect of a distinctly Polish perspective. Therefore, the permanent exhibition was expected to receive a stronger national profile.65 Thus, the museum has immediately been slated for revision and a candidate who vowed to strengthen the official view of Polish history in the exhibition replaced its director.
The former director of the museum, Pawel Machcewicz, has been a vocal critic of the current government’s politics of history for years.
In 2012, he diagnosed that historical views from within Poland’s civil society were subdued by the government’s interventions and that Polish memories were still largely dominated by official narratives.66 In the present confrontation, Polish courts had initially upheld the defence of the museum and its director against political intervention.
Thus, the government’s simultaneous initiatives for the politics of history and legal reform have to be interpreted as being interconnected.67 This simultaneity points towards the close interrelation between domestic politics and external relationships when historical issues are concerned. While this is the case in both countries, in Poland the scope for controversy still appears bigger in this respect, whereas in Germany domestic consensus over historical issues seems to be broader, which is helped by its larger political clout on the European continent.
65 Cf. Florian Peters, “Lokales Holocaust-Museum oder nationalistische Geschichtsfälschung?”
Zeitgeschichte-Online [22 March 2017], URL: http://www.zeitgeschichteonline.de/
geschichtskultur/lokalesholocaustmuseumodernationalistischegeschichtsfaelschung (accessed 30 May 2018), p. 1. See also Joachim von Puttkamer, “Europäisch und polnisch zugleich,”
p. 4.
66 Cf. conference report “Strategien der Geschichtspolitik in Europa seit 1989.
Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen im internationalen Vergleich.”
67 Cf. conference report “Geschichtspolitik und neuer Nationalismus im gegenwärtigen Europa,” 10-11 October 2017, Berlin, H-Soz-Kult [25 November 2017], URL: https://
www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7411 (accessed 30 May 2018).
In a recent attempt to win back the initiative in the domestic, European and international conflicts over the past, the Polish government has enacted a new law, officially called the “Amended Act on the Institute of National Remembrance” that makes it a crime to implicate the Polish state and/or nation in the perpetration of the Holocaust. Apparently meant to prevent the incorrect reference to Nazi extermination camps on Polish territory as “Polish camps,” it also serves to criminalize allegations against Polish institutions or representatives as having collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews. This was decreed despite available evidence of individual as well as some institutional involvement in the persecution of Jewish people in Poland during World War II.68 However, the original cause of this delicate legislation had been Poland’s understandable displeasure with a certain international carelessness in terminology where even high-ranking politicians would refer to German concentration camps on Polish soil as “Polish camps”. When former US president Obama referred to extermination camps as “Polish death camps” in 2012, it caused a serious row with the Polish government. In 2005, this had led to a controversy in the European Parliament when the resolution to introduce 27 January as European Holocaust Memorial Day had been debated. German parliamentarians had argued to remove the reference “German” from the extermination camp at Auschwitz to avoid invoking any idea of collective guilt of all Germans. While there was some support from non-German parliamentarians, there was opposition from others.
Especially Polish MEP.s argued that the removal could blur the responsibilities for the Holocaust. Eventually, the denomination as
68 Cf. Menachem Z. Rosensaft, “Poles and the Holocaust in Historical Perspective,”
Tablet Magazine [22 February 2018], URL: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/256053/
poles-and-the-holocaust-in-historical-perspective (accessed 28 February 2018).
“Nazi Germany’s death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau” was adopted.
There had certainly been no lack of willingness among parliamentarians to accommodate the German view, thus at least the historically and politically qualifying addition “Nazi” went together with the national signifier. However, in the interests of cosmopolitanisation, the symbolic representation of the victims still seemed more vital, so that Polish concerns to keep the reference to Germany could ultimately prevail. However, the reference to concentration camps as “Polish” kept appearing in German newspapers and even in German textbooks, too.69
Another attempt at Europeanizing national memories of suffering concerned the issue of flight and expulsion. Ever since it had become a topic in the 1998 German election campaign, this part of German collective memory had gained renewed attention, and, due to the involvement of a number of Eastern European countries in the issue had an inherent European dimension. The corresponding discourse in Germany especially alerted Polish observers, who were afraid of a revival of German revanchism. In line with the trend around 2000 in Poland towards Europeanization of conflicted collective memories, soon Polish intellectuals and politicians came up with ideas to commemorate flight and expulsion in a European context and at an authentic site like Wroclaw/Breslau in Poland, which had seen a high degree of forced migration of diverse ethnic groups during the 20th century. Another suggestion brought up the idea to build a museum to commemorate the vicissitudes of Polish-German relations, which
69 Cf. “EU tilgt Wort ‚deutsch‘ in Auschwitz-Resolution,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), 27 January 2005, p. 6; “Kein polnisches Lager,” and “Erinnerung ist ein Prozeß und sie wird niemals abgeschlossen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt on the Main), 28 January 2005, p. 3; see also Adam Krzeminski, “Die schwierige deutsch-polnische Vergangenheitspolitik.”
could even be located in Berlin.70 Historians, publicists, politicians and writers on both sides of the border soon took to the idea and started a debate on the possible form and content of this commemorative undertaking.71 These initiatives eventually led to the foundation of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (abbreviated as ENRS) in 2005, which can be described as a German-Polish elite project to promote a Europeanized approach to controversial memories and their museumization. In its programmatic platform, the Network explicitly addressed the Europeanization of the ways and practices of accounting for difficult pasts as an overarching trend.72 Though following a different political agenda – pushing for the equal recognition of Nazi and communist crimes within the European landscape of remembrance – also the “Platform of European Memory and Conscience”, an initiative mostly carried by politicians from Eastern Europe, dating back to the 2008 “Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism”, definitely furthers the trend of Europeanization of cultures of remembrance with regard to memories of World War II.73 According to the political standpoint, it can be seen as either a counter-initiative or a supplement to the ENRS.
As far as national cultures of remembrance are concerned, the European Parliament has played a crucial role for their
70 Cf. Adam Krzeminski, “Wo Geschichte europäisch wird,” Die ZEIT (Hamburg), 20 June 2002, no page reference.
71 Cf. Basil Kerski, “Geschichte und Erinnerung in den aktuellen politischen Debatten zwischen Deutschen und Polen,” p. 13ff.
72 Cf. Paulina Gulińska-Jurgiel, “Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung Made in Europe,”
Zeitgeschichte-online [March, 2012], URL: https://zeitgeschichte-online.de/kommentar/
vergangenheitsaufarbeitung-made-europe (accessed 30 May 2018). See also on the following.
73 Cf. Stefan Tröbst, “Eckstein einer EU-Geschichtspolitik? Das Museumsprojekt „Haus der Europäischen Geschichte“ in Brüssel,” Deutschland Archiv Online, No. 10, 2012, URL: http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte/deutschlandarchiv/144616/eckstein-einer-eu-geschichtspolitik (accessed January 9 2017).
Europeanization. A major outcome of corresponding efforts was a one-sided tendency to highlight the negative role the Soviet Union played in the first half of Europe’s 20th century history. Backed up by Russian president Putin’s current risk-taking in Eastern Europe, this negative commemorative focus on the former Soviet Union has become instrumental for the political rapprochement between Poland and Germany. 74 The European Parliament’s 2009 resolution to inaugurate a “European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes” on 23 August, the day the infamous Hitler-Stalin-Pact had been signed in 1939, was echoed by an open letter from German intellectuals and politicians. This letter attempted to reframe 20th century history in a way very similar like the corresponding recent trend in Poland as being bracketed by the years 1939 and 1989 as beginning and end of what is now commonly acknowledged as totalitarian oppression in Europe. 75 Despite remaining Polish anxieties over German-Russian energy cooperation in the Nord Stream pipeline project, this renewed anti-totalitarian consensus is quickly emerging as a common denominator of German-Polish politics of history, which enables both countries to utilize the growing political distance with Russia. Germany can integrate the former GDR with a negative emphasis on the communist totalitarian legacy, whereas Poland can adjust to the post-Cold War geopolitical reality of being reunited Germany’s neighbour and one of its junior partners within the European Union.
On surface level, the new European Day of Remembrance has
74 Cf. Adam Krzeminski, “Erinnern für die Zukunft – Deutsche und Polen gemeinsam in Europa,” p. 2.
75 Cf. Kryzstof Ruchniewicz, “Der sogenannte Polenfeldzug 1939 und der Zweite Weltkrieg in der deutschen und polnischen Erinnerungskultur,” p. 48f. See also Winson Chu, “Ethnic Cleansing and Nationalization in the German-Polish and German-Czech Borderlands,” p. 150.
been an attempt to integrate the cultures of remembrance of Eastern and Western Europe, giving historical experiences of suffering of the countries of Eastern Europe greater presence. Thus, this initiative is part of the cultural and political deepening of the extension of the European Union, which has started with its eastward enlargement in 2004. However, despite the substantial backing the introduction of a new day of remembrance has received within the European Parliament, critics have pointed out that this initiative puts emphasis on national suffering under what is presented as an interconnected succession of totalitarian oppression. Thus, it overshadows any ambition to self-reflection on individual and collective collaboration with the Nazi occupation regime in Europe and the concomitant preservation of “negative memory,” which had been initiated by the inauguration of 27 January as Holocaust Remembrance Day.76
On another level, the House of European History,77 which was commissioned by the European Parliament in 2007 and opened its permanent exhibition in Brussels in 2017 to represent the European significance of the Holocaust, of Western Europe’s unification, of its reconciliation with its Eastern neighbours and of their eventual admission to the Union, also aroused Polish indignation. Although being initiated with the aim of bringing the various cultures of remembrance in Europe into closer contact with each other, critics in Poland considered their country’s history being misrepresented in the Guidelines for its permanent exhibition despite a historian from Poland heading the Academic Committee, which had authored those
76 Cf. Ljiljana Radonic, “Europäische Erinnerungskulturen im Spannungsfeld zwischen
‘Ost’ und ‘West,’” in Forum Politische Bildung, Informationen zur Politischen Bildung 32 (Innsbruck/ Wien/ Bozen: Studien-Verlag, 2010), pp. 21-30, here p. 29.
77 Cf. Stefan Tröbst, “Eckstein einer EU-Geschichtspolitik? Das Museumsprojekt” Haus der Europäischen Geschichte “in Brüssel.”
Guidelines.78 According to the Guidelines, Polish resistance against the Nazis during World War II had already ended in 1939, while in fact this only concerned the immediate military confrontation, while the paramilitary, political and cultural resistance movement had only just started to gather momentum. Eventually, Poland’s “Underground State” existed during the entire duration of the war and has become a major source of national identification for Poland again after 1989.79 Turned positively, Poland also fills the new interpretive framework of the half-century between World War II and the Polish roundtable as another proof of Poland indefatigable struggle for freedom, which emphasizes a strictly national Polish narrative and downplays the importance of the country’s otherwise hitherto successful integration into Europe.80
5. Conclusion
Interacting dynamics of politics of history concerning Germany,
Interacting dynamics of politics of history concerning Germany,