"In the Houses of Others. Traces of the German Past in Western Poland"
In her book „In den Häusern der anderen. Spuren deutscher Vergangenheit in Westpolen” Karolina Kuszyk reports about the challenge of the Polish post-war society to deal with the German heritage in today’s western Poland. The author describes what it meant for the Poles to come to the territories abandoned by the Germans at the end of the Second World War, to take possession of the villages, towns and houses of the enemy. On Wednesday, June 14, the author will present her book at Falstaff. After the welcome by Dr. Thomas Köcher (Landeszentrale für politische Bildung), Dr. Silke Pasewalck (Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa) will take over as moderator.
Poniemieckie is the name given in Poland to what used to be German: places, buildings, objects left behind by millions of Germans when they fled to the West. The new owners were Poles, often displaced or resettled themselves. What was the loss of the homeland for one, was a new beginning in the foreign for the other. Two ends of a story that shows how biographies and things are interwoven across time periods, national borders and generations to this day.
Karolina Kuszyk, born in 1977 in Legnica, lives in Berlin and Lower Silesia and works as a freelance author, translator and lecturer, among others at the Viadrina. She has written articles for Zeit Online, Deutschlandradio Kultur and Funkhaus Europa, among others, and translated Max Frisch, Ilse Aichinger, Karen Duve and Bernhard Schlink into Polish. „In den Häusern der anderen” was awarded the Arthur Kronthal Prize in 2020 and stimulated a lively discussion in Poland about how to deal with German heritage.
An event of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Bremen, the German-Polish Society Bremen and globale° – Festival.
Start is at 7 pm
in the Falstaff,
Schulstraße 26.
Admission is free.
More information:
Tobias Peters
Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Bremen
Phone 0421-361 2098 | tobias.peters@lzpb.bremen.de
Birkenstraße 20-21| 28195 Bremen
