History

The German-Polish House is to be established in the heart of Berlin. It will serve as a memorial to the victims of the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945, provide information through a historical exhibition on German-Polish history with a focus on the Second World War, and facilitate encounters through a rich educational program. The triad of "Remembrance – Encounter – Understanding" is its core mission.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of the Second World War. The German occupation of Poland claimed the lives of over five million Polish citizens, the vast majority of whom were civilian victims. Many more were scarred for life, deported to concentration camps or as forced laborers; Polish children were kidnapped for Germanization, and cities and cultural assets were obliterated. The Polish nation was to be crushed, and its inhabitants exploited as slave labor. The German occupiers carried out the Holocaust largely in occupied Poland: half of the six million murdered Jews of Europe were Polish citizens before the war. More than 95 percent of all Jews living in Poland before the war were killed during the Second World War. In the extermination camps built by the Germans in occupied Poland, Jews from all over Europe were also murdered. The traumas of the German war of annihilation continue to mark the country to this day.

Almost every family in Poland lost someone in the Second World War. Countless monuments nationwide commemorate those murdered. Very little of this is anchored in the cultural memory of Germany. Empathy for the victims is only possible if one knows what culture was destroyed by the Germans and who the people were who lived in and shaped it. The German-Polish House opens up spaces to get to know these people as active subjects. Before the Second World War, the Polish state was multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious – home to men and women who identified as Poles or Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Lithuanians or Belarusians, as Silesians, Lemkos or Kashubians, or as internationalists and citizens of the world. This centuries-old diversity was destroyed during the German occupation, and older conflicts were reignited.

Poland is not just the history of the "others," but our common German-Polish and, moreover, European mandate. How much Poland is in Germany, and how much Germany is in Poland? We are linked by centuries of neighborhood and a history of entanglement that shapes both societies to this day. At the beginning of the 19th century, about 10 percent of the inhabitants of Prussia were Poles. The so-called "Spring of Nations" was a European and, to a special degree, a German-Polish story. The "Poland enthusiasm" (Polenbegeisterung) of the 1830s led to the densest network of associations the German lands had ever seen – the communalization of the Germans, fragmented into principalities, took place partly thanks to the Poles. The Revolution of 1848 began on March 18 when German insurgents freed Polish prisoners from the prison in Berlin-Moabit, who had previously rebelled against Prussian rule. The Polish "Question" occupied delegates in Frankfurt's Paulskirche – and divided them.

Germany has not only been a country of migration since the 1960s, and our neighbor has played its part in this: Poles, Masurians, and Upper Silesians migrated from the eastern part of the German Reich to the west – to the Ruhr area or to large industrial cities like Hamburg and Berlin, where they established Polish associations and helped shape their environment. This characterizes local and regional identities to this day – in Wanne-Eickel as much as in Bitterfeld or Berlin. Historical traces of Poland can be found in many places in the German capital – not least at the site where the Bundestag meets today. Before the Reichstag was built, the Raczyński Palace stood here. The former Reich Chancellery in Wilhelmstraße originally belonged to the Radziwiłł family. When the Solidarność movement fought against the communist regime in the 1980s, it ultimately succeeded in shaking the "Eastern Bloc" so profoundly that the Berlin Wall also fell. Despite all these historical connections, German history in textbooks and public life is primarily told in relation to our neighbor, France. The role of Poland and East-Central Europe remains largely a blind spot.

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine led to a proclaimed Zeitenwende (turning point) in German politics. Previously, the close relationship with Moscow had obscured the view of the countries of East-Central Europe, whose voices were too often ignored. However, this had a long tradition. Prussia, the Russian Empire, and Austria partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century – a precedent and a tectonic shift in the power constellations of Europe. Prussia rose to become a powerful political actor only at the expense of Poland-Lithuania and solidified the special relationship with Russia that proved to be a long-lasting constellation. Prussia's rule over a part of Poland was also characterized by a colonial habitus, coupled with a conviction of a cultural and social gradient. In 1735, Frederick II described Polish nobles as "ugly monkeys and female apes" and believed he had to "bring European civilization to the poor Iroquois." This arrogance, enriched by National Socialist and anti-Semitic propaganda, also shaped the 1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers who marched into Poland on September 1, 1939.

Despite the experience of violence, reconciliation was possible after the Second World War. It was the Polish bishops who, as early as 1965, addressed (West) German dignitaries with the words "We forgive and ask for forgiveness," in the spirit of a united Europe of shared values.

It is no coincidence that in today's Germany, our neighbor is too often associated with Polish cleaners or construction workers, but rarely with Polish thinkers or Nobel Prize winners such as Czesław Miłosz or Jerzy Giedroyc, who developed visionary ideas for a common Europe. In every political conflict, time-tested stereotypes are close at hand – unfortunately on both sides of the Oder and Neisse. Pointing out where they come from, breaking them down, and enabling a new perspective on our neighbor will place German-Polish relations on a new foundation and help to further develop a strong European community. The German-Polish House intends to and will make its contribution to this.