Cultural Landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and the Collapse of Communism
Date: Wrocław, Poland, September 19-21, 2018
Cultural Landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and the Collapse of Communism
The end of World War II saw large parts of Central European countries in ruin. The borders were changed after the Potsdam conference leading to mass deportations and resettlement of millions of people. Vast areas of multi-ethnic borderlands that had been typical of the pre-World War II Eastern and Central Europe turned in most cases into monoethnic states. Cultural and national diversity, which had been the hallmark of what Hanna Arendt called “the belt of mixed populations”, albeit not without strife or conflict, virtually disappeared in most communist states, with the exception of Romania and the Yugoslavian Federation. Landscape, always a palimpsest of human and natural layering in time, held traces of that erased presence of people exterminated during the war or evicted afterwards. The communist states began also the push toward modernisation and collectivisation, profoundly changing rural and urban landscapes. At the same time, the landscape became a crucial ideological arena for the communist state where the successful story of human command of nature for the common good of the people was to be played out.
As a witness and active agent of key historical events such as uprisings, wars, burials, and revivals, the landscape was the repository of national history and memory, contributing an essential scenery for commemoration practices. Irreversible damage to natural resources done by heavy industry was covered up with the politics of conservationism and ecological responsibility.
After the breakthrough of 1989, the landscape was fundamentally transformed again by sweeping changes that affected the economy and created hybrid combinations of industrial and post-industrial urban spaces. Moreover, government was decentralised and the new freedom was used to construct new collective identities (a turn to regional forms of belonging, transborder solidarities and common histories and, at the same time, a weakening of centralised national affiliations). Likewise, the privatisation of space commodified the landscape, challenging the sense of commonality in the experience of public space, while, on the other hand, civic thinking about ecology and environmental openness gained ground.
We invited scholars working in the fields of humanities and social sciences to share their perspectives on the reordering of physical and social space in Central Europe after World War II and after the collapse of communism.
Points including the following provided prompts for our discussions:
- Landscapes of genocide, border shifts, and forced removals and resettlements – spectral landscapes;
- Rebuilding cityscapes during socialism and afterwards;
- Environmentalism, nature conservation, and exploitation of the natural environment;
- Heritage, memory, and commemoration: the landscape and cultural politics;
- The solace of cultivated and wild nature: parks, cemeteries, gardens, and nature reserves;
- Commodification and tourism vis-à-vis the landscape;
- (Post)industrial, technical, and military landscapes – picking mushrooms after Chernobyl;
- Struggles over nature: reclaiming wilderness, nature reserves, environmentalism, development, farming;
- Reclaiming locality after 1989 – environment, habitat, and new regionalism;
- Representing and imagining the landscape in literature and visual arts.
The conference, held in Wrocław, Poland, September 19-21, 2018, was a joint effort of Academia Europaea (Knowledge Hub, Wrocław) and the Faculty of Philology of the University of Wrocław, whose results included the publication of a selection of papers. The conference was part of a series of symposia bringing together established scholars and early career researchers, particularly from East-Central Europe.
Cultural Landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and the Collapse of Communism
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Cultural-Landscapes-Program.pdf
Cultural Landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and the Collapse of Communism
The end of World War II saw large parts of Central European countries in ruin. The borders were changed after the Potsdam conference leading to mass deportations and resettlement of millions of people. Vast areas of multi-ethnic borderlands that had been typical of the pre-World War II Eastern and Central Europe turned in most cases into monoethnic states. Cultural and national diversity, which had been the hallmark of what Hanna Arendt called “the belt of mixed populations”, albeit not without strife or conflict, virtually disappeared in most communist states, with the exception of Romania and the Yugoslavian Federation. Landscape, always a palimpsest of human and natural layering in time, held traces of that erased presence of people exterminated during the war or evicted afterwards. The communist states began also the push toward modernisation and collectivisation, profoundly changing rural and urban landscapes. At the same time, the landscape became a crucial ideological arena for the communist state where the successful story of human command of nature for the common good of the people was to be played out.
REGISTRATION:
The registration was available at: www.acadeuro.wroclaw.pl. The requirement was to submit a 300-word proposal and a curriculum vitae with a list of publications by February 28, 2018.
REQUIREMENTS:
The speakers were required to submit a 3,000-5,000 word description or excerpt (i.e., chapter, article, etc.). All workshop participants were asked to read the submissions prior to the workshop. The paper was to be an unpublished one. Those who did not meet the submission deadline were not able to present their work.
THE SEMINAR LANGUAGE was English.
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS:
The organisers covered the conference fee and the costs of accommodation (up to 4 nights), travel (up to a certain maximum: Western Europe – up to 100 EUR; Central and Eastern Europe – up to 150 EUR), and insurance.
All correspondence, including submissions of proposals and final papers, was handled by Katarzyna Majkowska (majkowska@acadeuro.wroclaw.pl).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9IsACzydtXk
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Registration
Welcome Addresses
- Prof. Marcin Cieński (University of Wrocław)
- Prof. Siegfried Huigen (University of Wrocław & Academia Europaea)
- Prof. Tadeusz Luty (Academia Europaea Wrocław Knowledge Hub)
Keynote | Chair: Siegfried Huigen
- 09:30 – 10:00 am Gregor Thum (University of Pittsburgh) Neugablonz. The Layered Landscape of War and Forced Migration
- 10:00 – 10:20 am Discussion
Session 1 | Post-Soviet Legacies Session Chair: Craig Young
- 10:20 – 10:35 am Tetiana Perga (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev) Impact of Nuclear Cities on the Landscape and Communities in Ukraine
- 10:35 – 10:50 am Stsiapan Stureika (European Humanities University, Vilnius) Appropriation of Soviet Architectural Heritage in Minsk. Challenges and Paradoxes
- 10:50 – 11:10 am Discussion
Coffee break
Session 2 | Landscaping the Soviet Space in Visual Arts Session Chair: Roma Sendyka
- 11:30 – 11:45 am Aleksandr Sautkin (Murmansk Arctic State University) Landscape Imagination of the 1970s and 80s. Sci-fi Painting as a Manifestation of the Technocratic Utopia
- 11:45 am – 12:00 noon Gregor Taul (Lisbon Consortium) Cultural Landscapes of Late-Soviet Monumental-Decorative Art.
- 12:00 – 12:15 pm Rima Bertašavičiūtė (Vilnius University) Cultural Landscapes in Motion. The Eloquent Emptiness of Lithuanian Photo-Essays
- 12:15 – 12:45 pm Discussion
Lunch break
Keynote | Chair: Tomasz Zarycki
- 02:00 – 02:30 pm Frank Uekötter (University of Birmingham) Developing the Land of Eastern Europe. An Archaeology
- 02:30 – 02:50 pm Discussion
Session 3 | Memory work Session Chair: Gregor Thum
- 02:50 – 03:05 pm Dmitrijs Andrejevs (University of Manchester) Saying Goodbye to Lenin? The Role of Enduring (Empty) Spaces of Socialism in (Dis-)Continuity of Cultural Landscape in Riga, Latvia
- 03:05 – 03:20 pm Adam Kola (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń) Post-Socialist Sites of Memory in the Czech Republic. Between Incidental Mourning and EverydayForgetting
- 03:20 – 03:35 pm Anna Olenenko (Khortytsia National Academy, Zaporizhia) Memory, National Idea and Landscape Construction in Ukraine
- 03:35 – 04:05 pm Discussion
Tea break
Keynote | Chair: Pieter Emmer
- 04:25 – 04:55 pm Kristin Kopp (University of Missouri) The Unexpected Cultural Landscape of African American Civil Rights in Germany
- 04:55 – 05:15 pm Discussion
Dinner | Centennial Hall, Wystawowa 1 Street
Keynote | Chair: Dorota Kołodziejczyk
- 9:30 – 10:00 am Jennifer Croft Moving Mountains. Cultural Landscapes in Translation
- 10:00 – 10:20 am Discussion
Session 4 | Ruptures, Voids, Palimpsests – Writing Landscape Session Chair: Kristin Kopp
- 10:20 – 10:35 am Mirja Lecke (Ruhr-University Bochum) No Country for Old Women. Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor (2017)
- 10:35 – 10:50 am Uilleam Blacker (University College London) Literature, Displacement and the Reconstruction of Memory in Post-War East-Central European Cities
- 10:50 – 11:10 am Discussion
Coffee break
- 11:30 – 11:45 am Jovana Vukcevic (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Košice/University of Valladolid) Landscapes of Memory. Commodifying Heritage and Branding Tourism in Post-Socialist Europe
- 11:45 am – 12:00 noon Jakub Gawkowski (Central European University, Budapest) KL Lublin Between the Liberation and the Musealization. The Laboratory of Propaganda, Memory and Exhibition-Making (1944-1947)
- 12:00 – 12:15 pm Stephanie Weismann (University of Vienna) “Lublin of the Future” – Clean, Hygienic, Orderly. Reshaping the Former Jewish Podzamcze Area after WWII
- 12:15 – 12:45 pm Discussion
Lunch break
Keynote | Chair: Pieter Emmer
- 02:00 – 02:30 pm Tomasz Zarycki (University of Warsaw) At the Limits of Kresy. An Inevitable Orientalization of Landscapes in Eastern Poland
- 02:30 – 02:50 pm Discussion
Session 6 | New Nationalism: Language and Rhetoric Session Chair: Kornelia Kończal
- 02:50 – 03:05 pm Agnès Dudych (Pavel Jozef Šafárik University, Košice/Bauhaus University, Weimar) From National to Local Scale, the Influence of the Soviet Model on Czechoslovak Territorial Development
- 03:05 – 03:20 pm Agata Zysiak (Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton) Where is the Working Class? Social Spaces of a Polish Industrial City 1945 vs. 1989
- 03:20-03:35 pm Oleksandr Androshchuk (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev) Place-Naming Politics in Ukraine and Poland After World War II
- 03:35 – 04:05 pm Discussion
Tea break
Keynote | Chair: Hana Cervinkova
- 04:25 – 04:55 pm Mariusz Czepczyński (Gdańsk University) Semiotization of Cultural Landscapes. From Ethnographic Markers Towards Meaningful Processes
- 04:55 – 05:15 pm Discussion
Keynote | Chair: Stanley Bill
- 09:00 – 09:30 am Roma Sendyka (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) Non-Sites of Memory and Cynegetic Landscape
- 09:30 – 09:50 am Discussion
Session 7 | Genocide in/as Landscape Session Chair: Uilleam Blacker
- 09:50 – 10:05 am Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biała) “Disturbed Landscapes”. Greening the Places of Memory
- 10:05 – 10:20 am Kornelia Kończal (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the TU Dresden, Germany) Commemoration Crusades: How “Cursed Soldiers” Transformed the Memory Landscape in Poland
- 10:20 – 10:35 am Gintarė Bernotienė (Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Vilnius) Permanence of Landscapes and Imprints of Genocide
Discussion
Coffee break
Session 8 | Constructing Socialist Landscape Session Chair: Adam Kola
- 11:25 – 11:40 am Nikola Baković (Justus Liebig University Giessen) Get to Know Your Country in Order to Love It. Constructing National Landscape Through “Partisan Tourism” in Socialist Yugoslavia
- 11:40 – 11:55 am Wojciech Bedyński (University of Warsaw) Reinterpreting the Landscape. Building New Narrations After 1945
- 11:55 am – 12:10 pm Maria Cristache (Justus Liebig University Giessen) Socialist Modernism. Representations of Urban Landscape in Central and Eastern Europe
- 12:10 – 12:30 pm Discussion
Lunch break
Session 9 | Socialist Cityspaces Session Chair: Mariusz Czepczyński
- 01:55 – 02:10 pm Lea Horvat (University of Hamburg) Post-Yugoslav Mass Housing Cityscapes. Between Decaying Placelessness, Localism, and Common Ground
- 02:10 – 02:25 pm Jurga Jonutytė (Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Vilnius) Cultural Landscapes of Vilnius in Oral Memories of Post-War Settlers
- 02:25 – 02:40 pm Antony Kalashnikov (University of Oxford) Building for Posterity. The Stalinist Cityscape and the Uneasy Embrace of Preservationism and Stylization
- 02:40 – 03:10 pm Discussion
Tea break
Keynote | Chair: Hana Cervinkova
- 03:30 – 04:00 pm Craig Young (Manchester Metropolitan University) Reconsidering the Cultural Landscapes of State Socialism in the 21st Century
- 04:00 – 04:20 pm Discussion
Concluding discussion | Chairs: Dorota Kołodziejczyk, Siegfried Huigen
Farewell Dinner | Jasna Restaurant