Geographia Polonica 2016, Volume 89, Issue 2, pp. 245-249

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BRIESEWITZ G., 2014 Raum und Nation in der polnischen Westforschung 1918-1948 Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag Paperback, 526 pages, ISBN 978-3-944870-03-8 Reviewed by Kazimierz Wóycicki The Centre for East European Studies University of Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00-927 Warsaw: e-mail: [email protected] European Academy Krzyżowa Krzyżowa 7, 58-112 Grodziszcze: Poland

The war of the geographers. A political scientist’s remarks The author does not explain this last hiatus in any more incisive or clear-cut way, but That Polish ‘Western thought’ emerged would seem to link it to the advent of the ‘Sta- in response to German Ostforschung linisation’ process. In a fundamental sense, is a main thesis of this very extensive work Briesewitz’s work encompasses a longer by Gernot Briesewitz. In it there is also period than the years 1918-1948, given that a strong signal that this kind of context cannot work by Wacław Nałkowski and Eugeni- to even the slightest extent relativise or justify usz Romer from before the First World War the entanglement of German Ostforschung is also referred to, with the mass of footnotes in the National Socialism of the Third Reich. furthermore allowing the history of Western The author offers a penetrating analysis thought after 1948 to be traced. The book of the evolution of Polish Western thought, thus offers an interesting lecture on the his- showing how it reacted to a changing politi- tory of concepts, not only from Polish political cal situation as one stage following Poland’s geography, but also from broader territory- regaining of independence in 1918 followed related musings of Polish political thought. another, through the inter-War period and Briesewitz regards the territory and space then the Second World War, up until the time that geography makes reference to as a crea- the communist authorities came to power. tion of the cultural imagination – in the same

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way that Anderson writes of the ‘imagined of Friedrich Ratzel, who is widely regarded past’, or else in line with the way the related as a main founder of political geography concept of ‘mental space’ is made use of. This as an academic discipline. This figure from ensures that it is with some considerable German geography arouses lively argument distance that one looks upon political geog- to this day, in regard to the degree to which raphy, where this seeks to use assumptions the concept he gave rise to (of Lebensraum) regarding objective factors to find affinities was or was not a co-founder of the later between a given territory and a given politi- Nazi ideology. Naturally the dispute revolves cal community. This is also why the author around whether these concepts had content reserves the harshest possible judgment for from the outset developed by the ideologists the German political geography of the Sec- of National Socialism, e.g. such geographers ond and Third Reichs, also emphasising just as Karl Kaushoffer, who became entirely how far-reaching its construing of anti-Polish caught up in fully-fledged , and was stereotypes was. a direct heir of the Ratzel tradition. Briesewitz thus notes a fundamental differ- In fact, terminology used by Nałkowski ence between Polish and German discourse and Romer (creature of nature, vital organ- in political geography prior to the First World ism) do display similarities to, and kinship War. In Germany, a highly-institutionalised with, the terminology of Ratzel. Thus, if Pol- political geography made manifest the state’s ish geographers make use of terms of this imperial ambitions, raising the issue of living kind, it is reasonable to assess the terminol- space and the possibility of expansion (with ogy deployed by the German geographer this in time becoming a political project for as belonging more with the epoch in which aggression). In the meantime, in the Polish it was created, and needing to be interpret- case, there was the discourse of the nation- ed in that context first and foremost. In this -building movement, seeking to regain and understanding, the ‘degeneration’ that took rebuild its state, while keeping the image place was something that happened after. of the old, pre-Partition Republic in the back- The period of the Second Republic ground. After more than a century of state- of Poland saw, not so much any easing lessness and huge ethnic and civilisational of the controversy involving Polish and Ger- changes taking place in the area, any recon- man geographers, as a marked strengthen- ciling of the historical map with contempo- ing of it. German political geography in the rary realities represented a difficult problem hands of such exponents as Hausdorf radical- indeed. It created a specific linkage between ised the anti-Polish argumentation, and this the Polish political geography that was taking – via the territorial revisionism of the Weimar shape and a geography of a symbolic and his- Republic – gave rise to the criminal policy torical nature. And, as we know, the matter of the Third Reich. The Second Republic was of the territory the re-emerging Polish state thus confronted with revisionist tendencies ought to occupy was a source of considerable on the German side, as well as with dissat- controversy and debate domestically, around isfaction with the results of the 1920 referen- 1918. dum on the Polish side. The dispute between the aforesaid A Jagiellonian-Piast concept then arose, Nałkowski and Romer is looked at, as one positing a temporal and spatial continuum of the most important discussions concern- from the origins of the Polish state through ing the territory and location of Poland prior to the present day. Historical argument here to its regaining of independence. The work links up with geographical, and Briesewitz by these leading Polish geographers is here is inclined to consider that the attention placed in the context of intellectual dispute of Polish political geography was first and characterising the late 19th and early 20th foremost directed at East Prussia and the centuries, as well as the creative output Baltic Sea (the matter of the widening of the

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Polish corridor). What was involved was separating the present from the Second a ‘geostrategic’ improvement of the state’s World War led to the emergence of new ide- location, more than any ethnic arguments, as and political needs. The or even historical ones. To that extent, Lower and Silesian Institute as institutional supports and Western were not the helped out via a battle against ‘West Ger- centre of attention for the Jagiellonian-Piast man’ revisionism, and with circles of resettled concept, with Polish political thought domi- (or exiled) Germans in particular. They also nated by a Jagiellonian-type thinking orien- upheld a thesis regarding the age-old Piast tated towards the East. However, ‘Western character of the Western Lands, and this was thought’ was awakened by the revisionist one of the reasons why the process of build- tendencies in the Weimar Republic. Euge- ing a Polish identity there (whose key factor niusz Romer’s concept of the ‘natural terri- with time became the recognition of the Ger- tory’ – with a western border along the Oder man heritage and its repossession) eluded and Neisse – found its continuation in work most of the later proponents of ‘Western by Zygmunt Wojciechowski, in which the thought’ in the People’s Republic of Poland. question of a border coinciding with these riv- These continued all the time in a confronta- ers was brought into far sharper relief. tional atmosphere vis-à-vis Germany, where In the circumstances of the Second World in the meantime the years from the 1970s War, Western thought experienced an under- onwards brought many observable manifes- standable-enough radicalisation, to the point tations of Polish-German rapprochement. The where it would supply justifications, post- two centres thus remained on the sidelines War, for a border along the Oder and Neis- of processes that led to Polish-German recon- se, in this way merging with the communist ciliation from 1989 onwards. concept of the ‘’ (Zie- In the context of the Polish-German dispute mie Odzyskane). The tragic paradox of this between geographers, ‘Western thought’ story is that effect was given to the Western may be interpreted more as a component thought characteristic of the Second Republic of political discourse than as a scientific quar- in tandem with the catastrophe of the Second rel within the discipline that is geography. World War. Poland did indeed obtain a bor- With the arrival of 1989, ‘Western thought’ der along the Oder and Neisse, because that was left entirely outdated by ever-closer rela- was the will of Stalin, who was at the same tions between Warsaw and Berlin, with this time stifling Polish independence. Academ- making clearer than ever the extent to which ics like Zygmunt Wojciechowski thus saw ostensibly geographical and certainly ter- their ideas written into a post-War concept ritorial imaginings had earlier become fixed of Piast Poland that legitimised the country’s in a purely propaganda context. However, new authorities. They salvaged what was left even in the face of such a critical assessment, of the Jagiellonian-Piast idea, facing up to it is necessary to recall how far on from 1945 the threat that Poland might end up being ‘Western thought’ found its political justifica- reduced to an area smaller than the old tion in the face of a shift of territory forced Congress Kingdom, given the efforts made upon Poland that was a rare event on such to fully discredit the Jagiellonian part of the a scale anywhere and at any time in history. above idea. If there is indeed justification for the thesis Understandably enough, Western thought that ‘Western thought’ was relegated to histo- immediately after the War had a very anti- ry by the events of 1989, as opposed to being German orientation, and was thus a useful any longer a matter of relevant political (or prop for the policy towards Germany being policy) discourse, this may still leave open pursued by the communist authorities. This a question as to how the ‘imagined space’ was the case through to 1989, notwithstand- of today’s Poland as an EU Member State ing the way increasing amounts of time is constructed, and what that construction

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has in common with imaginings to the fore and justify what had happened; and with the in earlier times. geographer wading in alongside the historian A reading of the work by Briesewitz also to add his contribution, to the effect that what ushers in a second, more general, question the latter knew to be true about history just – concerning the significance and role to be had to happen, given that it was all decided played in political processes by political geog- by geography. raphy, as well as the spatial imaginings and Things complicated further as geopolitics ideas that can find themselves being gener- opted to refer to the future as well as the ated within that discipline. To what extent past. Then geographical conditions were do the ideas of geographers end up influ- to delimit areas that were just ‘natural’ for encing politics (or policy)? To what extent are and to given political communities – to the they nothing more than ex post justifications extent that, if the latter did not in fact occupy allowing matters to be resolved or to take the former at the given moment, then the for- their course with the aid of ‘geographical mer situation needed to be reinstated. In the arguments’? These are of course questions late 19th and early 20th centuries, argumen- relating to a further one about the relation- tation of this kind was linked up with an abso- ship between the political sciences and geog- lutist approach to ethnic divisions, and hence raphy. Briesewitz is inclined to regard resort with fundamentally racist ideologies. Noth- to geography as a means of advancing politi- ing surprising then, as Brusewitz notes, that cal arguments as an abuse of science, pure some of the founders of geopolitics so will- and simple – even if the context of the era ingly become bedfellows with the National in which Ratzel, Nałkowski or Romer were Socialists. active was one in which this kind of approach While ostensibly supplying objectivised was widespread, and considered justified. criteria by which to depict political space, The pre-First World War period is one geography found itself at the beck and call of nation-founding movements within the of politics and politicians that were seek- area ruled over by European empires like the ing to shape political space actively. In such Second Reich and Tsarist Russia. Nations hav- a way did political wilfulness and even aggres- ing the ambition to found their own states sion obtain sanction by reference to natural were faced with an imperative to determine objectivity. their borders. Briesewitz’s book throws this The post-War period in essence brought fact into sharp relief, and in an interesting a complete ditching of the version of ‘geopoli- way. At the same time, and in parallel, we see tics’ that had shaped the turn of the century. the first fruits of the political sciences ripen, This inter alia happened because of the way with a major manifestation thereof being in which (and extent to which) it had become the birth of geopolitics. A late 19th-century compromised given the deployment of its key atmosphere in which scientism held sway saw tenets in support of Third Reich ideology. a geopolitics (with pretensions to be a field Nevertheless, the Polish-German disputes with objectivised rooting in science almost between geographers did not die away, and matching that of the natural sciences) reach in fact persisted for many years after the out for geography and Darwinism. Thus were War, as a consequence of the huge post-War spatial relations, like configurations of moun- shifts in territory that had taken place, and tain chains, lowlands and rivers, and even the fact that people in Poland had no choice climatic conditions, roped in to create condi- whatever but to speak up for changes that tions pretty much allowed to determine politi- long proved unacceptable to Germany, for cal relationships. Thus did geopolitics find obvious enough reasons. It is true to say itself in a rather ambiguous situation from that this dispute continued to draw heavily the very outset, with its geographical argu- on arguments from a much earlier era. But ments in general being deployed to explain the Polish-German war of the geographers

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ceased to mean anything rather quickly after Russia. Maps made by such supportive 1989, and so faded away. It might thus have propaganda merchants as Aleksandr Dugin seemed that geography had ceased to play offer an effective illustration of what Russian any propaganda role at all, at least in Europe. neo-imperialism can be capable of imagining, Nevertheless, it is ever necessary to recall when it comes to the design of a new interna- how great a significance a map may have, tional order. and how much persuasive power. What Indeed, every more general political is more, the associate mental maps are by no debate makes some reference or other means just the work of geographers. Depic- to a map. There is also obvious linkage tions from the past still visible on old maps between the political sciences and geography are a suggestive heritage that can come in many of its scientific variants. It is certain back to life even several generations later, that the boundaries between these fields are should the circumstances prove favourable. fuzzy, and hasty or thoughtless transgres- In Poland too, territorial imaginings bade sions of them may make geography a tool farewell to long ago seem to have made rath- of politics once again, with political scientists er a return: not least Międzymorze (the Inter- afforded the chance to use the prompts pro- marium between the Baltic and Black Seas), vided to offer simplified explanations of politi- as a concept inherited from earlier disputes. cal processes. A reminder regarding earlier For Poles, this is an echo of territorial imagin- discussions of this kind might thus prove use- ings associated with the old Commonwealth, ful, not only because of a need to safeguard while for Hungarians such a map lies at the the rules of our scientific discipline. Excessive- heart of discussions on national identity. ly blasé movements of fingers around maps Today’s migrations of nations and atten- may end in wars far beyond those waged dant processes are also impossible to discuss between geographers, and this is one more without a map, while a further grim example reason why a read of Briesewitz’s book looks of the use of maps – and hence of imagined beneficial. It would thus be fine if it were mental space given concrete form and geopo- to appear in a Polish version. litical resonance – of course relates to Putin’s

© Kazimierz Wóycicki Review first received • April 2016 © Geographia Polonica Review accepted • April 2016 © Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences • Warsaw • 2016

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