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Geographia Polonica Vol. 89 No. 2 (2016)

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Geographia Polonica Vol. 89 No. 2 (2016) Geographia Polonica 2016, Volume 89, Issue 2, pp. 245-249 INSTITUTE OF GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL ORGANIZATION POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES www.igipz.pan.pl www.geographiapolonica.pl 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 Warsaw Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00-927 Warsaw: Poland 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 VARIA: BOOK REVIEW GP_2016_2.indb 245 2016-06-21 11:33:44 246 Kazimierz Wóycicki 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 Nazism, 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 Geographia Polonica 2016, 89, 2, pp. 245-249 GP_2016_2.indb 246 2016-06-21 11:33:45 Review 247 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 Western Institute or even historical ones. To that extent, Lower and Silesian Institute as institutional supports Silesia and Western Pomerania 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 ‘Recovered Territories’ (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.
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