Studies in Contemporary Contemporary in Studies Studies in History European Contemporary Peripheries at the Centre European Peripheries History Studies in Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe Contemporary Machteld Venken European at the Centre History Peripheries at the Centre shows how the international border settlements after the First Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe World War worked (or did not work) on the ground. We learn how pupils, their parents and their principals maneuvered through changing legal and administrative regimes, and how those regimes were often riven by contradictions and failures in their application. Venken’s thought-provoking theses should interest scholars concerned with how international and Machteld Venken national dynamics shape the everyday experiences, subjectivities and scope of action for children in a variety of contested areas. Katherine Lebow, Oxford University Peripheries at the Centre is a notable intervention in social history and an innovative contribution to current historiographical debates. It offers a deep comparison of German peripheral regions after 1918 in Poland and Belgium, and it sets up a theoretically sophisticated European analysis of the limits and inadequacies of nationally framed reform pedagogy, giving voice to children’s modernity. Peripheries at the Centre Steven Seegel, University of Northern Colorado Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium – border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realising the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period. Machteld Venken is Professor of Contemporary Transnational History at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History of the University of Luxembourg. Cover image: Page 3 of the book FIBEL, Lesebüchlein für die Unterklassen belgischer Schulen (J. Lousberg). Used with permission. History / Education Machteld Venken berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com Peripheries at the Centre This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Not for resale. Studies in Contemporary European History Editors: Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Henry Rousso, Senior Research Fellow at the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (Centre national de la recherche scientifi que, Paris) Recent volumes: Volume 27 Volume 22 Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland From Eastern Bloc to European Union: Schooling in Interwar Europe Comparative Processes of Transformation Machteld Venken since 1990 Edited by Günther Heydemann and Volume 26 Karel Vodička At the Edge of the Wall: Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin Volume 21 Hanno Hochmuth Migration, Memory, and Diversity: Germany from 1945 to the Present Volume 25 Edited by Cornelia Wilhelm Reconciliation Road: Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik and the Quest for European Volume 20 Peace Ambassadors of Realpolitik: Sweden, Benedikt Schoenborn the CSCE and the Cold War Aryo Makko Volume 24 Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Volume 19 Petitions during the Holocaust Wartime Captivity in the Twentieth Edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Century: Archives, Stories, Memories Wolf Gruner Edited by Anne-Marie Pathé and Fabien Théofi lakis Volume 23 Peace at All Costs: Catholic Intellectuals, Volume 18 Journalists, and Media in Postwar Polish- Whose Memory? Which Future? German Reconciliation Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Annika Elisabet Frieberg Cultural Diversity in East, Central and Southeastern Europe Edited by Barbara Törnquist-Plewa For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: h p://berghahnbooks.com/series/contemporary-european-history. This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Not for resale. PERIPHERIES AT THE CENTRE Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe ( Machteld Venken berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Not for resale. First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Machteld Venken All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without wri en permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Venken, Machteld, author. Title: Peripheries at the centre : borderland schooling in interwar Europe / Machteld Venken. Description: First edition. | New York : Berghahn, 2021. | Series: Studies in contemporary European history ; volume 27 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2020042373 (print) | LCCN 2020042374 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789209679 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789209693 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Scho ols—Europe—History—20th century. | Education— Europe—History. | Borderlands—Europe—Social conditions—20th century. | Language and languages—Study and teaching—Europe—History—20th century. | Europe—Social conditions—20th century. Classifi cation: LCC LA621.8 .V46 2021 (print) | LCC LA621.8 (ebook) | DDC 370.94—dc23 LC record available at h ps://lccn.loc.gov/2020042373 LC ebook record available at h ps://lccn.loc.gov/2020042374 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The electronic open access publication of Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe has been made possible through the generous fi nancial support of the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. This work is published subject to CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. The terms of the license can be found at h ps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For uses beyond those covered in the license contact Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78920-967-9 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-969-3 open access ebook This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Not for resale. CONTENTS ( List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations x Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Schools, Language and Children during the First World War 41 Chapter 2. A Framework of Comparison 57 Chapter 3. Making the Border 77 Chapter 4. Scaping the Border 119 Chapter 5. A Universal Childhood 156 Conclusion 196 Appendix. Belgian and Polish Governments and Ministers Responsible for Education 212 Bibliography 218 Index 257 This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Not for resale. ILLUSTRATIONS ( Figures Figure 0.1. Joseph Lousberg’s alphabet book developed for German-speaking pupils in the regions of Eupen, Sankt Vith and Malmedy (Lousberg, Fibel oder Lesebüchlein, 1929, 14 – copyright: State Archive in Eupen). 2 Figure 4.1. New textbooks, such as Our Readings (Nasze Czytanki) compiled by Jan Żebrok, were the most well-known products of the Polonisation campaign directed towards borderland pupils in Polish Upper Silesia in the late 1920s and early 1930s (copyright: The Silesian Library). 145 Figure 5.1. The school journal The Young Citizen, produced by the bilingual primary school in Lubliniec, was printed only in Polish. Młody Obywatel, 1935, vol. 2, 3, front cover (copyright: Public Primary School in Lubliniec Nr. 1). 177 Tables Table A.1. Belgian governments and ministers responsible for education. 212 Table A.2. Polish governments and ministers responsible for education. 214 This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Not for resale. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ( I composed this monograph to the rhythm of my daughter’s growing into a schoolchild. She is on every page of this book. I read most of Mezzadra and Neilson’s Border as a Method, referred to in the introduction, on Viennese playgrounds while looking a er Maren and her older brother, Lew. A er Maren found in my backpack a book with drawings of Polish-speaking children in refuge depicting their ex- periences of the First World War, she had problems falling asleep. My a ention was triggered by the account of the girl writing an essay in Ger- man while using Polish orthography, mentioned in one of the chapters of this book, because a few days earlier my trilingual daughter had decided to stick to her neologism ‘poestij n’ – a combination of the Dutch word ‘woestij n’ and the Polish word ‘pustynia’ – even a er fi nding out it was wrong, because she considered it more beautiful. An original source copy from the German Archive in Koblenz contains a hole Maren made a er grabbing it from my desk. The archival documents from Katowice were gathered during a research summer Maren was too small to remember, but her four-year-old brother did. He put the city at the centre of his men- tal map of Europe and long continued to ask when we would fi nally move there.