Paper short abstract:

The paper is focused on relations between contemporary inhabitants of Western Polish territories, that before World War II belonged to Germany, and pre-war materiality. We analyze the “repeated” patterns of people, objects and places, as well as emotions they evoked.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is part of the ongoing research on pre-war materiality and its meanings for the contemporary inhabitants of Western Polish territories (Wrocław, Szczecin cities). The regions, before World War II belonged to Germany, were incorporated into Poland as a result of the Allied Leaders' Agreements.

We will focus on particular approaches and emotions that occur among our interlocutors, while recognizing the “repeated” patterns of people, objects and places. For instance, by discovering that an apartment is inhabited by people sharing the same profession that its pre-war owners had. Another such case was when a previously unidentified man, whose picture hangs at the entrance to the exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum in Wrocław, proves to be a prominent, pre-war folklorist. Such findings evoke feelings of satisfaction, and they are desirable and welcomed with enthusiasm. Our aim is also to present the objects' agency in re-establishing the past "proper order of things", that may be visualized by a painting that re-appeared in the same place on the wall as it hung in the past. We analyze these forms of interpreting past objects and places, (searching for and creating links between past and present), not only in a term of a lucky twist of fate but rather as a source of legitimizing the past takeover and reinforcement of the act of ownership among the next generations of settlers. Our analysis is based in heritage and emotion studies (Jo Labanyi, among others), we also consider people-object-place relations, taking into account social class perspective.