Poster short abstract:

After 1945 from Central Europe 10 millions of Germans were expelled. The German past of the regions was supposed to be forgotten, however, is still visible. Visual materials we present come from the fieldwork in the regions and are presented alongside the narratives collected through interviews.

Poster long abstract:

After 1945 from Slavic Central Europe up to 10 millions of Germans were expelled. Blamed collectively for the war, they were forced to leave behind their properties which in turn were acquired by the new settlers of various cultural backgrounds. The German past of the regions was supposed to be forgotten, however, despite the attempts to eradicate it, a lot of remains persisted and are still visible in the cultural landscape of these regions. In our project “Recycling the German Ghosts. Resettlement Cultures in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia after 1945”, we are interested in visualizing the haunted landscapes of Slavic Central Europe: how people and their traces that were to be forgotten are still present in many forms. We document these presences and how current inhabitants deal with the potentially traumatic past by engaging which what was left, e.g. recycling, suppressing, neglecting, uncovering it. We do fieldwork and archival research in three regions: in Polish Pomerania, Czech Sudetenland / Northern Bohemia and Slovak Hauerland / Žiarská kotlina. For the purpose of this poster, we identified places where the German past is still visible and evoke unsettling memories in the inhabitants, e.g. memorials, places of worship, cemeteries, vanished spaces, houses, and orchards. We analyze them as examples of haunted landscapes evoking various responses in current inhabitants of the regions. Visual materials we present come from the fieldwork in the regions we investigate and will be presented alongside the narratives collected through interviews and archival documents.