Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

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Format: 1 online resource (364 p.)

ISBN: 9789633863244

Content: After World War II, Europe witnessed the massive redrawing of national borders and the efforts to make the population fit those new borders. As a consequence of these forced changes, both Lviv and Wrocław went through cataclysmic changes in population and culture. Assertively Polish prewar Lwów became Soviet Lvov, and then, after 1991, it became assertively Ukrainian Lviv. Breslau, the third largest city in Germany before 1945, was in turn "recovered" by communist Poland as Wrocław. Practically the entire population of Breslau was replaced, and Lwów's demography too was dramatically restructured: many Polish inhabitants migrated to Wrocław and most Jews perished or went into exile. The forced migration of these groups incorporated new myths and the construction of official memory projects. The chapters in this edited book compare the two cities by focusing on lived experiences and "bottom-up" historical processes. Their sources and methods are those of micro-history and include oral testimonies, memoirs, direct observation and questionnaires, examples of popular culture, and media pieces. The essays explore many manifestations of the two sides of the same coin—loss on the one hand, gain on the other—in two cities that, as a result of the political reality of the time, are complementary.

Note: Frontmatter -- , Table of Contents -- , Introduction -- , A Place Called Home? Nation, Locality and the “Parallel” Polish- Ukrainian Histories of Wrocław and Lviv -- , Population Movement and the Liberal State: The Polskie Towarzystwo Emigracyjne and the Regulation of Labor Migration from Lviv’s Hinterlands -- , Jews in Lviv at the Turn of the 20th Century: On the Road to Modernization -- , Beyond National: “Posttraumatic Identity” of Disabled War Veterans in Interwar Lviv -- , East Meets West: Polish-German Coexistence in Lower Silesia through the Memories of Polish Expellees, 1945–1947 -- , Tylko we Lwowie: Tango, Jazz, and Urban Entertainment in a Multi-ethnic City -- , Impressions of Place: Soviet Travel Writings and the Discovery of Lviv, 1939–40 -- , Imperfect Metropolis: The Evolving Projections of Wrocław in Polish Feature Films -- , The Bu-Ba-Bu and the Reorientation of Ukrainian Culture: The Carnival City and the Palimpsestual Past -- , Memory, and Lack of Memory, of Others: The Image of the Jewish and the Polish Neighbor in Oral Reflections of Lviv’s Current Inhabitants -- , City, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Wrocław after 1945 -- , Contemporary Lviv: Facing the Past—Reinterpreting the Past -- , Building Bridges Between Breslau and Wrocław: A Case Study from the European Capital of Culture Initiative, 2016 -- , Afterword: Central European Cities as Laboratories of Memory… and Oblivion—Lviv and Wrocław Contrasted -- , Index , In English.

Language: English

URL: https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9789633863244