Herito - War and Memory

What is HERITO?

Professors Andrzej Chwalba, Jacek Purchla and Robert Traba talk to Łukasz Galusek

The state is a very significant factor that serves the cultivation of memory. It has at its disposal instruments that make it possible to weaken, kill, reinforce, strengthen, and also create myths. The majority of the nations that participated in the First World War did not have their own states, we are talking about this new Europe – this is a truism, but one that must be emphasised: it was not their war.

Łukasz Galusek: Is the impact of the First World War on the cultural memory of Central Europe in any way comparable to the remembrance of the Second World War?

Andrzej Chwalba: If the question is posed this way,whether you like it or not, you need to start with Germany. It is good to realise that Germany was very close to victory in 1915, in 1916, and even early in 1918, when they reallocated armies from the Eastern to the Western Front, despite the presence of American forces. They also had impressive plans concerning the design of Europe; after all, the idea of Mitteleuropa – a termwe often use – was to be implemented by Germany after 1915 or 1916. It meant Europe stretching as far as Finland. Ukraine, Romania, Poland – the whole of Austro Hungary after its disintegration – was to be part of that German Europe (just as there used to be a French Europe, now a German one was to arise). For years, the German propaganda and school “pumped up” the pride and self assuredness of Germans around the powerful position of the country, also on the scale of colonial empires: in the place of the British and French empires, they expected the emergence of the colonial German Empire, the largest in the history of the world. Thus “pumped up”, they suddenly lost the war, and they found it a great shock, which is why they fervently sought the culprits. They would find them in the revolution, in communists, socialists… In the appalling West, which forced t he famous clause into the Treaty of Versailles, stating that the only culprit behind the outbreak of the war was Germany. The only one, really? And we know that the Germans were not keen to agree to this. The assessment of the end of the war, the revolution that destroyed Germany, and the allies unable to understand that the Germans were at most jointly to blame for the war – all these factors led to the favourable conditions for the preparation of a new war. That is why the ideology of National Socialism would soon come to power. In the case of Germany, there is an organic tie between the First and the Second World Wars; it would be difficult to imagine the Second without the First, and Germany strongly lives by it.

Robert Traba: Yet by the 1960s, the First World War had been displaced from cultural memory…

Andrzej Chwalba: Of course, after the Second World War, the First suddenly became more distant. Germans have neither the desire nor the time to take a close look at it, as they are chiefly concerned by coming to terms with the Second World War. Yet there is one moment, one place, Verdun, where major gatherings are organised on successive anniversaries – in 1966, 1976, and 1986 – which is aligned with the concept of German French reconciliation. Present there in 1986 were both Kohl and Mitterrand, and the site had earlier been a meeting place for veterans. This is how the memory of war serves the establishment of a foundation for a political tandem, that is the French German leadership in the European Community: originally the EEC, and later the European Union. It is in Verdun that they swear to each other that they will collaborate for the common good and for the peaceful development of Europe.

Robert Traba: Let’s not forget that, besides the current of European conciliation, it was the memory of the First World War that made a very solid foundation of the critical German appraisal of their history in the liberal left wing spirit in the 1960s. “We are responsible for the tragedy of the 20th century” is the message of Griff nach der Weltmacht (literally “bid for world power” and published in English as Germany’s Aims in the First World War), a book by Fritz Fisher, of fundamental importance for the debate about the responsibility for both the wars. It is significant that the contemporary publishing market is consumed by a book by an Australian academic, Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went To War in 1914. So far, the German language version has sold 300,000 copies, a record for a history book. Why? Because Clark disaggregates the responsibility for the First World War and challenges the dominant claim about Germany’s chief responsibility. I am somewhat puzzled by this enthusiastic reception of Clark’s claims, because, at least in historians’ studies, the question of diversification of participation of powers, especially European ones, in starting the war has been discussed for years. This refers both to colonialist competition and competition on the European continent. Obviously, German responsibility is very clear, yet not exclusive.
Another important question is an attempt to redefine the history of Europe through the First World War. Let’s recall what must perhaps be the most popular opinion on the subject, published by Die Welt early this year: four young academics formulated a quasi manifesto, which tried to portray the outbreak of the First World War and its consequences as failed foundations for contemporary Europe, also post 1945, because they believe the First World War to have been the start of a 30 year war (1914–1945), a simplified assertion… There are very many such publications, and the First World War remains popular in TV programmes, documentaries, etc. Despite the very lively debate, the rationale of the official German historical policy, we could say, is such that the anniversary of the First World War cannot dampen the memory of the Second World War, Holocaust, and Nazi period. State celebrations in Germany are limited; President Gauck invited historians from all over Europe to a public debate on the significance of the Great War, and this is the largest event. There are no major state ceremonies, and they build up the greatest power and drive for cultural remembrance.

Łukasz Galusek: How does it look from the Polish perspective?

Jacek Purchla: By definition, Polish memory is entirely different. The Second World War not only wiped out the drama of the First World War from the collective memory of Poles for 50 years, but it went further, as this erasure was one of the most crucial strategies of propaganda in the People’s Republic of Poland. This was because the foundation of that memory accompanied the independence obtained in 1918. Anything connected to the myth of Jozef Piłsudski or the legend of the Legions, anything that contributed to the foundation of the new narrative in the two decades of the Second Republic of Poland, beginning with August 1914 and Oleandry, until 11th November 1918, was a taboo subject. The paradox of the contemporary memory of Poles about the First World War lies in the fact that regaining of memory, which we have certainly been witnessing for some time, is highly selective. In such places as Gorlice and Przemyśl, that is where the theatre of war has to this day left a lasting trace in the form of wartime cemeteries and military installations, we witness the conversion of remembrance into a tourist commodity. In turn, I believe that memory about the reality of the First World War in major Polish cities – Krakow, Warsaw, Łodź – is still of token significance. What I find most curious, in my capacity as an economic historian, is that the narrative developed by Polish historiography between the two world wars, and also in our times, leaves out not only the scale of involvement of Poles serving in the uniforms of the three occupying armies but also the scale of destruction of the Polish lands. Besides north eastern France and part of Belgium, it was these territories that experienced ruin, destruction, and pillaging by all the occupying powers. Moreover, in the end Poland did not necessarily side with the victors, as it had to pay reparations from some of its land. These costs became something of secondary importance when juxtaposed with the joyful news that the independence of 1918 certainly was. (Although the First World War did not finish for Poles at that time, as the border wars were to continue for a few more years.)

Robert Traba: I don’t think that it’s correct to say that the memory of the First World War was erased. I would use a stronger term, for I am convinced that there was no memory of the First World War in Poland after 1918 either. Full stop. Why? Just because if we accept Professor Chwalba’s opening construction, i.e. we examine the theatre of events, the question arises of what was the most important between 1914 and 1918. The Gorlice–Tarnow Offensive, the raid of Hindenburg’s armies from the north, and the establishment of a rump Polish state, to which Germany paradoxically awarded certain liberties, beginning with the use of the Polish language, observation of 3rd May, etc., and besides that the unprecedented destruction of Kalisz, Częstochowa: these events were supplanted. And I will tenaciously cling to the notion, as I see erasure as a process of external intervention into memory, while displacing can be both mine, internal, and external. This duality is worth emphasising. The deed of the legions was remembered after the First World War, the cause that brought about the momentous event, that is regaining independence. Dramatic events like the Gorlice–Tarnow Offensive were not ensconced in cultural memory. The memory of war was displaced for the sake of the memory of regaining independence.
After the Second World War, the memory of regaining independence was displace, as the status of the state after regaining it was contradictory with the communist ideology. Yet I would like to emphasise another thing as well: this was a natural phenomenon. Once we realise what the hecatomb of the Second World War, which claimed over 5 million victims, was, it becomes easier to understand that it was not only a question of communist propaganda but also the aftermath of the events from 1914–1918 being overwhelmed by the tragedy of the Second World War. If we apply the Assmanns’ categories, I’d say that the events of the First World War did not pass – both between the wars and after the Second – from communicative memory, the memory passed from generation to generation – into cultural memory. A cultural memory was developed in the symbolical space of independent Poland, yet not in the space of the sacrifice that Poland actually made in the First World War.
The cemeteries that were established during the war did not enter the canon of political rituals, hence the memory of thousands of Poles fighting in the armies of alien occupant powers became blurred.

Jacek Purchla: What I meant was that as soon as the First World War came to a close, the Polish outlook on it was primarily monopolised by independence. Anything else was, one could say, not our war – and this is where the dichotomy lies. Erasure – I am determined to use the term – arrived after the second war, because this very independence was a memory of the first war, and it was awkward for the new system. But I don’t want to talk too much about this new system, the People’s Republic, as it would be too easy. As far as commemoration is concerned, it began as early as 1915, and primarily served the warmongering propaganda of the central powers.

Andrzej Chwalba: Perhaps I will approach the period between the two world wars in a somewhat different manner. The war ended in 1918, and as we know subsequent wars continued, and there were altogether seven of them, until 1921, if not 1923, and in the memory of the citizens of the Republic of Poland – whether we’re talking about Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians or Lithuanians – it is just what they participated in that remains alive.

Robert Traba: Yes, but in individual memory, and not in the ritualised form of collective remembrance.

Andrzej Chwalba: Obviously. It was such an intensive, such a dramatic experience both in the material realm discussed earlier and in the human realm that it was strongly remembered and commemorated by the participants of the events themselves as far as possible. Yet the conscious policy of the state is something different. In 1921–1926, the state was quite passive when it comes to commemorating. That role was taken over by associations – for example the Haller Armies Veterans Association, yet by 1939 they had lost any major significance, they received no assistance from the state, and disappeared. That is why there is no commemoration of Gorlice, no commemoration of Tarnow, nobody commemorates Limanowa or the battle of Łodź.

Łukasz Galusek: This war was also hardly celebrated in Russia. The memory of it seems downright insignificant there. Was this because the October Revolution was the most important, and it was the revolution that determined what was commemorated?

Andrzej Chwalba: Indeed, that was the case, and to tell the truth the memory of that war was not restored in Russia after 1991 / 1992. There are no political forces willing to do it. Even if local initiatives emerge – a reconstruction of the battle of Gumbinnen (Polish: Gąbin, Russian: Gusev) was organised in the Kaliningrad Oblast, say – on the Russian scale, the memory of the First World War does not exist.

Jacek Purchla: The victory of the Bolsheviks determined that the whole problem of that war was dominated by the Bolshevik Revolution for a very long time – the time in which the generation of the First World War died out – and anything that remained was unwelcome, as it was associated with imperial Russia.
Yet I would not agree that this is the case today, because since the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s presidency you can clearly see that the First World War is becoming an ever handier tool for the reconstruction of the Russian imperial tradition. You just have to visit the Museum of Political History of Russia in St Petersburg to see how the narrative changed; how altogether different is the official justification of the First World War today, and what that war meant for Russians also after 1918. Why do I mention this? Because what we can currently see clearly in Russia is the ambition of the authorities to rebuild the memory of the First World War, yet obviously not as anything so special that it could in any way challenge the Great Patriotic War. No, this is not what it is all about, the essence is to portray the continuity of the Russian Empire. Interestingly, this experiment is conducted on the memory of people born after the First World War. For that reason, this cannot have a very broad resonance, yet the trend is absolutely visible, at least from my perspective.

Andrzej Chwalba: I ndeed, i n t he days o f Yeltsin, the subject of the First World War didn’t exist at all. Later, Putin (or Kremlin policy) sought a reference for its imperial policy in Russia’s imperial past. At the same time, the Kremlin is a conscious heir to everything that came to pass in the Soviet state and in the later state, so this policy is somewhat incoherent. It used to be incoherent, and it will probably remain incoherent as it is drawing from antagonistic competing memories and the history of memory. That is why it seems to us that Russians are trying to return to the events from the First World War, yet these are actually episodic events. The most important thing is that the Russian historians received no positive signal – get to work and research the history of the world war – from the Kremlin.
They do not participate in international congresses on the war, however much they would like to, just because they are not prepared for that. In Russia, there are no new studies. Nevertheless, the time of the war as a period of an imperial war is instrumentally fitted to the history of contemporary Russia and Russian policy. It is a very instrumental, very selective policy.

Jacek Purchla: Yet we must distinguish between history and memory; historical research – whatever its level of advancement – is one thing, and the process I outlined is another.

Łukasz Galusek: What about the “small nations of Central Europe”? Many of them came into being through the First World War, so it seems that they have special reasons to cultivate its memory.

Jacek Purchla: Looking at Central Europe, one needs
to state clearly that Poles and Czechs may on the one hand consider the result of the war of nations, the generalwar, a success, despite the damage and losses. Yet our close neighbours, such as Hungarians, recall this war precisely the other way round: as a catastrophe whose aftermath they are even to this day struggling to come to terms with, also in the political aspect. Thus, within a small area, we can observe nearly the entire spectrum of situations – from gains to losses – that is, from the three imperial powers that could be said to have stabilised and also controlled the entire great space of Central and Eastern Europe in 1815, their demise, which after all was difficult to foresee in 1914 by the future beneficiaries such as the Republic of Poland and Czechoslovakia, via the catastrophe that the Hungarians, but also Austria and Austrians, found this war to be, to the experience of those in whom the war sparked hopes, yet unfulfilled hopes: Ukrainians, for example. Finally, there were the beneficiaries who received a present from the allies, from the victors, as a bonus – here I mean Romania. These presents were about to generate successive conflicts and disputes. Let’s add too the three Baltic states, and we arrive with 11 new states that emerged on the map of Europe after the conclusion of the war.

Robert Traba: We continue to emphasise the situation of Hungary, but why was this war not such a trauma, such a catastrophic defining moment for Austria?

Andrzej Chwalba: Because, a lthough there were claims made concerning the Austrian Czech borderland, Austria re emerged in its, one might say national, borders. Hungary, in turn, considered the territory from the Carpathians to the Adriatic to have been Hungarian for centuries. Austrians were building something that I would call artificial, turning their state into an empire, where they were a stratum, the managing nation, especially through participation in administration and the army. Things looked different in the case of the Hungarians, also because they maintained a monarchy between the two world wars. It was a symbol of Hungarian aspirations and the belief that the monarchy would one day let them reclaim the territories they used to have. Austrians set up the republic which made them in a way say farewell to the Habsburgs.

Robert Traba: Yet South Tyrol was a sore loss.

Andrzej Chwalba: Tears were indeed shed over Tyrol. Yet there was no weeping over what had happened.

Jacek Purchla: The new Republican tradition is crucial for Austria, as the republic consciously fought the entire Habsburg myth. It fought that myth persistently and for a very long time. That is perhaps why Austrians found it easier to swallow an obvious catastrophe, especially acutely felt by Vienna, which suddenly became the huge capital in a miniature rump state.

Łukasz Galusek: Looking for Central European “places of remembrance” related to that war, we immediately encounter two: Sarajevo and Trianon. One has in a way already been closed: Sarajevo, where that war began, somehow received a complement in the form of the besieged Sarajevo of the 1990s. Some even believe that the entire 20th century is contained between those two Sarajevos. Trianon still remains open, it continues to be a trauma, for example, for Hungarians. What are the other “places of memory” of the First World War important for Central Europeans?

Robert Traba: Versailles. After all, it is thanks to Versailles that we regained independence. I believe that historians should not play at being prophets, and therefore I do not intend to, yet observing what is taking place in the building of memory – although I do not like hearing this word being abused – or in the historical policies of Central European states other than Serbia – I have the impression that the memory of the First World War was supplanted to the extent that even the centenary will hardly change anything. For thirty  or forty somethings, the experience of the change of 1989–1990 is the generational experience. And that turning point will, I believe, remain most vivid in the memory, and it will be the one to create historical memory. Observing what happened until June this year, I believe that the memory of the First World War will exist, yet it will ever more be a “cooled down” memory, without identity building impulses for our historical awareness. As a historian, but also as a citizen, I believe that the most important event in the history of Poland that I have lived through was 4th June 1989, the 1980–1989 period – that time influenced my whole thinking, understanding of reality, and this is the living memory of millions of people of Central Europe.

Andrzej Chwalba: The state is a very significant factor that serves the cultivation of memory. It has at its disposal instruments that make it possible to weaken, kill, reinforce, strengthen, and also create myths. The majority of the nationalities that participated in the First World War did not have their own states, we are talking about this new Europe – this is a truism, but one that must be emphasised: it was not their war. The people of those nations obviously went to the war: disciplined, they donned the uniforms and had their weapons issued, yet they did not feel the emotions
of defending the state. Europe made a vast effort in the 19th century, when the nations developed national states, and the war of 1914–1918 was also the war of national states, not only of multinational ones. Besides Hungary, which due to the staggering defeats entered the 21st century with that burden, and Romania and Bulgaria, which had already obtained their statehood at an earlier date, the remaining countries will truly celebrate only in 2018: on the centenary of the establishment of their independent states. The policy of individual states serves rather the commemoration of the year the war ended – 1918.

Jacek Purchla: I would also like to look at the – one can cynically use the word “demand” – scale of demand for the First World War. It is clear that the main engine stimulating the demand today is the problem of independence. The fall of great empires is rather the question of oblivion among the nations that lost their imperial nature, and this also concerns Austrians. Yet I would like to address the case of the Slovenes, who still very much live on the First World War. What happened at the Isonzo River led to my having the pleasure of supporting the idea of the Memorial Church of the Holy Spirit in Javorca being placed on the new European Heritage Label list in June. This is the choice
of the Slovene state and the Slovene government, and what is for them the most important in the face of Europe when it comes to the policy of remembrance. It is highly characteristic that the brutality of that war with all its bloodshed remains in the memory of the nations that might have played secondary roles, yet had those massacres enacted in their territory. And this too is part of the experience of Central Europe.

Andrzej Chwalba – historian, Professor of Humanities, professor at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University, head of the Chair of Historical Anthropology. His research interests concern the religious, social, cultural, and civilisational aspects of Polish and European history of the 19th and 20th centuries, and especially the history of mentality, history of Krakow in the 20th century, and history of Poland after the Second World War, especially in the communist period and the system transformations after 1989. Author of numerous academic works and member of
multiple associations, he served as vice president of the Polish Historical Society. Professor Chwalba’s most recent publication is Samobójstwo Europy (literally: “Europe’s suicide”, Krakow 2014).

Jacek Purchla – ordinary professor of human science, head of the Department of Economic and Social History and the UNESCO Chair for Heritage and Urban Studies at Krakow University of Economics as well as the Jagiellonian University’s European Heritage Department. His areas of research include urban development, social history of art in the 19th and 20th centuries, and theory and practice of heritage preservation. He is the author of more than 300 academic works, including many books. In 1990–1991 he was the deputy mayor of Krakow, and since 1991 he has been the organiser and director of the International Cultural Centre in Krakow, and editor in chief of Herito.

Robert Traba – professor of history, political scientist, theorist of culture, founder of the “Borussia” Cultural Community Association and editor of Borussia quarterly. He began his scholarly work at the Research Station of the Polish Historical Society in Olsztyn. Between 1995 and 2003, he worked in the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. Since 2006 he has been the director of the Historical Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin. He is also the co president of the Polish German Textbooks Commission and an honorary professor at the Freie
Universitat in Berlin.