Changing Cultural Landscapes: The Case of Post-German Territories in Poland

Abstract

Cultural landscapes of Central-Eastern Europe have been devastated by the Second World War and its consequences. Thinking of demolished cities and destroyed historical buildings, one can easily forget about the intangible part of the landscape, so to the narratives standing behind what we see. These were more affected by the unprecedented mass forced migrations that happened after the military actions had ceased. Among the territories that almost completely changed their population over a very short time after the war were the so-called ‘Recovered Territories’, i.e. former German lands attributed to Poland after the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. New inhabitants, who in the majority came there from former Polish territories in the East, found themselves in a ‘land without landscape’, where everything needed new names and reinterpretation.