Magdalena Sacha studied Polish and German philology in Warsaw and Gdańsk and earned her Ph.D. in 2004 with a dissertation on the cultural life of prisoners in the Nazi Buchenwald Concentration Camp between 1937 and 1945. She has worked since 2004 as a research assistant at the Institute for Cultural Studies at Uniwersytet Gdański and teaches cultural theories, regional and Polish cultural history, as well as museology. From 2001 to 2009 she was the director of the Regional Museum in Krokowa in Northern Poland which was a branch of the West Prussia Museum in Warendorf in Germany. Since 2017 she has been a member of museum council in Museum of Upper Silesia in Bytom. In her recent research she analyses the presence of social and religious minorities in the museum exhibitions with focus on displaced persons.
Adel im Grenzraum. Transkulturelle Verflechtungen im Preussenraum vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, 2021
Towards the end of the 18th century, the question if women's education became more and more impor... more Towards the end of the 18th century, the question if women's education became more and more important at the time of the outgoing Enlightenment in Prussia. Some scholars were of the opinion that women from all social classes should be educated to become useful citizens in the etics of duty. One author, today almost an unknown German, Margarethe Regina Louise Countess von Krockow (1749-1803), wrote in 1793 an essay "Paedagogische Ideen", where she described her project for a boarding school for impoverished and orphan girls from Prussian gentry families. The following article presents the educational dream of Countess von Krockow and compares them with the memoires of Hans Carl von Krockow (1769-1841), her second son.
The article addresses representations of the Evangelical denomination at contemporary permanent m... more The article addresses representations of the Evangelical denomination at contemporary permanent museum exhibits in the region of Masuria, inhabited between 1525–1945 by a Protestant majority. Applying semiotic analysis, the author presents the outcomes of field studies in the local museums in Olsztyn, Mikołajki, Mrągowo, Ogródek, Szczytno, and in the open-air museum in Olsztynek. The principal research question is the issue of visibility and recognisability of Evangelism-related items at permanent exhibits. The author concludes that there are three types of omissions in the presentation of the history of Masurian Evangelicals. The silencing of the Protestant past of Masuria results from the cultural colonisation that took place after 1945 and from identifying Evangelicalism with Germanness in the common consciousness of the currently dominant Polish Roman Catholic community.
Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited: An attempt to pre-categorizeThe article aims at ... more Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited: An attempt to pre-categorizeThe article aims at analyzing the status of material things whose function has changed due to changes of borders between Poland and Germany and the population transfer i.e. repatriation and expulsion after 1944. By using the Greimas semiotic square, I categorize artefacts along two axes: familiarity–otherness and mobility–immobility. I mainly focus on the musealization of things at the exhibitions in Poland and Germany concerning war and postwar resettlements.
In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in vie... more In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in view of a document ratified by Bundestag in 2016. The document concerned the further action plan for implementing the provisions of paragraph 96 of the Federal Expellee Law of 1953, popularly referred to as a “cultural paragraph”. The term “German East” bears reference to the historic territories of German settlement prior to 1945, whose heritage is a focus of attention for museums as well as science and culture institutions in contemporary Germany. Those eastern German museums have been reviewed herein, whose interest lies, inter alia, in territories presently belonging to Poland: the East Prussian State Museum (Ostpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Lüneburg, the West Prussian State Museum (Westpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Warendorf, the State Museum of Pomerania (Pommersches Landesmuseum) in Greifswald, the Silesian Museum (Schlesisches Museum) in Görlitz.
The essay focuses on the image of a woman as the Other in various status roles, such as a wife, a... more The essay focuses on the image of a woman as the Other in various status roles, such as a wife, a foreigner, a gentlewoman. The analysis, which aims to demonstrate the existence of a structural opposition between nature and culture, is based on the works of the English Edwardian writer, Elizabeth von Arnim. As the Other, the heroine of her prose finds herself mentally in the betwixt-and-between (liminal) time. On the material plane the expression of her state is the literary topos of a garden as hortus conclusus.
The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Pol... more The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Polish museums after 1989 is tackled. The main focus of interest are displays perceived as: 1) visual and public form of knowledge transfer; 2) the way of overcoming the trauma of losing one’s native land; 3) tools for creating collective identity and 4) effects of the participation of Borderland circles in creating the display. The goal of the study is an overview of contemporary exhibitions dedicated to the Eastern Borderlands, and the experience of their loss as the result of WW II. Since the residents of the Borderlands were relocated to the ‘former German’ territories, the overview centres on the displays from the Western and Northern Territories. Apart from the local and national aspects, what matters is also the international dimension related to museum presentations of the ‘lost land’ and the fate of migrants. Therefore, the activity of Polish institutions is initially shown in the ...
w: Kurs na Ferdinanda de Saussure'a, red. A. Grzegorczyk, A. Kaczmarek i K. Machtyl. Poznań 2017: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza, s. 331-348., 2017
The machine or the guillotine? Using semiotic analysis to interpret museum exhibitions
The articl... more The machine or the guillotine? Using semiotic analysis to interpret museum exhibitions The article focuses on using semiotic analysis in the context of museum exhibitions. Such a method is widely used in English and German museology (there are no known examples of its use in Polish museology). In the preface, the author explains how the definition of a museum itself has changed throughout history, focusing on understanding the museum as a heterotopia (according to Michel Foucault). She also shows the meaning behind museum pieces (semiofors in Krzysztof Pomian's words). Assigning meaning to a museum piece can lead to controversy, which is illustrated by the example of the permament exhibition at the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The main thesis of the article is that the exhibit can be treated as a message made up of signs. The article presents a research method that uses the tools of semiotic analysis to interpret the message (see: Jana Scholze). In the study, the exhibition is treated as a text meant to be decoded by the recipient.
Artykuł omawia mit regionalny wykreowany wokół postaci kaszubskiego działacza ludowego Antoniego ... more Artykuł omawia mit regionalny wykreowany wokół postaci kaszubskiego działacza ludowego Antoniego Abrahama (1869-1923) w kontekście koncepcji mitu bohaterskiego (J. Campbell).
Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited:
An attempt to pre-categorize
Abstract
The articl... more Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited: An attempt to pre-categorize Abstract The article aims at analyzing the status of material things whose function has changed due to changes of borders between Poland and Germany and the population transfer (i.e. repatriation and expulsion) after 1944. By using the Greimas semiotic square, I categorize artefacts along two axes: familiarity–otherness and mobility–immobility. I mainly focus on the musealization of things at the exhibitions in Poland and Germany concerning war and postwar resettlements. Keywords: resettlement of Poles and Germans after WWII, museum exhibitions, semiotics analysis, anthropology of things
The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Pol... more The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Polish museums after 1989 is tackled. The main focus of interest are displays perceived as: 1) visual and public form of knowledge transfer; 2) the way of overcoming the trauma of losing one's native land; 3) tools for creating collective identity and 4) effects of the participation of Borderland circles in creating the display. The goal of the study is an overview of contemporary exhibitions dedicated to the Eastern Borderlands, and the experience of their loss as the result of WW II. Since the residents of the Borderlands were relocated to the 'former German' territories, the overview centres on the displays from the Western and Northern Territories. Apart from the local and national aspects, what matters is also the international dimension related to museum presentations of the 'lost land' and the fate of migrants. Therefore, the activity of Polish institutions is initially shown in the European context, through recalling the legal framework and working conditions of so called East German museums commemorating the 'German East' lost by Germany. The question of the reasons for the disproportion in the presentation of the topic between Poland and Germany is posed, while the to-date achievements of Polish museologists are presented. Territories, museums of the 'German East'. Jednym ze skutków II wojny światowej były masowe wysied-lenia ludności w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej, które szcze-gólnie dotknęły obywateli polskich zamieszkałych na przed-wojennych Kresach Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej, a także obywateli niemieckich na tzw. niemieckim Wschodzie 1. Doświadczeniu temu podległo ogółem około 2 mln Polaków i 14 mln Niemców, przy czym rząd PRL określał uchodźców jako tzw. repatriantów (co miało ukryć przymusowy charak-ter wysiedlenia), a rząd RFN-jako Vertriebene, wypędzo-nych (co wskazywało na najbardziej drastyczny aspekt tego procesu). Trauma utraty ziemi rodzinnej stanowi silny kom-ponent uczuciowy, który-przy uwzględnieniu zasadniczej różnicy w kwestii przyczyn politycznych i moralnej odpowie-dzialności za koszmar wysiedleń-łączy przedstawicieli obu
This article considers the contemporary museum landscape in the territory of historical Masuria.
... more This article considers the contemporary museum landscape in the territory of historical Masuria. Assuming – first of all – that the historical pillars of Masurian identity before the Second World War were the Polish language and the Protestant faith, and – secondly – that museums are institutions whose purpose is to archive, select and present artefacts as well as construct narratives about the cultural memory of a group, the author considers the question of the presence of Protestant themes in the exhibitions of selected present-day Masurian museums. An exhibition is understood here as a message addressed to receivers, and therefore the author uses the method of semiotic analysis of the visual stratum of selected exhibitions. The choice of the exhibitions discussed in the article is limited to museums located at operating Protestant churches (the Museum of the Reformation in Mikołajki) and in former sacral buildings abandoned by Protestants after 1945 as well as a reconstruction of a parsonage (exhibitions on the site of the Folk Architecture Museum and Ethnographic Park in Olsztynek)
In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in vie... more In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in view of a document ratified by Bundestag in 2016. The document concerned the further action plan for implementing the provisions of paragraph 96 of the Federal Expellee Law of 1953, popularly referred to as a “cultural paragraph”. The term “German East” bears reference to the historic territories of German settlement prior to 1945, whose heritage is a focus of attention for museums as well as science and culture institutions in contemporary Germany. Those eastern German museums have been reviewed herein, whose interest lies, inter alia, in territories presently belonging to Poland: the East Prussian State Museum (Ostpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Lüneburg, the West Prussian State Museum (Westpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Warendorf, the State Museum of Pomerania (Pommersches Landesmuseum) in Greifswald, the Silesian Museum (Schlesisches Museum) in Görlitz.
Scraps, notes, trifles, relics. About Buchenwald’ poetry
by Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski
Summary
The s... more Scraps, notes, trifles, relics. About Buchenwald’ poetry by Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski
Summary The subject of the study focuses on the poetry of the Polish-French literature historian Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski (1882–1967). The reason for my research was the Polish edition (2016) of his poetic cycle Relikwiarz buchenwaldzki (Reliquary of Buchenwald) which was created in the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald (Germany) between 1943–1945 and until now was not widely known among the readers in Poland. Lubicz-Zaleski’s concentration camp poetry is presented within the context of looking at the nuances that the Polish and German prisoners’ of war collection of poetry shared about their ordeal while in Buchenwald. I also point out the domination of the German former communist prisoners in access to publishing within the German Democratic Republic after 1945 and because of this the lack of availability of French and Polish publications in East Germany. The main aim of the study was looking at Lubicz-Zaleski’s war poetry and its reception in a broader historical-political context.
The paper deals with the contemporary museum landscape on the territory of historical Masuria. As... more The paper deals with the contemporary museum landscape on the territory of historical Masuria. Assuming - first of all - that the historical pillars of Masurian identity before the Second World War comprised the Polish language and evangelical denomination, and - secondly - that museums are institutions whose purpose is to archive, select and present artifacts as well as construct narration about the cultural memory of the group, the author of the article poses the question of the current presence of evangelical themes at the exhibitions of selected Masurian museums. An exhibition is understood here as a message addressed to receivers, and therefore the author uses the method of semiotic analysis of the visual stratum of selected exhibitions. The choice of the exhibitions discussed in the article is limited to museums located at operating evangelical churches (Museum of the Reformation in Mikołajki [Germ. Nikolaiken]) or in former sacral buildings abendoned by Protestants after 1945 (exhibitions on the premises of the opan-air ethnographical museum in Olsztynek [Germ. Hohenstein]).
Adel im Grenzraum. Transkulturelle Verflechtungen im Preussenraum vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, 2021
Towards the end of the 18th century, the question if women's education became more and more impor... more Towards the end of the 18th century, the question if women's education became more and more important at the time of the outgoing Enlightenment in Prussia. Some scholars were of the opinion that women from all social classes should be educated to become useful citizens in the etics of duty. One author, today almost an unknown German, Margarethe Regina Louise Countess von Krockow (1749-1803), wrote in 1793 an essay "Paedagogische Ideen", where she described her project for a boarding school for impoverished and orphan girls from Prussian gentry families. The following article presents the educational dream of Countess von Krockow and compares them with the memoires of Hans Carl von Krockow (1769-1841), her second son.
The article addresses representations of the Evangelical denomination at contemporary permanent m... more The article addresses representations of the Evangelical denomination at contemporary permanent museum exhibits in the region of Masuria, inhabited between 1525–1945 by a Protestant majority. Applying semiotic analysis, the author presents the outcomes of field studies in the local museums in Olsztyn, Mikołajki, Mrągowo, Ogródek, Szczytno, and in the open-air museum in Olsztynek. The principal research question is the issue of visibility and recognisability of Evangelism-related items at permanent exhibits. The author concludes that there are three types of omissions in the presentation of the history of Masurian Evangelicals. The silencing of the Protestant past of Masuria results from the cultural colonisation that took place after 1945 and from identifying Evangelicalism with Germanness in the common consciousness of the currently dominant Polish Roman Catholic community.
Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited: An attempt to pre-categorizeThe article aims at ... more Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited: An attempt to pre-categorizeThe article aims at analyzing the status of material things whose function has changed due to changes of borders between Poland and Germany and the population transfer i.e. repatriation and expulsion after 1944. By using the Greimas semiotic square, I categorize artefacts along two axes: familiarity–otherness and mobility–immobility. I mainly focus on the musealization of things at the exhibitions in Poland and Germany concerning war and postwar resettlements.
In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in vie... more In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in view of a document ratified by Bundestag in 2016. The document concerned the further action plan for implementing the provisions of paragraph 96 of the Federal Expellee Law of 1953, popularly referred to as a “cultural paragraph”. The term “German East” bears reference to the historic territories of German settlement prior to 1945, whose heritage is a focus of attention for museums as well as science and culture institutions in contemporary Germany. Those eastern German museums have been reviewed herein, whose interest lies, inter alia, in territories presently belonging to Poland: the East Prussian State Museum (Ostpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Lüneburg, the West Prussian State Museum (Westpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Warendorf, the State Museum of Pomerania (Pommersches Landesmuseum) in Greifswald, the Silesian Museum (Schlesisches Museum) in Görlitz.
The essay focuses on the image of a woman as the Other in various status roles, such as a wife, a... more The essay focuses on the image of a woman as the Other in various status roles, such as a wife, a foreigner, a gentlewoman. The analysis, which aims to demonstrate the existence of a structural opposition between nature and culture, is based on the works of the English Edwardian writer, Elizabeth von Arnim. As the Other, the heroine of her prose finds herself mentally in the betwixt-and-between (liminal) time. On the material plane the expression of her state is the literary topos of a garden as hortus conclusus.
The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Pol... more The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Polish museums after 1989 is tackled. The main focus of interest are displays perceived as: 1) visual and public form of knowledge transfer; 2) the way of overcoming the trauma of losing one’s native land; 3) tools for creating collective identity and 4) effects of the participation of Borderland circles in creating the display. The goal of the study is an overview of contemporary exhibitions dedicated to the Eastern Borderlands, and the experience of their loss as the result of WW II. Since the residents of the Borderlands were relocated to the ‘former German’ territories, the overview centres on the displays from the Western and Northern Territories. Apart from the local and national aspects, what matters is also the international dimension related to museum presentations of the ‘lost land’ and the fate of migrants. Therefore, the activity of Polish institutions is initially shown in the ...
w: Kurs na Ferdinanda de Saussure'a, red. A. Grzegorczyk, A. Kaczmarek i K. Machtyl. Poznań 2017: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza, s. 331-348., 2017
The machine or the guillotine? Using semiotic analysis to interpret museum exhibitions
The articl... more The machine or the guillotine? Using semiotic analysis to interpret museum exhibitions The article focuses on using semiotic analysis in the context of museum exhibitions. Such a method is widely used in English and German museology (there are no known examples of its use in Polish museology). In the preface, the author explains how the definition of a museum itself has changed throughout history, focusing on understanding the museum as a heterotopia (according to Michel Foucault). She also shows the meaning behind museum pieces (semiofors in Krzysztof Pomian's words). Assigning meaning to a museum piece can lead to controversy, which is illustrated by the example of the permament exhibition at the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The main thesis of the article is that the exhibit can be treated as a message made up of signs. The article presents a research method that uses the tools of semiotic analysis to interpret the message (see: Jana Scholze). In the study, the exhibition is treated as a text meant to be decoded by the recipient.
Artykuł omawia mit regionalny wykreowany wokół postaci kaszubskiego działacza ludowego Antoniego ... more Artykuł omawia mit regionalny wykreowany wokół postaci kaszubskiego działacza ludowego Antoniego Abrahama (1869-1923) w kontekście koncepcji mitu bohaterskiego (J. Campbell).
Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited:
An attempt to pre-categorize
Abstract
The articl... more Things expelled, things tamed, things exhibited: An attempt to pre-categorize Abstract The article aims at analyzing the status of material things whose function has changed due to changes of borders between Poland and Germany and the population transfer (i.e. repatriation and expulsion) after 1944. By using the Greimas semiotic square, I categorize artefacts along two axes: familiarity–otherness and mobility–immobility. I mainly focus on the musealization of things at the exhibitions in Poland and Germany concerning war and postwar resettlements. Keywords: resettlement of Poles and Germans after WWII, museum exhibitions, semiotics analysis, anthropology of things
The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Pol... more The question of presenting the heritage of the Borderlands and the life of its inhabitants in Polish museums after 1989 is tackled. The main focus of interest are displays perceived as: 1) visual and public form of knowledge transfer; 2) the way of overcoming the trauma of losing one's native land; 3) tools for creating collective identity and 4) effects of the participation of Borderland circles in creating the display. The goal of the study is an overview of contemporary exhibitions dedicated to the Eastern Borderlands, and the experience of their loss as the result of WW II. Since the residents of the Borderlands were relocated to the 'former German' territories, the overview centres on the displays from the Western and Northern Territories. Apart from the local and national aspects, what matters is also the international dimension related to museum presentations of the 'lost land' and the fate of migrants. Therefore, the activity of Polish institutions is initially shown in the European context, through recalling the legal framework and working conditions of so called East German museums commemorating the 'German East' lost by Germany. The question of the reasons for the disproportion in the presentation of the topic between Poland and Germany is posed, while the to-date achievements of Polish museologists are presented. Territories, museums of the 'German East'. Jednym ze skutków II wojny światowej były masowe wysied-lenia ludności w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej, które szcze-gólnie dotknęły obywateli polskich zamieszkałych na przed-wojennych Kresach Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej, a także obywateli niemieckich na tzw. niemieckim Wschodzie 1. Doświadczeniu temu podległo ogółem około 2 mln Polaków i 14 mln Niemców, przy czym rząd PRL określał uchodźców jako tzw. repatriantów (co miało ukryć przymusowy charak-ter wysiedlenia), a rząd RFN-jako Vertriebene, wypędzo-nych (co wskazywało na najbardziej drastyczny aspekt tego procesu). Trauma utraty ziemi rodzinnej stanowi silny kom-ponent uczuciowy, który-przy uwzględnieniu zasadniczej różnicy w kwestii przyczyn politycznych i moralnej odpowie-dzialności za koszmar wysiedleń-łączy przedstawicieli obu
This article considers the contemporary museum landscape in the territory of historical Masuria.
... more This article considers the contemporary museum landscape in the territory of historical Masuria. Assuming – first of all – that the historical pillars of Masurian identity before the Second World War were the Polish language and the Protestant faith, and – secondly – that museums are institutions whose purpose is to archive, select and present artefacts as well as construct narratives about the cultural memory of a group, the author considers the question of the presence of Protestant themes in the exhibitions of selected present-day Masurian museums. An exhibition is understood here as a message addressed to receivers, and therefore the author uses the method of semiotic analysis of the visual stratum of selected exhibitions. The choice of the exhibitions discussed in the article is limited to museums located at operating Protestant churches (the Museum of the Reformation in Mikołajki) and in former sacral buildings abandoned by Protestants after 1945 as well as a reconstruction of a parsonage (exhibitions on the site of the Folk Architecture Museum and Ethnographic Park in Olsztynek)
In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in vie... more In the article, the so-called eastern German museums and the way they operate is discussed in view of a document ratified by Bundestag in 2016. The document concerned the further action plan for implementing the provisions of paragraph 96 of the Federal Expellee Law of 1953, popularly referred to as a “cultural paragraph”. The term “German East” bears reference to the historic territories of German settlement prior to 1945, whose heritage is a focus of attention for museums as well as science and culture institutions in contemporary Germany. Those eastern German museums have been reviewed herein, whose interest lies, inter alia, in territories presently belonging to Poland: the East Prussian State Museum (Ostpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Lüneburg, the West Prussian State Museum (Westpreuβisches Landesmuseum) in Warendorf, the State Museum of Pomerania (Pommersches Landesmuseum) in Greifswald, the Silesian Museum (Schlesisches Museum) in Görlitz.
Scraps, notes, trifles, relics. About Buchenwald’ poetry
by Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski
Summary
The s... more Scraps, notes, trifles, relics. About Buchenwald’ poetry by Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski
Summary The subject of the study focuses on the poetry of the Polish-French literature historian Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski (1882–1967). The reason for my research was the Polish edition (2016) of his poetic cycle Relikwiarz buchenwaldzki (Reliquary of Buchenwald) which was created in the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald (Germany) between 1943–1945 and until now was not widely known among the readers in Poland. Lubicz-Zaleski’s concentration camp poetry is presented within the context of looking at the nuances that the Polish and German prisoners’ of war collection of poetry shared about their ordeal while in Buchenwald. I also point out the domination of the German former communist prisoners in access to publishing within the German Democratic Republic after 1945 and because of this the lack of availability of French and Polish publications in East Germany. The main aim of the study was looking at Lubicz-Zaleski’s war poetry and its reception in a broader historical-political context.
The paper deals with the contemporary museum landscape on the territory of historical Masuria. As... more The paper deals with the contemporary museum landscape on the territory of historical Masuria. Assuming - first of all - that the historical pillars of Masurian identity before the Second World War comprised the Polish language and evangelical denomination, and - secondly - that museums are institutions whose purpose is to archive, select and present artifacts as well as construct narration about the cultural memory of the group, the author of the article poses the question of the current presence of evangelical themes at the exhibitions of selected Masurian museums. An exhibition is understood here as a message addressed to receivers, and therefore the author uses the method of semiotic analysis of the visual stratum of selected exhibitions. The choice of the exhibitions discussed in the article is limited to museums located at operating evangelical churches (Museum of the Reformation in Mikołajki [Germ. Nikolaiken]) or in former sacral buildings abendoned by Protestants after 1945 (exhibitions on the premises of the opan-air ethnographical museum in Olsztynek [Germ. Hohenstein]).
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The article focuses on using semiotic analysis in the context of museum exhibitions. Such a method is widely used in English and German museology (there are no known examples of its use in Polish museology). In the preface, the author explains how the definition of a museum itself has changed throughout history, focusing on understanding the museum as a heterotopia (according to Michel Foucault). She also shows the meaning behind museum pieces (semiofors in Krzysztof Pomian's words). Assigning meaning to a museum piece can lead to controversy, which is illustrated by the example of the permament exhibition at the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The main thesis of the article is that the exhibit can be treated as a message made up of signs. The article presents a research method that uses the tools of semiotic analysis to interpret the message (see: Jana Scholze). In the study, the exhibition is treated as a text meant to be decoded by the recipient.
An attempt to pre-categorize
Abstract
The article aims at analyzing the status of material things whose function has changed due to changes of borders between Poland and Germany and the population transfer (i.e. repatriation and expulsion) after 1944. By using the Greimas semiotic square, I categorize artefacts along two axes: familiarity–otherness and mobility–immobility. I mainly focus on the musealization of things at the exhibitions in Poland and Germany concerning war and postwar resettlements.
Keywords: resettlement of Poles and Germans after WWII, museum exhibitions, semiotics analysis, anthropology of things
Assuming – first of all – that the historical pillars of Masurian identity before the Second World War
were the Polish language and the Protestant faith, and – secondly – that museums are institutions
whose purpose is to archive, select and present artefacts as well as construct narratives about the
cultural memory of a group, the author considers the question of the presence of Protestant themes
in the exhibitions of selected present-day Masurian museums. An exhibition is understood here as
a message addressed to receivers, and therefore the author uses the method of semiotic analysis of
the visual stratum of selected exhibitions. The choice of the exhibitions discussed in the article is
limited to museums located at operating Protestant churches (the Museum of the Reformation in
Mikołajki) and in former sacral buildings abandoned by Protestants after 1945 as well as a reconstruction of a parsonage (exhibitions on the site of the Folk Architecture Museum and Ethnographic
Park in Olsztynek)
by Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski
Summary
The subject of the study focuses on the poetry of the Polish-French literature historian Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski (1882–1967). The reason for my research was the Polish edition (2016) of his poetic cycle Relikwiarz buchenwaldzki (Reliquary of Buchenwald) which was created in the Nazi
concentration camp Buchenwald (Germany) between 1943–1945 and until now was not widely known among the readers in Poland. Lubicz-Zaleski’s concentration camp poetry is presented within the context of looking at the nuances that the Polish and German prisoners’ of war collection of poetry shared about their ordeal while in Buchenwald. I also point out the domination of the German former communist prisoners in access to publishing within the German Democratic Republic after 1945 and because of this the lack of availability of French and Polish publications in East Germany. The main aim of the study was looking at Lubicz-Zaleski’s war poetry and its reception in a broader historical-political context.
The article focuses on using semiotic analysis in the context of museum exhibitions. Such a method is widely used in English and German museology (there are no known examples of its use in Polish museology). In the preface, the author explains how the definition of a museum itself has changed throughout history, focusing on understanding the museum as a heterotopia (according to Michel Foucault). She also shows the meaning behind museum pieces (semiofors in Krzysztof Pomian's words). Assigning meaning to a museum piece can lead to controversy, which is illustrated by the example of the permament exhibition at the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The main thesis of the article is that the exhibit can be treated as a message made up of signs. The article presents a research method that uses the tools of semiotic analysis to interpret the message (see: Jana Scholze). In the study, the exhibition is treated as a text meant to be decoded by the recipient.
An attempt to pre-categorize
Abstract
The article aims at analyzing the status of material things whose function has changed due to changes of borders between Poland and Germany and the population transfer (i.e. repatriation and expulsion) after 1944. By using the Greimas semiotic square, I categorize artefacts along two axes: familiarity–otherness and mobility–immobility. I mainly focus on the musealization of things at the exhibitions in Poland and Germany concerning war and postwar resettlements.
Keywords: resettlement of Poles and Germans after WWII, museum exhibitions, semiotics analysis, anthropology of things
Assuming – first of all – that the historical pillars of Masurian identity before the Second World War
were the Polish language and the Protestant faith, and – secondly – that museums are institutions
whose purpose is to archive, select and present artefacts as well as construct narratives about the
cultural memory of a group, the author considers the question of the presence of Protestant themes
in the exhibitions of selected present-day Masurian museums. An exhibition is understood here as
a message addressed to receivers, and therefore the author uses the method of semiotic analysis of
the visual stratum of selected exhibitions. The choice of the exhibitions discussed in the article is
limited to museums located at operating Protestant churches (the Museum of the Reformation in
Mikołajki) and in former sacral buildings abandoned by Protestants after 1945 as well as a reconstruction of a parsonage (exhibitions on the site of the Folk Architecture Museum and Ethnographic
Park in Olsztynek)
by Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski
Summary
The subject of the study focuses on the poetry of the Polish-French literature historian Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski (1882–1967). The reason for my research was the Polish edition (2016) of his poetic cycle Relikwiarz buchenwaldzki (Reliquary of Buchenwald) which was created in the Nazi
concentration camp Buchenwald (Germany) between 1943–1945 and until now was not widely known among the readers in Poland. Lubicz-Zaleski’s concentration camp poetry is presented within the context of looking at the nuances that the Polish and German prisoners’ of war collection of poetry shared about their ordeal while in Buchenwald. I also point out the domination of the German former communist prisoners in access to publishing within the German Democratic Republic after 1945 and because of this the lack of availability of French and Polish publications in East Germany. The main aim of the study was looking at Lubicz-Zaleski’s war poetry and its reception in a broader historical-political context.