Official Narratives and Repressed Voices on the Disputed Territory of Habsburg Galicia in the Interwar Period

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The breakup of the Habsburg Empire was followed by a violent aftermath in the struggle for national states. This process was particularly evident in the multinational regions such as the former Galicia, which was incorporated to the Second Polish Republic after the Polish-Ukrainian War for the province (1918-1919). We suggest investigating the multiplicity of voices on these events through the lenses of (German-) Austrian, Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian personal accounts, written at the end of WWI and in the interwar period. Those memoirs ranged from official state documents and popularized reports to accounts released in print, to private, unpublished writings. Warsaw, as the center of political, economic and ideological power of the newly reborn Polish state, as well as intellectual institutions working for its benefit hierarchized the supposed ‘objectivity’ of the memoires, authorized the official knowledge about the takeover of the province and produced ignorance towards undesirable facts.
The panel aims to contrast the official, institutionalized knowledge on the disputed territory of Eastern Galicia with marginalized voices of any (non-) national side, produced between 1918-1939. We want to tackle the following questions: Which strategies served the production of official knowledge and the repression of unwelcome voices? Which counter-narratives did repressed voices elaborate in languages other than Polish, or in private, unpublished texts? How were counter-narratives prepared for international audiences?

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Fabian Baumann, U of Heidelberg

Papers

• Constructing the Defense of Lviv and the South-Eastern Borderlands in Polish Memoirs on the Polish-Ukrainian War, 1918-1919 - Jagoda Wierzejska, U of Warsaw (Poland)

• 'For the Future Ukrainian Science': Contesting Polish Rule and Constructing Western Ukraine in the Memoirs on the Polish-Ukrainian War - Martin Rohde, U of Vienna (Austria)

• Like a Dark Yarmulka on the Head of the City': WWI Traces in Post-War Jewish Travelogues from Galicia - Vladyslava Moskalets, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Ukraine)

• Archiving Disparate Emotions in Personal Accounts from Galicia at the Edge of Empire/Postimperial Era - Kamil Ruszala, Jagiellonian U (Poland)

Discussant

• Keely Stauter-Halsted, U of Illinois at Chicago