Brendan Karch. Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland: Upper Silesia, 1848–1960. (Cambridge University Press)
In the bloody twentieth-century battles over Central Europe's borderlands, Upper Silesians stand out for resisting pressure to become loyal Germans or Poles. This work traces nationalist activists' efforts to divide Upper Silesian communities, which were bound by their Catholic faith and bilingualism, into two 'imagined' nations.These efforts, which ranged from the 1848 Revolution to the aftermath of the Second World War, are charted by Brendan Karch through the local newspapers, youth and leisure groups, neighborhood parades, priestly sermons, and electoral outcomes.
What's the one key idea or message you want readers to take from your book?
My work focuses on the long-term struggles of nationalist activists to convince a largely bilingual, Catholic population of borderland citizens in Upper Silesia to embrace single loyalties as Germans or Poles. I really hoped to push readers to consider how unstable the concept of ‘national identity’ was, especially in ethnically mixed borderlands like Upper Silesia. At the same time, I argue these Upper Silesians could not afford, amid nationalist violence, to remain ‘indifferent’ to the nation. Rather, they reacted instrumentally to calls for German and Polish loyalty, balancing their national sentiments against commitments to family, faith, community, and politics.
What got you interested in the topic of your book?
After learning German and then Polish, I knew I wanted to work on German-Polish relations. But I also wanted to challenge the view that everyday citizens were always invested in the ethno-national struggles that typically define the narrative arc of modern Central Europe. The history of Upper Silesia was a great lens to accomplish this.
Books answer questions, but they also raise new questions. What questions does your book raise?
My work focuses on lack of single national loyalties in one mixed-language borderland, but I hope research can continue into whether large swathes of Central and Eastern Europe, and not just borderlands, were also sites of resistance to nationalizing projects. Much amazing research has been accomplished in this regard, especially in the former Habsburg lands, but I believe more remains to be done.
What are you currently reading, in your field or just generally, and what do you like about it?
I recently finished A Specter Haunting Europe by Paul Hanebrink. It’s a masterful synthesis of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. It expands, both geographically and chronologically, our understanding of how anti-Semitic and anti-Communist sentiments were fatally intertwined. His work really forced me to rethink how I teach modern Europe and the Holocaust.