Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central EuropeanBorderland by James E. BjorkReview by: Richard BlankeSlavic Review, Vol. 69, No. 2 (SUMMER 2010), pp. 462-463Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25677116 .

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462 Slavic Review

authorities' post-World War II executions of the "enemies of the people." Even if we

speculate that such a retroactive analogy between these crimes could easily be made by

Makavejev, it still obscures his more pointedly universal insight into the mass murder and terror that, without exception, lie at the foundation of every modern society.

Tatjana Aleksic

University of Michigan

Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Border

land. By James E. Bjork. Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany. Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. xiv, 290 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. $75.00, hard bound.

The borderland referred to in the subtitle of this fine monograph is Upper Silesia during the period from the 1890s to the 1921 plebiscite. While more than 60 percent of Upper Silesians were Polish by native language, fewer than 40 percent were ever politically Polish

in the sense that they wanted to live in a Polish state. In the view of some, the remaining 20 percent fell into the category of "Polish-speaking Germans"; in James E. Bjork's view,

they are better understood as "neither Germans nor Poles." Indeed, he suggests that such a designation might well apply to most of the province's two million people. Bjork is a sym

pathetic advocate of the alternative notion of a bilingual "Catholic people," as opposed to

the conventional German-Polish dichotomy, and of "the capacity of confession [generally] to complicate the process of national polarization" (7).

Of course, national polarization was also a growing threat to confessional unity. At the

center of this study of local politics in the Polish-speaking part of the province (specifically, the area around Katowice, its largest city) are the Catholic Church and the Catholic Center

Party. Both institutions were necessarily discomfitted by the rise of nationalism?the usual

fusion of Catholicism with Polishness was obviously not workable where Poles, Germans, and "neither/nors" were equally Catholic. The efforts of these two institutions to resist,

compete with, co-opt, and/or adapt to the two increasingly assertive nationalist movements

form the backbone of Bjork's detailed study, in which inner-Polish-Catholic rivalries loom

larger than the conventional German-Polish struggle. While the national trend seemed

ascendant as the twentieth century began, and leading Catholic politicians concluded

that they would have to proceed along separate national lines if they were to retain any influence, Bjork demonstrates that the following period saw no straight line leading to a

clear division of the province's population into hostile national groups. Rather, he empha sizes examples of "retreat from nationalist politics" (1)?at least, until the 1921 plebiscite forced an "either/or" decision. His overall thesis is that, while the forces of nationalization

(e.g., compulsory schooling, universal male conscription, periodic election campaigns) were not without effect, neither did they produce "full-blown durable national identities"

(253) in a population that continued to show signs of national indifference.

Bjork is certainly right to remind us that the triumph of the nation-state over other

forms of social organization was never uncontested, foreordained, or the only conceivable

outcome. He is also correct to point out that the 1921 plebiscite, which asked only to which

state one wanted to belong, did not necessarily indicate one's national identity in any more

profound, essentialist, or permanent sense. But he passes over the plebiscite itself rather

quickly and questions its apparent implications, presumably because it does not fit well

into his dominant narrative. And yet, having to make such an explicit national choice

could produce results that were eloquent and revealing as well as historically significant; and to suggest that one could vote to belong to one country or the other (one did not have

to do so, and yet turnout exceeded 95 percent) and still not qualify clearly as German or

Polish in terms of national "identity" raises the evidentiary bar impossibly high. And while

Bjork offers an important corrective to the view of the pre-1921 situation as solely prelude to national division, few Upper Silesians post-1921 would have described themselves as

"neither German nor Pole." And if we ask what became of the aforementioned 20 percent and their descendants, we find that most eventually opted clearly for membership in the

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Book Reviews 463

German national community (by relocating there) while the remainder (concentrated

mainly in Opole Wojewodship, where their share of the vote ranges as high as 40 percent) describe themselves today as "German" (and not "Silesian)," though they no longer speak that language.

Whether or not one agrees with all of Bjork's efforts to assign broader applicability to

his findings, he has produced the only modern English-language account, based on wide

reading and a thorough plumbing of provincial archives, of political developments in this

key borderland?important not just because of its unique ethnic mix, of course, but also

because it was imperial Germany's second most important (and post-1922 Poland's most

important) industrial region. His study adds significantly to our understanding of the eth

nic, political, and especially confessional dynamics of a particular stage in the evolution of

the German-Polish relationship, and for that reason alone will be of interest to historians

of Germany and Poland alike.

Richard Blanke

University of Maine

Krakau in Warschaus langem Schatten: Konkurrenzkdmpfe in der polnischen Stadtelandschaft, 1900-1939. By Hanna Kozihska-Witt. Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des

ostlichen Mitteleuropa, no. 30. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008. 231 pp. Appen dixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Maps. 35.00, hard bound.

The title of this thorough study on Krakow during the first half of the twentieth century is somewhat misleading: rather than examining the relationship of Poland's second city to

Warsaw, Hanna Kozihska-Witt has written a well-informed political and cultural history of

Poland's "spiritual capital" (stolica duchowd). She presents five chapters that each deal with

different aspects of the city's development during the last decades of Habsburg rule and

the second Polish republic. The focus, thus, is on the development of Krakow itself under

imperial rule and as Poland's second city during the decades of interwar independence. The first chapter deals with the unfolding of the city's self-government within the

framework of Galician autonomy under Habsburg rule. Kozinska-Witt recapitulates the

research on Krakow and the Galician crownlands and discusses the political evolution of

the city's elites. Chapter 2 outlines the ballot rules and regulations between 1866 and 1939.

This period witnessed a growing nationalization of political life in Krakow; nineteenth

century liberalism and tolerance made way for increasing nationalism that led to the grow

ing isolation and exclusion of the sizeable Jewish population. The third chapter covers the

strategies of urban development that were formulated by various mayors and their admin

istrations. Here Kozihska-Witt emphasizes the major role played by tourism in the elite's

attempts to improve Krakow's dire economic situation. Chapter 4 specifies the ways in

which the city defended its self-proclaimed status as Poland's "spiritual capital." Kozihska

Witt uses Pierre Nora's concept of lieux de memoire to discuss the nationalization of Krakow's

public spaces. Her examples range from a description of the stage-management for an

imperial visit in 1880 to the commemoration of the battle of Grunwald in 1910 to the

rise of the cult around Jozef Pilsudski in the 1930s. The final chapter points to the role of the press in the public sphere. This part of the study includes a comparison between

the development of the mass media in both Warsaw and Krakow. The author succeeds in

showing that the press was in many ways dependant on the state as well as the local ad

ministration and that Warsaw's papers were more aggressive in their criticism of local and

national politics. In her conclusion Kozihska-Witt points to the tension between Krakow's cultural and

mythical significance for Polish society and the stagnation of the city's social and economic

life. The elites that dominated the city council attempted to make use of the city's heritage in order to establish Krakow on the Polish mental map as the cultural center of the nation.

During the time of partition, Krakow's burghers saw themselves as destined to preserve Polish culture, which was perceived to be under threat in the Russian as well as in the Prus

sian part of the divided country. Kozihska-Witt emphasizes that, before 1918, the Krakow

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