Die Geschichten hinter den Objekten ("The stories behind the objects")

The first half of the 20th century in  was an eventful time. The decades between the outbreak of the First World War, when Silesia was still a province of the German Empire, and the beginning of the 1950s, when large parts of the region in effect belonged to the People’s Republic of , were marked by conflicts, upheaval and shifting borders.

In 1914, the Silesians, like most Germans, went to war for the Emperor with a mood of euphoria, however, by the winter of 1917, with famine spreading throughout the region, the atmosphere had changed, bringing strikes and protests. The longed-for end of the war not only brought the Poles a country of their own again and the Germans a new form of government, but also a peace treaty, which the latter found humiliating. Turbulent years of uprisings and strikes, the division of  and hyperinflation were followed by the "Golden Twenties", which, however, came to an abrupt end with the world economic crisis in 1929. The rapid rise of the NSDAP led to the National Socialists' seizure of power in 1933 and the establishment of a dictatorship that had at its core a contempt for human life. The invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht on 1 September 1939 marked the beginning of the Second World War, an unprecedented war of annihilation that lasted for six years and cost the lives of more than 60 million people. Until mid-1944, Silesia was largely spared the immediate acts of war. During the final months of the war, however, when the Red Army made a very rapid advance to the Oder River, Silesia became a combat zone and hundreds of thousands fled. After the end of the war the region was placed under Polish administration and the majority of the German population was forced to leave. In their place, Poles came to the region, which was completely foreign to them.
 
The purpose of the blog is not to give a chronological outline of Silesian history, nor to explain major political events, but rather to focus on exemplary individual life stories and single events, report on them and put them into their historical context. On the basis of exhibits and archival materials from the collections of HAUS SCHLESIEN and some of its foreign partner museums, the aim is to tell about everyday and family life, about culture, economy and politics, and about the joys and sufferings of the people of Silesia in the period between the Empire and the People's Republic. The aim is to make the stories behind the objects visible and to give the silent witnesses a voice.
 
A further aim of the blog is to offer an opportunity to capture a range of very different perspectives through individual, personal stories, and thus to provide a multifaceted view of the everyday life, culture and history of Silesia in the first half of the 20th century. In addition, it shows the potential of the museum collections and draws attention to the important role that even comparatively unspectacular exhibits can have in conveying information, helping us to understand how everyday objects can also be worth collecting.