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Agata, Dorota, Iwona, Jolanta
"What luck that we had this kindergarten!" All four say. That was in the early 1970s. Agata and Jolanta now live in Germany, Dorota and Iwona have stayed in Masuria. Lehndorff Castle, the "Pałac", was a place they all felt happy. In those stately rooms they had a feeling of security and comfort, they played among the old oaks, went swimming in the lake. It was a microcosm away from the adult world with its worries and traumas.
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Antje Vollmer
She is known as a Green Party politician and for her longstanding role as Vice President of the German Bundestag. After retiring in 2005, she became a freelance author. Her first book project “Doppelleben” (Double Life) tells the story of Heinrich von Lehndorff, one of the conspirators of the events of 20 July 1944 , and his wife Gottliebe. It is a moving biography of two young aristocrats that tells of their daring and their love.
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Biography
Artist and Art Figure
Monika Hunnius is generally known as a Baltic German author. She, however, saw herself as a musician – and was part of a network of musicians that extended all over Europe, to which Julius Stockhausen, Johannes Brahms, and Clara Schumann belonged as well.
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Biography
Bettina Bouresh
"I’m a typical post-war child," says Bettina Bouresh. Born in 1950, she grew up burdened with German guilt and the traumas of her mother's family, who had lived in Allenstein until 1945. She herself felt homeless for a long time. Until one day she found her place: in Masuria. Here she found a home – and in Steinort Palace her life’s work. Today she is vice-chairwoman of the Lehndorff Society.
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Biography
Eva Anna Therese Puschke
As far back as the 19th century, the Puschke family worked as teachers in Steinort and in the neighboring church village of Rosengarten. They played an important role in village life and had close ties to the noble Lehndorff family. The last teacher of the dynasty was Eva Puschke, a "lay teacher" in Rosengarten from 1940 to 1944. After the Germans were expelled, she lived in Hamburg. She left behind a suitcase full of family documents.
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Podcast
Hanna Schygulla
The actor Hanna Schygulla was 30 years old when she first met Gottliebe von Lehndorff in 1973. The scene of the encounter: the artists' colony in the old Peterskirchen vicarage, east of Munich. They lived there for thirteen years, their apartments backing onto each other. Despite their age difference, they had many things in common, not least the experience of losing their homeland. In the podcast, the years they shared at Peterskirchen come back to life.
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Biography
Hannah Wadle
In 2009, Hannah Wadle settled in Sztynort to do research for her doctoral thesis – and stayed for a whole year. Gradually, her cautious explorations turned into familiarity and what began as a purely academic interest became a dedicated personal commitment to the town and its people. She learned to see the Lehndorff manor house from many perspectives. In 2017, she founded a cultural festival, and since then the palace has come to life every August.
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How did a German Emigrant find his Way in Eastern Europe at the Beginning of the 19th Century?
How someone finds their way in a foreign country can be explored in different ways. In the case of Franz Xaver Bronner's travels from Switzerland to Kazan in 1810, and his return in 1817, a geographical approach is used to provide a fact-based foundation.
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In search of history at the Jewish Museum Vienna
Each of the objects on display at the Jewish Museum Vienna was once intended for daily or ritual use in Jewish families and communities and is bound up with the fates of Jewish people. Together, the objects, each torn from their original context, provide a memorial to the Jews who were displaced and murdered, and for this reason the story behind every object deserves to be told. Although only scant reliable information is available for most of the objects, this article describes an attempt to trace the story of a Torah crown from the JMV using just a few details.
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Jazz in the Eastern Bloc
More than just music: During the Cold War, jazz suddenly found itself between all fronts – at the same time, it served as a propaganda weapon, a symbol of freedom and a musical bridge between East and West.
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Jewish History in Eastern Europe: The 19th Century
In Jewish history, the 19th century stands for a time of comprehensive change in all areas of life. Jews, who had previously seen themselves primarily as a religious group, now became supporters of various political or national movements. This gave rise to a range of new, constantly contested Jewish affiliations.
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Jewish Postcard Publishers and the Imagery of the Urban
In numerous cities across eastern Europe, Jewish publishers enjoyed notable success on the newly established postcard market. This article presents a socio-historical background of this topic and asks whether their social positioning influenced the depictions of the urban world they chose to feature on their postcards.
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Lembergs’s Coffeehouse Culture Before the First World War
The east Galician city of (Lemberg) Lviv had a lively coffeehouse culture during the Habsburg Empire. Poles, Jews and Ukrainians would gather over pots of coffee and tea. As the First World War approached, however, a growing sense of nationalism could also be felt in these otherwise convivial spaces.
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Biography
Marek Makowski and Piotr Wagner
Two passionate sailors, raised in Giżycko, not far from Sztynort. Marek Makowski (b.1984) and Piotr Wagner (b.1986) left at a young age, took advantage of the opportunities on offer in a united Europe and later returned to the world they grew up in. Marek, an entrepreneur and owner of a sailing school, and Piotr, a self-employed interpreter, tour guide and cultural professional, share a tangible vision for Sztynort.
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Biography
Maria Zarębska
When Maria Zarębska was born, in July 1948, the village of Sztynort was still scarred by war. A few Masurian families had remained living there, but most of the inhabitants – like Maria's parents – were newcomers. Everyone was struggling to survive, to get along with each other, to find their way in socialist Poland. For a child like Maria, all this was "normal." The curious girl later became an avid and perceptive chronicler.
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Cooking recipe
Mini-Napoleons
Every recipe tells a story – be it that of one’s own family, social group, region, of nation states or whole empires. A particular dish is thus always both a symbol and an expression of cultural concepts. A recipe booklet compiled by students at the University of Bamberg looks at “Culinary Forays Into Eastern Europe” (Kulinarische Streifzüge durch das östliche Europa) and brings together a series of recipes of cultural and historical interest. Below is an especially delicious sample.
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Interview (video)
Pandemic and Migration in Eastern Europe
Copernico asked: What role have epidemics and pandemics actually played in history, especially in Eastern Europe? How were they combated in the past? What impact did they have on the course of history? What role do they play, for example, in the context of human migration movements?
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Object story
Papierówki – “Paper Apples”
A summer apple. The first to ripen. In Polish, it is called "papierówka", in German "Papierapfel" (paper apple). It once grew almost everywhere in Masuria and Warmia, including in the garden of Stefan Tymiec's grandmother, Gertrud. "It smelled and tasted delicious," he remembers. "And that yellow!" For his 60th birthday, he brought seedlings from a Polish nursery all the way to Wuppertal.
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Background article
Ruthenia quasi est alter orbis
"Rus' is almost another world" wrote the Krakow bishop Maciej around 1150. What was the basis of this differentiation? How powerful was it and how did it play out in reality? In search of answers, this article also discusses the dimensions and ambivalences of border demarcations.
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Biography
Samuel Fränkel
The Berlin Jew Samuel Fränkel (1773-1833) settled in Warsaw in 1798 as a representative of a large bank. Within a few years and across numerous political breaks, Fränkel rose to become the most important banker in a divided Poland. In doing so, Fränkel always successfully drew on his transnational connections to Jews and non-Jews in Prussia, Austria and Russia.
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