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Webdocu
"We, too, are stepping down from our role"
Web documentary about the German Drama Theater in Temirtau and the Germans in the Soviet Union between staying and leaving.
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Object story
"What you can carry on your own"
On November 18, 1944, nine-year-old Elsa Beck flees the Hungarian village of Máriakéménd with her mother and sister. Elsa's mother allows her to take with her what she can carry herself. Elsa decides to take her school suitcase. Today, this is held in the Danube Swabian Central Museum in Ulm.
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Background article
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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Background article
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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Object story
Edina's beach bag
A blue and white striped bag with white handles - at first glance an inconspicuous beach bag. But it tells the moving story of the then 33-year-old Edina Rizvanović's flight from what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina to Ulm.
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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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Object story
Home in a trunk of clothes - the Garlik family's traditional costume suitcase
This suitcase has traveled far – not, as one might expect, after the Second World War, but rather in the decades after the flight of the Nessner family. It was used to transport the traditional costumes of a Danube Swabian dance troupe from Baden-Württemberg as they toured to enclaves of Danube Swabians scattered around the world.
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Background article
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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Map and text
In Copernicus’ name
These days, there are a whole host of organizations in Poland, Germany, and the USA bearing the name Copernicus. Although they all relate to the same historical person, they have quite different goals.
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Introduction
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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Introduction
Jews in Poland in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
The article offers an overview of Jewish history and the development of Jewish settlement in medieval and early modern Poland from the first recorded mentions of Jewish centers in the 11th century through to the end of the 18th century. As in the neighboring countries of Hungary and Bohemia, the Polish monarchs were also interested in Jewish settlement; the privilege of 1264 and its confirmations created the legal framework for this. Jews were involved in the economic and demographic development of Poland. The Jewish percentage of the urban population also grew, and their formative influence was particularly visible in the south-eastern provinces, which found expression in the concept of the Jewish "shtetl". In modern times, Poland-Lithuania also became a center of Jewish scholarship. The crises and wars in the mid-17th century brought an influx of messianic movements. In the 18th century, the impulses of the Jewish Enlightenment and the emancipation of the Jewish population were the subject of lengthy and lively discussion.
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Background article
Laima chocolate – a Riga icon
If you’ve ever visited Latvia, you’ll probably have heard of the chocolate brand Laima. Perhaps you’ll even have seen the Laima Clock, a popular meeting point in central Riga. Laima products have been among Latvia’s most successful exports all the way back to the 1920s. What’s less well known is that the company was originally founded by Jewish entrepreneurs.
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Biography
Liberation from forced labor and the search for a new home
21-year-old Janina Jagodzińska describes the arduous beginning of 1945 in Poland's new western territories.
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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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Background article
Migration to Southeast Europe in the 18th Century
Migration stories can be success stories. Migration is often associated with people’s desire to improve their living situation. However, this wish does not always come true, and so migration stories are often marked by disappointments and failures – like that of Michael Kreutzer.
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