On the need for local borderland research on the example of the Babimojszczyzna in the 20th century

Abstract

The aim of the study is an attempt to refer to the historiography of a small microregion at the border of today's provinces: Lubuskie and Wielkopolskie, called "Babimojszczyzna". The time perspective relating to the events of World War I, Polish-German disputes, as well as the transformations in Poland and Germany after 1989 requires a new approach to historical narratives. The thesis of the article is the assumption that the hitherto historiography of this complex microregion in Polish-German relations in the first half of the 20th century did not develop new approaches. Another problem is the lack of real effects under the research models on the Polish and German narratives of the last thirty years. Their lack is particularly noticed in the context of the condition of social memory in the vicinity of Babimost, where only the tradition of the Polish Uprising 1918-1919 and the struggle for Polishness is cultivated, without a broader context. The discussed region can also be an interesting example for other similar historical areas, which, like all borderlands, were the subject of natural osmosis rather than their contact.