Anna Wolff-Powęska

Anna Wolff-Powęska (* 1941 in Tarnopol ) is a Polish historian and political scientist who specializes in Polish-German relations .

Life

One of Anna Wolff-Powęska's two grandfathers was German. Immediately after the Second World War, her family was relocated from eastern Poland, annexed by the Soviet Union , to the Greater Poland region. She grew up in Wągrowiec and also attended school there.

In 1964 she completed her studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan with a master's thesis on the coronation ceremonies in the Kingdom of Poland . She initially taught history at a primary school. In 1969 she was employed at the West Institute in Poznan. In 1970 she defended her doctoral thesis, ten years later she completed her habilitation with a thesis on political and legal theories. In 1986 she got the title of Professor of Political Science. From 1990 to 2004 she headed the West Institute in Poznan .

At the same time, she took on teaching positions at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism at Adam Mickiewicz University. She is also active as a journalist, her articles are mainly published in the daily newspaper " Gazeta Wyborcza ", the weekly newspaper " Tygodnik Powszechny " and in the periodical "Przegląd Zachodni". Her fields of research are German history in the 20th century, German-Polish relations and political culture in Central and Eastern Europe.

In 2004 she was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta . In 2016 she received the Viadrina Prize from the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) . In his laudation, the German literary scholar Heinrich Olschowsky pointed out that she had always argued against a nationalistically narrow view of history. She also asked uncomfortable fundamental questions, such as the right of Germans to mourn their own victims after Auschwitz. For 2017 she was awarded the Pomerania Nostra award .

Monographs

• Doktryna geopolityki w Niemczech (1979)
• Polityczne i filozoficzne nurty konserwatyzmu w Republice Federalnej Niemiec (1984)
• Niemiecka myśl polityczna wieku oświecenia (1988)
• Polacy wobec Niemców. Z dziejów kultury politycznej Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej 1945–1989 (1993)
• Osvojona Revolucja. Europe Środkowo-Wschodnia w procesie Demokratyzacji (1998)
• Poland in Germany, integration or separation? (2000)
• Drogi i bezdroża demokracji u progu XXI wieku (2001)
• A bliźniego swego ...: kościoły w Niemczech wobec "problemu żydowskiego" (2003)
• Między Renem a Bugiem w Europie (2004)
• Polacy - Niemcy: kultura polityczna, kultura pamięci (2008)
• Memory as burden and liberation: Germans and their Nazi past (2015)

Web links

• Literature by and about Anna Wolff-Powęska in the catalog of the German National Library
• Article by Anna Wolff-Powęska in Gazeta Wyborcza

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical information, unless otherwise stated, according to: Anna Wolff-Poweska - laureatka Giganta '2003 Gazeta Wyborcza , ( Poznań edition ), November 17, 2003.
2. ↑ Conference paper of the Neuhardenberg Castle Foundation and the German-Polish Society (Federal Association) 2004  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 227 kB)  
3. ^ Gazeta Wyborcza
4. ^ Tygodnik Powszechny
5. ↑ Laureatka tegorocznej Nagrody Viadriny: prof. Anna Wolff-Powęska Gazeta Wyborcza ( Gorzów edition ), May 10, 2016.
6. ↑ Jan Messerschmidt: Prof. Dr. Anna Wolff-Powęska receives the Pomerania Nostra 2017 award. Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, press release from September 11, 2017 at the Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw-online.de), accessed on September 11, 2017.