Polish Failure Club

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Polish Failure Club

The Club of Polish Failures (Polish Klub Polskich Nieudaczników ) is an institution of German-Polish cultural exchange in Berlin .

history

In 1994 Leszek Oświęcimski wrote the ironic “Little Manifesto of Polish Failures”, which seven years later gave the club its name.

“There aren't many like us in town. Just a few, maybe a few tens. The rest of them are people of success, cool and cold-blooded specialists - whatever they do, they do well .
We - the weak, less gifted, can hardly achieve anything; We try to buy the milk in the pharmacy and half a kilo of cheese from the hairdresser. Cars honk at us, we stumble on the straight path, we keep kicking dog shit, it just doesn't want and doesn't want to bring us luck .
We endure the terror of the perfection of those others. Your presence intimidates us. It is only right with them, because they live in the fear of losing the monopoly of creativity that they claim for themselves .
We are inclined to acknowledge their primacy, yet we want to remain creators according to our possibilities, on a lower level .
Demiurge adored the selected, perfect and complicated matter, we prefer the trash. "

The Club of Polish Failures emerged from a regulars' table of Polish artists living in Berlin and was founded on September 1, 2001 in Torstrasse 66 in the Mitte district by the Association of Polish Failures - Polenmarkt e. V. opened. Piotr Mordel and Leszek Oświęcimski founded the union . Then Wojciech Stamm, Joanna Bednarska, Tomasz Sosiński and Adam Gusowski joined them - all of them came from Poland in the 1980s. The members who work in the club act on a voluntary basis, without rewards. They are active in their professions outside the club.

Since its inception, the club has been against the culture of success in terms of its equipment and its name. Instead, failure with its various aspects is presented as a worthwhile goal. In the Polish word nieudacznik, there is not only the failure, but also the restless:

“ In Polish, a nieudacznik is someone who does nothing. But also someone who is not resting on his laurels is positive. "

The club's program includes concerts, readings, exhibitions and screenings of Polish and other East Central European films. Other activities of the operators Adam Gusowski and Piotr Mordel are the lieutenant show on Radio Multikulti of the RBB , which was crowned in 2008 by the gala Don't be afraid of the Poles - they just want to play in the broadcasting hall of the ARD-Anstalt or Die Ostseeerweiterung , a filmic self-portrayal of the club.

Due to its provocative name, the club quickly gained notoriety and was mentioned in national mass media . The club has been located at Ackerstraße 169 since 2007 . The club also includes the Versager-Verlag , in which the story " Club of Polish Sausage People " by Leszek Oświęcimski was published.

The German-Austrian television film Since Du da bist broadcast by ARD in December 2016 uses the name of the club improperly in the opinion of the operators, which is why, according to its own information, a lawsuit has been filed against ARD.

On May 9, 2017, the Club of Polish Failures eV was awarded the annual European Blue Bear Prize. The prize, donated by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the Representation of the European Commission in Germany , honors exemplary Berlin initiatives, associations, projects and individuals who, with their civic engagement, contribute to the growing together of Europe and its people and who work for common European values . Adam Gusowski comments: " We regard the award as a trust credit that we want to repay and that encourages us to create further European projects ".

In January 2018 it became known that the club of the Polish Failures decided to found a political party called the Polish Party of Germany (PPD), which would be pro-European and anti-populist and promote democratic thinking with humor and satire. The PPD essentially wants to take care of politics in Germany, even if the party founders are particularly concerned about the current split in Polish society.

literature

  • Adam Gusowski et al. Piotr Mordel: The Club of Polish Failures , Reinbek 2012, ISBN 978-3-499-62985-3 .
  • Leszek Oświęcimski as Leszek Herman: The Club of Polish Sausage People , Munich 2004, ISBN 3-548-25856-5 .
  • Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski u. Marek Graszewicz: Nonsense inspired Berlin or how the Club of Polish Failures confused the German press , in: Magdalena Marszałek (Ed.): Lines of contact. Polish literature and language from the perspective of German-Polish cultural exchange , Hildesheim 2006, pp. 315–326, ISBN 978-3-487-13024-8 .

Web links

Commons : Club of Polish Failures  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manifest
  2. ↑ The Club of Polish Failures - About Us ( Memento of February 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Press release from the club of the Polish failure , May 22, 2008, at openPR .com
  4. ^ Statement by the Club of Polish Failures, Berlin
  5. ↑ "Blue Bear"
  6. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/polne-partei-deutschlands-club-der-polnischen-versager-gruendet-partei/20824636.html Retrieved January 11, 2018

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '46.5 "  N , 13 ° 23' 50.9"  E