Polish western thought

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The world of ideas is referred to as the Polish Western Thought ( Polish polska myśl zachodnia ), which sought to win German territories west of the Polish border from 1772, which had already belonged to Poland in the Middle Ages . Poland was by three taking place 1772-1795 divisions among Russia , Austria and Prussia were split up and disappeared as a state. The Polish idea of ​​the west took shape in the circles of the national democratic movement in Poland in the 19th century and aimed at the re-establishment of a Polish state. In the discussion about the borderline of the state of Poland, which was reborn after the First World War , these ideas became more topical.

From the Polish western thought , a research organization, which the German side than the German developed Ostforschung accordingly as Poland's western research is called because they formed "an almost true reflection of the German Eastern Research". It developed with the emergence of the new Polish national state after the First World War. Its center was the University of Poznan , which was newly established in 1919 and was called the Piast University in 1919/20 . It was directed against the declared German intentions not to recognize and to question the eastern border with Poland established in the Versailles Peace Treaty . After the attack on Poland began in 1939, she opposed the Germanization policy of National Socialism from underground . After the Second World War it was her goal, with the Oder-Neisse Line " reclaimed areas to legitimize".

Altogether three aspects of the Polish idea of ​​the West can be distinguished:

  1. a political western program ("program zachodni") which, after the First and also after the Second World War, formulated a shift of the Polish western border as a goal,
  2. under the concept of western research, scientific approaches to justify the necessity and legality of this shift, and
  3. the West work ( "praca zachodnia"), d. i. the propaganda activity to popularize the Western idea.

prehistory

The spread of the Slavs in the 5th to 10th centuries

Poznan , the center of the Polish heartland Wielkopolska for centuries , had already become the main organizational center of the Polish national movement in Prussia and in the German Empire in the 19th century . In April and May 1848 the Poznan Poles revolted against Prussian rule. The uprising was directed against the inclusion of predominantly Polish areas in the elections for the Frankfurt National Assembly and thus against the incorporation of part of Poland into a German nation-state. Another aim was the unification of all of Poland. In the Frankfurt National Assembly, the days of debate from July 24th to 27th, 1848 were aimed at Poland, which was to be re-established. All claims by Poland were rejected, which was not only clear in the contribution of the East Prussian MP Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Jordan and his emphasis on "healthy people's egoism ", but also in the anti-Polish script of the Frankfurt Paulskirche member and Leipzig historian Heinrich Wuttke Germans and Poles (1846 / ²1848).

Dominion of Bolesław I around the year 1000 (map excerpt from Putzger's "Historical School Atlas" , 1905)

He expressly rejected the claim that the required Polish western border should be the Oder . Like the debate speaker Jordan, he admitted that the Slavs were actually entitled to areas up to the Saale “and deep into the heart of Germany” that had been wrested from them since the 10th century. However, he points out that the Slavs had usurped these areas as attackers.

The historian Roland Gehrke wrote in 2001 about the territorial conceptions for a future Polish nation-state developed in the 19th century: “With the return to the Piast legacy, the territorial orientation of the Piast state and, beyond that, the medieval western expansion of slavery in general came into the focus of historians and publicists . In the foreword to his monumental four-volume 'History of Northwestern Slavery up to the Middle of the 13th Century', Wilhelm Bogusławski described it as his goal to show the reader the close connection between the West Slavic tribes and the inhabitants of Piastic Poland and the original ethnographic border between Teutons and to recall Slavs. In individual representations, this border was relocated much further west beyond its approximate course along the rivers of the Elbe and Saale, with reference to a sometimes quite adventurous interpretation of place names as well as medieval and ancient sources. "

Language map of Germany, in which areas with a German minority are also shown as "German"
Andree's Handatlas 1881

Before the end of the World War, a brochure by the journalist Bolesław Jakimiak was published in Moscow in 1917 , in which he thought about how to reverse the processes of Germanization that had taken place in previous centuries . The Deutsche Ostsiedlung presented itself to him as follows:

“(...) note that the relatively small German people, who emerged from only a handful of tribes (Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia) and settled between the Rhine and Weser rivers, with the help of intrigues and maneuvers, sometimes also with the help of better armament and one better organization, gradually subjugated a much larger territory to his rule that was not his own, (...) and forced his language on the long-established Slavic population of this territory. Remember that there is no other people on earth who obey such predatory instincts and are so ruthless in denationalizing the population of the annexed territories. "

For Jakimiak, the Oder and Lusatian Neisse were already considered to be the western borders of the planned new state .

The Polish western border in the Versailles Peace Treaty

The national politician Roman Dmowski was the Polish negotiator in the negotiating peace treaty of Versailles . He spoke out in favor of an annexation of German Austria to Germany because he believed that this would break the Prussian supremacy in Germany and the Prussian-German threat to Poland. His territorial program for future Poland, with partial disregard for completely non-Polish populated areas, looked like this:

“1) Austrian Poland - Galicia annexed in the partitions of Poland and half of Austrian Silesia ( Teschen ), 2) Russian Poland - the Kingdom of Poland and the Kowno , Wilna and Grodno governorates annexed in the partitions of Poland as well as part of the Minsk and Volhynia Governments , 3) German Poland - the provinces of Posen and West Prussia annexed in the partitions of Poland with Danzig ; also Upper Silesia and the southern part of East Prussia . "

These demands remained unfulfilled to this extent. The result of the German assignment of territories was that the separation of East Prussia from the rest of the Reich (see Polish Corridor ) and, above all, the arbitrary tearing of the Upper Silesian industrial area raised calls for a revision of the "bleeding border in the east".

The establishment of Polish research on the West

As in German East Research, various sciences contributed to the West Research Project, which had its center in Poznan. The preliminary University of designation as "Piast University" was already program, pointing out that was thought in a millennium space, namely by Mieszko ago, the first contact with the Saxon expansion under the Liudolfingern in the form of Margrave Gero had come . In addition to national history, it was above all archeology, geography, sociology and linguistics that made their contributions to the exploration of the western areas that were once inhabited by Slavs, which had been pushed back in the course of the medieval eastern expansion that began with the Holy Roman Empire and which had largely disappeared completely .

Robert Brier wrote in 2003:

“The archaeologist Józef Kostrzewski, for example, saw the role of his science as a producer of arguments for political demands and recalled during the Polish Historians' Day in 1925 that historical studies in the western regions had always served the purpose of 'defending national existence'. While this political attitude to science in the western regions of the then Polish state had undoubtedly developed under the special circumstances of the pressure to Germanize in the German Reich, it was more topical since the mid-twenties at the latest due to the rise of Eastern research in the scientific landscape of the Weimar Republic . After the establishment of German East European research institutes in Königsberg and Breslau during the First World War, it was in particular the Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research , established in 1926 , that gave this research direction an institutional character as well as a substantive and methodological thrust. "

How close the contact was with German concepts was exemplified by the fact that the Western researcher Józef Kostrzewski had studied with Gustaf Kossinna . He developed the thesis that Slavic culture was younger than German in terms of civilization. It owes its emergence essentially to Germanic culture, which is why Central Europe up to the Vistula was, as it were, Germanic "original home". Kostrzewski's scientific activity consisted in refuting Kossinna.

Rudolf Jaworski states that in both Polish West and German East research, “highly political research concerns” arose in the dispute over territories, minorities and cultural influences. They survived the Second World War "and for a long time poisoned the intellectual climate between the two countries because they were also effective in journalism and pedagogy beyond their scientific work".

Second World War

With the attack on Poland and the National Socialist intention to treat Poland as a " colonial country " ( Hanns Johst , 1940) (cf. Fremdvölkische ) and to destroy the ruling classes, the University of Poznan was also transformed into a "Reich University" in 1941. For the western researchers, this meant underground work, especially since there was a list drawn up by German eastern researchers, on the basis of which the Gestapo identified and persecuted the representatives of the western school. The medieval historian and constitutional lawyer Zygmunt Wojciechowski emerged from the underground organization “Ojczyzna” - “Fatherland”, founded in Poznan . His field of activity was “the management of the western office of the government delegation in Warsaw. If the original task of this institution was the political representation of the Polish territories that were affiliated to the Reich, one began there under the catchphrase of the 'required' or 'returning areas' [ ziemie postulowane, ziemie powracające ], however, also with questions about the takeover of To employ territories beyond the western border from 1939, a field of work that dominated after 1943 [...] The aim of the western course was on the one hand to propaganda for the most extensive territorial demands possible. On the other hand, these demands should be underpinned by the continuation and expansion of western research and their implementation prepared. This should be achieved by researching the history of German-Polish relations and the required areas as well as documenting German crimes during the occupation. "

A stele with numbers at the Poznan Residential Palace commemorates Polish cryptanalysts and their contribution to the Allied victory.

It was important to work with the Polish government-in-exile, initially in France and then in London, and to provide them with feedback and material for the upcoming negotiations with the three allies, the Soviet Union , England and the USA . A memorandum drawn up in 1943 called for the creation of a fait accompli after the war before a peace conference. The aim of the westward shift was also served by the demand to completely relocate the German population from the new territories. This was to exclude the possibility of holding plebiscites , with which one had had bad experiences after the First World War.

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 meant a reorientation of the initially purely national-Polish efforts. Wojciechowski was the quickest to adapt to future Soviet dominance because it was foreseeable that his own demands would only have a chance of being realized if Josef Stalin was convinced of them. Because Stalin wanted to move Russia to the west at the expense of Poland, which would be all the easier for him if he compensated for the loss caused by the acquisition of areas in the west, which is so coveted in Western research, which are known as “original Polish” and “mother countries” (Wojciechowski) because they were piastically valid (cf. Eastern Territories of the German Empire ) As early as 1941, Stalin had given Władysław Sikorski a promise that the future Polish western border would be the Oder. In July / August 1944 he committed himself to the Lublin Committee , the Communist Provisional Government of Poland supported by the Soviet Union, for the first time on the Oder-Neisse line as the border route and assured possession of Szczecin and Breslau . This had immediate consequences for Wojciechowski and the western research he directed: At the end of 1944, thought was given to an Instytut Zachodni (German: West Institute ), which was then founded in Poznan in February 1945 and which Wojciechowski directed until his death in 1955. The alliance with the Russians experienced the following legitimation by assigning it to the Pan-Slavic context: "The core of the Slavic world is without a doubt the Russian (Great Russian) and the Polish nation" (Zygmunt Wojciechowski).
The Polish historian Władysław Konopczyński also counted on the protection of the new regime supported and implemented by Moscow and concluded in 1946: “The wind is now blowing in the opposite direction. It's quiet over the East, loud around the Gero and Ottonen , Albrechts and Friedrichs , around Bismarck and Hitler . "

After a number of crises and shifts in focus, especially after the end of the Cold War , the institute continues to exist and remains the center of attention in Germany.

Western research and the "regained areas"

In the magazine of the “Polish Western Union” ( Polski Związek Zachodni , PZZ) Polska Zachodnia No. 4 of August 26, 1945, the doubts expressed above all by Winston Churchill about the legitimacy of the Oder-Neisse border were dispelled with the reference that “that Poland owned only part of the Slavic territories that had been Slavic since ancient times; citing historical law, which had even been confirmed by the Germans, Poland could actually claim back all Slavic areas up to the Elbe, although it did not ”(see above Wilhelm Jordan and Heinrich Wuttke 1848). In 1946 the “Slavic Committee” in Breslau published the book of the former National Democrat Karol Stojanowski on the reslawization of East Germany ( O reslawizację wschodnich Niemiec ) as the first volume of the “Slavic Library” . The author assumed that, based on the Sorbs of Lusatia , the extinct Slavic language could be revived by the settlement of a Slavic core population in East German territory. To compare how such a thing works, he referred to the return of the Jews to Palestine and to the reintroduction of Old Slavonic to the modernized Biblical Hebrew (see Ivrit ). With the emergence of West Slavic states west of the Oder, Stojanowski wanted to have the guarantee that in the peace treaty to be negotiated the Prussian state would perish "without any chance of revival". He said that Germany, limited to its "western and southern territories (...) would lose a lot of its conquering psyche". (See also zone protocol ).
While the connection of Lusatia to Poland was discussed with a wide response, the ideas of reslawization up to the Elbe were considered unrealistic. However, it was insisted that the rights to the capital should be shifted from Berlin to the west. It was feared that Berlin as the capital would continue the Prussian tradition and underscore the imperial idea of Bismarck and Hitler . "Artificial gravity all over Germany to the east" should definitely be avoided.

In October 1945 the "Ministry for the Reclaimed Territories" was founded. It existed until 1949. It was his responsibility to ensure the " border colonization " integration of the areas that had to be settled with Polish populations after the expulsion of the Germans. The work of the western researchers should serve to "advise the government on nationality problems as well as economic, demographic and 'colonizing' questions in relation to the new western areas". The western researchers found a political legitimation of their work, which was reflected in the journal Westrundschau ( Przegląd Zachodni ), which the institute has published to this day . From 1945 it appeared monthly with great regularity.

“This most important organ of Polish research on the West was, first of all, a professional journal that provided the opportunity to publish articles and reviews. In addition, it was a forum on which Western researchers could exchange ideas through discussions, polemics, research reports or letters to the editor, or where reports on the activities of other institutes and facilities were reported. In addition to these scientific contributions, there are also occasional texts that were more programmatic or even propagandistic in character and related to current events, such as B. an editorial by Wojciechowski, in which he compared the outcome of the war with the 'Polish' victory of the Battle of Grunwald . "

In the People's Republic of Poland , Western research was "elevated to a state-sponsoring science and financed accordingly". According to Rudolf Jaworski, it contributed to securing the communist claim to rule and responded to the restorative tendencies of German research on the East as a “front science” of two warring power blocs. However, the Oder-Neisse line was "only partially a German-Polish matter".

For British historian Norman Davies , the following happened in the post-war period: “Strangely enough, the communists' adoption of nationalist ideas coincided with the elimination of ethnic minorities and the transformation of Polish society. While Stalin exerted a radical influence on the Polish Communist Party, he created a mononational Poland. While Dmowski's ideas unexpectedly revived in post-war ideology, just as unexpectedly his wildest ethnic dreams came true: a Poland emerged in which exclusively Poles lived. "

German-Polish border treaty of 1990 as a prerequisite for a new beginning

When, in the course of the impending German reunification in 1990, especially in the Republic of Poland, the concern grew that unified Germany could demand a revision of the German eastern borders, the four victorious powers demanded the final recognition of the Oder-Neisse border as a prerequisite for their consent to German unity as a lawful state border between Germany and Poland. This recognition was anchored in the Two-Plus-Four Treaty and confirmed in the German-Polish Border Treaty of November 14, 1990 in an international agreement. With this treaty, which came into force on January 16, 1992, the Federal Republic of Germany relinquished all claims to the eastern territories of the German Reich that lay east of this line and since then have also belonged to Poland under international law.

Since then, at the latest, German “ Ostforschung ” has itself become the subject of critical appraisal and the subject of research on the history of science and, as a generic term in contemporary research, has been so burdened that other terms have taken its place. As the first joint inventory of both research directions impaired by historical-political instrumentalizations, a volume was published in 2003 in which both “German East research” and “Polish West research” are presented critically. It should be noted that innovative concepts came into play in both research directions, namely various disciplines were brought together, in which economic, social, legal or population-historical issues were in the foreground. This reflected a pan-European development that had arisen elsewhere from imperialist conquests and the establishment of colonies overseas and which, in connection with the threefold increase in population in European countries between 1814 and 1914, experienced its clearest manifestations under social-imperialism .
Overall, a perspective is increasingly being pursued in which events in Central Eastern and Eastern Europe are also classified in the context of pan-European contexts. In 2009 , Jürgen Osterhammel wrote in his work on the 19th century " The Transformation of the World " under the heading " Settlement Colonialism " of the " fascist imperial dreams" in the "state colonialist settlement projects" developed by Germany, Italy and Japan between 1930 and 1945: Italy in Libya and Ethiopia , Japan in Manchuria , where a military utopia was to emerge, and Germany, which wanted to establish an “Aryan” racial tyranny in conquered Eastern Europe. As early as the 19th century, whole peoples were decimated or at least plunged into misery on the " frontiers ". The settlers of fascist imperialism, however, were only instruments of state policy. "It was the state that recruited them, sent them and provided them with land in the colonial fringes and overseas territories, and which persuaded them that they were fulfilling a particularly important national duty and that they should endure the inevitable hardships of everyday life for the good of the 'people as a whole'." They were - whether in Africa, Manchuria or on the Volga - only guinea pigs in imperial dreams.
But the “state colonialist settlement projects” as a peculiarity of “fascist imperialism” also produced their counter-image with different omens. For, according to Robert Brier, Polish researchers from the West made “a contribution to the Sovietization of the country” by “ nationalizing Stalinism ”. This was reflected in Wojciechowski's personal life balance sheet, who as a Polish nationalist identified with the People's Republic and said that “I am most closely connected to this Pole and I feel jointly responsible for his fate.”
When Hans Mommsen used the image of a “ Faustian Pact ”used to describe the readiness of researchers from the East to cooperate with the Nazi regime in order to realize their territorial and population policy concepts regardless of possible inhumane consequences, this picture could also be transferred to research into the West, which involved the demand for the expulsion of the Germans were part of the “nationalist radicalization process” that plagued the peoples who suffered under the Nazi, German occupation.

For East and West research, however, further critical research is required because obviously not yet unreserved access to all subject areas has been found.

See also

literature

  • Detlef Brandes : The way to expulsion 1938-1945. Plans and decisions to “transfer” Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Oldenbourg, Munich ²2005, ISBN 3-486-56731-4 .
  • Robert Brier: The Polish “Western Thought” after the Second World War 1944–1950 (PDF; 828 kB), Digital Eastern European Library: History 3 (2003).
  • Roland Gehrke: The Polish idea of ​​the west until the re-establishment of the Polish state after the end of the First World War. Genesis and justification of Polish territorial claims against Germany in the age of nationalism , Herder Institute, Marburg 2001, ISBN 3-87969-288-2 .
  • Andreas Lawaty : The end of Prussia from a Polish perspective: On the continuity of negative effects of Prussian history on German-Polish relations , de Gruyter, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-11009-936-5 .
  • Jan M. Piskorski , Jörg Hackmann, Rudolf Jaworski (eds.): German East Research and Polish West Research in the field of tension between science and politics. A comparison of disciplines. Fiber, Osnabrück 2003, ISBN 978-3-929759-58-7 .
  • Jörg Hackmann: Structures and Institutions of Polish Research on the West (1918–1960). In: Journal for East Central Europe Research 50 (2001), pp. 230–255.

Individual evidence

  1. Jan M. Piskorski, quoted in Robert Brier: The Polish “Western Thought” after the Second World War 1944–1950. Digital Eastern European Library: Geschichte 3 (2003), p. 13 (PDF; 828 kB).
  2. Cf. Robert Brier: The Polish “Western Thought” after the Second World War 1944–1950. P. 3 f.
  3. Poland and Germans , 1846, p. 5 f. - In 1882 Ernest Renan pointed out in his speech “ What is a nation? "In the Sorbonne on March 11, 1882, referring to the dispute between Germans and Slavs:" Remember, this ethnographic policy is not reliable. Today you use them against the others; later you will see how it turns against yourself. Is it certain that the Germans, who hoisted the flag of ethnography so high, will not one day see how the Slavs for their part research the village names of Saxony and Lusatia, explore the traces of the Wilzen and the Obodrites and answer for the slaughter and? Demand massive sales made to their ancestors by the Ottonians ? "(See reprint of the speech here .)
  4. ^ Heinrich Wuttke, Poland and German: Political considerations by Heinrich Wuttke (Schkeuditz 1846), p. 6
  5. ^ Roland Gehrke: The Polish idea of ​​the west up to the re-establishment of the Polish state after the end of the First World War. Genesis and justification of Polish territorial claims against Germany in the age of nationalism. Herder Institute, Marburg 2001, p. 130 f. ( Full text online ( Memento from October 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, 434 pages)).
  6. See Roland Gehrke (2001), p. 139.
  7. Cf. Andreas Lawaty: The end of Prussia in a Polish perspective: On the continuity of negative effects of Prussian history on German-Polish relations. Berlin (de Gruyter) 1986, p. 38.
  8. See Roland Gehrke (2001), p. 304.
  9. See Robert Brier (2003), p. 53.
  10. Robert Brier (2003), p. 12 f.
  11. ^ Rudolf Jaworski: German East Research and Polish West Research. P. 12, in: German East Research and Polish West Research in the field of tension between science and politics. Disciplines in Comparison , ed. by Jan M. Piskorski / Jörg Hackmann / Rudolf Jaworski, fiber, Osnabrück 2003, pp. 11–23.
  12. Robert Brier (2003), p. 21. - In this context, Albert Brackmann deserves a special mention as the German counterpart to Zygmunt Wojciechowski. He wrote at the request of Heinrich Himmler and to order the SS of 26 September 1939 in 7,000 copies of the Wehrmacht rightful in May 1940 propaganda publication " Crisis and construction in Eastern Europe. A world-historical picture (insignificantly shortened; PDF; 417 kB).
  13. ^ Robert Brier (2003), p. 19.
  14. See Robert Brier (2003), p. 20.
  15. Detlef Brandes: The way to expulsion 1938-1945. Plans and decisions to “transfer” Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland. 2nd edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2005, pp. 465, 469.
  16. How deeply the Pan-Slavic traditions were anchored in Josef Stalin like the Pan-German ones in Hitler , so that both endeavored to act in their favor, Hannah Arendt highlights elements and origins of total rule in her book . Anti-Semitism, imperialism, total rule (Piper, Munich 1986, 8th edition 2001, p. 473). Stalin declared on May 9, 1945: "The centuries-long struggle of the Slavic peoples for their existence and independence ended with the victory over the German occupiers and German tyranny." (See Stalin: Address to the People .)
  17. ^ Andreas Lawaty (1986), p. 115.
  18. Andreas Lawaty (1986), pp. 206 ff .; West German press coverage of a Sorbian state (last third of the website)
  19. ^ Andreas Lawaty (1986), p. 211.
  20. The attribute " regained " is also to be seen in the sense of Jan M. Piskorski as a " true mirror image " of German expression: From the " regaining of old German folk and cultural soil in the east " is 1941 also in SS = Leitheft-Kriegsausgabe , vol. 6 , Part 2b, p. 2, in connection with the first resettlement and settlement of ethnic Germans in the areas conquered since 1939.
  21. ^ Robert Brier (2003), p. 25.
  22. ^ Robert Brier (2003), p. 29.
  23. Rudolf Jaworski (2003), p. 17 f. See more recently Bogdan Musial , Stalin's Foray. The pillage of Germany and the rise of the Soviet Union to a world power. Berlin: Propylaen 2010, ISBN 978-3-549-07370-4 , therein the chapter Stalin's war goal - the lasting weakening of Germany , pp. 181-236.
  24. Norman Davies: In the Heart of Europe: History of Poland. 4th, revised edition, CH Beck, Munich 2006, p. 137.
  25. Jan M. Piskorski, Jörg Hackmann, Rudolf Jaworski (eds.): German East Research and Polish West Research in the Tension Field of Science and Politics. A comparison of disciplines. Fiber, Osnabrück 2003.
  26. ^ Robert Brier (2003), p. 14.
  27. Cf. Dirk van Laak : About everything in the world. German imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 36.
  28. As Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison explains in his book “ La République impériale ” (2009), for example, France's development as a colonial power in competition with England included its own scientific institutions such as the Academy of Colonial Sciences . Research and teaching disciplines were anthropology, ethnology, colonial sociology, national psychology, political science, law, history and geography (p. 17). What can thus be described as “innovative” for German East research and Polish West research had its precursors and parallels in the scientific institutions that worked towards the domination goals of the imperialist European colonial powers. According to Le Cour Grandmaison, the idea of living space was also a peculiarity of pan-European imperialism (pp. 329–352).
  29. See Polish Colonial Ambitions ( Memento from July 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  30. Jürgen Osterhammel: The transformation of the world. A story of the 19th century. 4th, updated edition, CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 3-40658-283-4 , p. 531 f.
  31. See Robert Brier (2003), p. 87 f. - Brier follows the US historian Norman Naimark : “ Nationalism and the Eastern European Revolutions 1944–1947 .” Transit 15 (1998): 40-60.
  32. See the review of the volume published in 2003 “ German East Research and Polish West Research in the Field of Tension between Science and Politics. Disciplines in Comparison ".