50 years of the German-Polish Textbook Commission
The first meeting of the Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission took place in Warsaw from 22 to 26 February 1972. That conference laid the foundation for several decades of joint work on textbooks. The Commission will mark its 50th anniversary with a conference in Warsaw from 30 June to 2 July 2022.
Following the horrors of the Second World War and the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, and against the backdrop of the Cold War, political relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland first began to relax at the end of the 1960s. This rapprochement culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Warsaw in 1970 which brought increased security by accepting the inviolability of the Polish border, but which also proved controversial in Germany.
The Textbook Commission was one of very few forums enabling intellectual and academic communication between Poland and Germany during the Cold War and was a major contributing factor in the reconciliation between the two countries. Its work was shaped to a large degree by the personalities involved. One of whom was the Braunschweig historian Georg Eckert, whose great commitment to bilateral work on textbooks designed to promote international understanding led to the German-Polish textbook conferences that took place in early 1972. These resulted not only in agreement on 17 recommendations regarding how German-Polish relations should be addressed in the textbooks of both countries, but also to an initiative by the German and Polish UNESCO commissions that led to the eventual creation of the Joint Textbook Commission. Georg Eckert supported the sensitive project from the beginning – the Commission’s German office has been housed within the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig since 1972.
The co-chairmen Georg Eckert and Władysław Markiewicz (chairs from 1972 to 1974 and 1972 to 1984 respectively), brought together academics of very different characters and with a range of political views. Participants included the Auschwitz survivor Maria Wawrykowa (1925-2006) and the doyen of German research on Poland, Klaus Zernack (1931-2017). Since the founding of the Commission all members had united behind the idea to provide academic and didactic recommendations that would enable the countries’ mutual history to be taught appropriately, and to also approach it from the perspective of the neighbouring country.
‘The Textbook Commission is an important platform for dialogue and reflects the rapprochement between Germany and Poland. The reconciliation process between the two countries would not have been conceivable without the diverse bilateral undertakings on social and cultural levels. This is also demonstrated by the first joint German-Polish textbook, “Europe – Our History”’, said Professor Eckhardt Fuchs, director of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI).
Working with the Georg Eckert Institute and its Polish partner, the Zentrum für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften was the driving force behind the Commission’s textbook project, which was completed in 2020 with the publication of the fourth and final volume of the joint history textbook for young Germans and Poles: ‘Europa – UnsereGeschichte’ / ‘Europa. Nasza historia’. This unique textbook emphasises the relevance of the Commission’s work and was awarded the 2021 ‘Textbook of the Year’ award. (see: http://www.gei.de/preise/schulbuch-des-jahres/nominierungen/2021.html).
At the anniversary conference the German-Polish Textbook Commission will present volume 4 of the joint history textbook to the public in Poland; it will also take the opportunity to look back over 50 years of sometimes difficult, but overall successful, academic dialogue and to discuss the role of textbooks in the future, as well as to take a broader view of how history is communicated to the general public and by museums.
The Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission is coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute and the Zentrum für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Its 50th anniversary will be celebrated with a three-day conference: At the 38th German-Polish Textbook Conference, to be held from 30 June to 2 July 2022 in Warsaw, academics and teachers will discuss the subject of ‘In dialogue: rethinking history’. The work of the Textbook Commission is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
