European Heritage Label (EHL) in Lights of Internal Historical Policy in Poland
European Heritage Label (EHL) in Lights of Internal Historical Policy in Poland

Summary/Abstract: In the framework of the EU European Heritage Label (EHL) programme, six EHLs were granted to Polish institutions from 2014 to 2019.1 The EHL programme regulations oblige EHL operators to promote through their work with the label a European historical narrative, however in Poland EHL operators often have to work on bringing back, or refreshing, memory about the sites. In some cases, they are focused on reviewing regional perspectives (Polish-German and Polish-Lithuanian) which were ignored during communism. Deriving from the assumption that the concept of cultural heritage is used at the national, subnational and pan- national levels (Haftsein, 2012, p. 501) and that heritage is a “process of negotiating values” (Smith, 2016, p. 30 ), it is important to ask the following questions: 1) Do Polish EHLs initiate a discussion about the Europeanisation of heritage? 2) To what extent EHLsin Poland are subject to the process of Europeanisation and to what extent are they a subject of the state’s historical policy and national discourse?

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