Karol Kubicki, Odniemczanie krajobrazu a zagłada dóbr kultury na przykładzie pomników Fryderyka II Wielkiego na Górnym i Dolnym Śląsku
Karol Kubicki, The De-Germanization of the Landscape and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage: The Case of the Monuments to Frederick II the Great in Upper and Lower Silesia

Summary/Abstract: The advance of the front in 1945 and the occupation of German Silesia by the Red Army, followed by the takeover of administrative control over these areas by Polish authorities, contributed to a massive campaign to erase traces of German culture, which consequently led, among other things, to the dismantling and destruction of monuments associated with Silesia’s German past. In this way, not only were efforts made to forge a new identity for these lands, but irreparable losses to cultural heritage were also inflicted. Before World War II, Upper and Lower Silesia were home to more than a dozen statues of Frederick II, King of Prussia – one of the central figures in the German pantheon of heroes. Only one of these monuments survived the year 1945. The aim of this article is to catalog these monuments and then reconstruct their fate during the pivotal year of 1945 for Silesia – that is, the final chapter of their existence. The quantitative losses are presented through the lens of qualitative losses – to what extent was the deliberate destruction of monuments merely the removal of elements of historical propaganda from public space, and to what extent was it the annihilation of works of high artistic value? These actions were compared with the situation of Frederick the Great’s monuments after 1945 west of the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, as well as with the Polish authorities’ policy toward monuments to this ruler after 1920/1922 in the area of the former Prussian partition.

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