„Bridging cultural boundaries” Andrzeja Kapiszewskiego

Author(s): Leszek Korporowicz,Sylwia Jaskuła / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2017

The sentence, or “rule” created by Andrzej Kapiszewski, about building bridges over cultural barriers is an unusually interesting proposition in the world of global scope of cultural processes that cause many divisions, confl icts, but also create many opportunities for cooperation and mutual enrichment. “Bridging cultural boundaries” is a formula that can combine many sciences, including pedagogy of intercultural relations, which is focused on shaping attitudes, intercultural competences, stimulating perspective of cognitive openness, tolerance and crossing the barriers posed by cultural stereotypes. The postulate of “building bridges” may refer to the old perspective of Jagiellonian values, sensitizing towards cultural diversity, although in search of common and fundamental features of community, tolerance and cooperation. Three types of values seem to be the basis on which integration activities can be based, it is humanity, dialogue and development, which, taken as a whole, generate the axiological basis of Andrzej Kapiszewski’s formula.

„Chcę rozmawiać”. Autopsychoterapeutyczne funkcje narracji Justyny Bargielskiej i Anny Starobiniec o utracie perinatalnej

Author(s): Irina Adelgejm / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2017

The article discusses a unique experience of death such as a perinatal loss described in „Obsoletki” by Justyna Bargielska and „Spójrz na niego” by Anna Starobiniec. The author of the article analyses the ways in which narration aims at assimilating the traumatic experience (in Bargielska’s writing: ‘cataloguing’ the pain of other mothers, ‘a split screen’, adapting external observer’s point of view, dividing the trauma into separate elements, lack of logic; in Starobiniec’s writing: externalization of the loss by the experience of mourning, ‘recreating’ lost relations; in both authors’ creativity: connecting life and death, placing loss in the story of life, conventional endings).

„Cítím se býti v Orientu“. Pohled Čechů na život v bulharských městech na konci 19. století.

Author(s): Pavel Zeman / Language(s): Czech / Publication Year: 0

Pavel Zeman depicts the reality of the Bulgarian city in the late 19th century, as perceived by the Czech intelligentsia. After 1878, when the Bulgarian Principality was liberated and the modern Bulgarian state was founded, a large number of Czechs came to live and work in Bulgaria and East Rumelia for several reasons, and were active in a variety of fields. The most visible presence was that of Czech teachers, lawyers, engineers, architects, artists, and musicians, that is, the members of the contemporary intelligentsia. The author reconstructs for us life in that era in Bulgaria’s cities using a travelogue, memoirs, and correspondence of Konstantin Jireček, Antonín Šourek, Josef Voráček, Hermenegild Škorpil, Rudolf Thurn-Taxis, Antonín Brožka, and Jan Mrkvička. He also outlines the main traits of society at that time as described by these Czechs, who spent a part of their liveson the Balkan peninsula.

„Cultural, Religious and Humanist Inheritance of Europe“ – Its Future Legal Relevance

Author(s): Alexander Balthasar / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

By the Treaty of Lisbon, the “Masters of the Treaties” not only completed a catalogue of founding values (Article 2 TEU) but provided also an indication where from these values “have developed”, i.e. “from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe”. This contribution - originally presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Czech Association for European Studies Prague, 12. and 13. June 2014 - aims at analyzing the normative relevance and implications of this indication which might mean a considerable change of paradigm for secular Member States like Austria, Czech Republic or France.

„Dansând cu Moartea” (Rituri româneşti de iniţiere în context postfunerar)

Author(s): Narcisa Ştiucă,Florian TEODORESCU / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 22/2008

In April 2006 we conducted fieldwork in the Romanati ethnographical area (Olt County, in south-east Romania) and we shot the custom and practice hora de poamana (the round dance offered as tribute to the dead). The circulation of this custom and practice is testified as ritual post-funeral practice in similar variants in two other Romanian areas (Banat and Oltenia), as well as in the vlahi communities in Valea Timocului. It is dedicated to the young people dead (either married or unmarried) whose death happened earlier than 3 years ago. It is performed in a communitarian place (in the cemetery and on the grazing ground) and in a moment with religious significance (Easter hollydays). Its main actors are the closest family members, and its significance as tribute is emphasized by a lot of ritual formulas and by ritual food contextualized by the holy day. The ritual proves itself to be a communication channel and a channel to insure the social mediation, an apparatus for establishing rules and for symbolically treasuring the present and the future which enables the reproduction of the social order through the participation of the youngest representatives of the society.

„Die Lubinaken kommen!“ Odhaľovanie Hurbanovho pomníka v Novom Meste nad Váhom v kontexte osláv 10. výročia vzniku Československej republiky

Author(s): Peter Macho / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 3/2018

The study describes the preparation, construction and official unveiling of Jozef Miloslav Hurban’s Memorial in Nové Mesto nad Váhom on the 10th anniversary of the birth of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1928. The construction of the memorial was initiated by the local organisation of Matica slovenská, with the involvement of Slovak and Czech intellectuals (Ľudmila Podjavorinská, Rudolf Markovič, Otokar Fleischer and others). The collective remembering of Hurban was marked by creating ideologically motivated links between the Hurban and legionary traditions. The legionary element was integrated in the rhetoric and ritual aspects of this festivity on purpose. Ján Drobný suggested using this memorial initiative to achieve definitive Slovakisation of the public life in the town, even by using violence. His proposal was targeted against the members of the so-called better society which arose mainly from the Jewish community and preferred Hungarian in public communication.The events related to Hurban’s Memorial revealed the frustration of some members of the Slovak intellectual élite. They had the feeling that the upheaval and the birth of the republic in 1918/19 did not culminate with absolute victory of the Slovak national idea. The purpose-built and positively “modelled” picture of the “Hurbanist”past was one of the factors that worked in the contemporary discourse as purported guarantee of the national reliability and loyalty of the citizens of the Nové Mesto region towards the Czechoslovak state.

„Dorastanie nie jest dla dzieci” – o odtabuizowaniu dziecięcej transgresyjności według Kuby Czekaja

Author(s): Agata Montewska / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

The article is an analysis of a debut, feature‑lenght film by Kuba Czekaj – Baby Bump in the perspective of transgression and Józef Kozielecki’s psychotransgression theory. Theses are based on symbolic (cutting off frozen ears, breasts, pregnancy belly; hatching) and formal (cartoon, pastel, surreal imagination) transgression indicators, which simultaneously realize the process of breaching of taboo of childhood limits. Conclusions are based on enhancers and impediments’ theory in progression’s psychology, which at the same time explain threads of fascination with corporealness, mother’s sexuality, maturation’s trauma which is intertwined with sexual normativeness.

„Dusze przemierzają wieki, jak chmury przemierzają niebo” — Tożsamość sieciowa w filmie „Atlas chmur”

Author(s): Sonia Front / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 37/2018

In 21st-century science fiction narratives, the figure of the cyborg has been replaced by a new group of liminal characters: avatars, clones, sentient AI, genetically modified humans and time-displaced individuals. Through these characters, the narratives explore philosophical questions about the unity of personal identity. One of the films that investigate this question is Tom Tykwer’s and Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s film „Cloud Atlas” (2012), as it proposes the notion of network identity, divorced from time. Network identity – in the form of transmigration of souls – is enacted in the film by the concept of eternal recurrence which is the film’s overriding framework. This identity is what connects the six juggled stories, spanning through various historical eras from the nineteenth century to the distant future. The paper analyses the film’s concept of twenty-first century subjectivity, singular and manifold, separated and connected simultaneously, and how it taps into the theme of global interconnectedness and co-temporality brought about by the media and globalization.

„Dziadek (nie) był komunistą”. Między/transgeneracyjna pamięć o komunizmie w polskich (auto)biografiach rodzinnych po 1989 roku

Author(s): Agnieszka Mrozik / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

This article analyses strategies for constructing family memory about communism in (auto) biographical texts in Poland today. Drawing on the work of Harald Welzer as well as Aleida and Jan Assmann, Mrozik asks how private memory of commitment to Communism works in the public sphere in Poland: to what extent is such unofficial memory made to agree with official memory, becoming elusive where it does not overlap. Another key question is if and how the memory of one’s own or one’s relatives’ commitment to Communism is subject transformation in the process of inter- or transgenerational migration and

„Eroul necunoscut” - un profil etnologic

Author(s): Ioana-Ruxandra Fruntelată / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 27/2013

Several interpretations of the term „hero” are possible, depending on the context of reference. Nevertheless, it is common place that heroism implies as its first trait violent death embraced by the hero for the benefit of the community. Violent death is fertile and connected to sacrifice in archaic mentality. As battles or wars are the most frequent opportunity for a person to meet violent death, war culture should also be taken into consideration for understanding the substance of heroism.The two World Wars are the last modern wars associated to violent death, as postmodern wars are allegedly ”zero dead” confrontations. The term ”unknown hero” or ”unknown soldier” was coined to depict the anonymous dead in the modern wars, who are usually common people remembered for their sacrifice to defend an idea (most of the times the national idea). ”Unknown heroes” do not choose or are not chosen to die, in fact, they fall in battle while trying to survive it. Their heroism consists in the power to preserve their humanity under atrocious circumstances and is documented by their front line diaries, correspondence and other written materials. Their attributed heroic quality points more to a compensatory function for the loss of so many lives than to a creative function for the society they belonged to. In Romanian rural communities, war heroes are honoured on the Ascension Day (40 days after Easter) together with all ancestors of the place, irrespective of the circumstances of their death.An ethnological approach of the issue, aiming to identify and explain rationally the rules that people abide by, although unaware of that, would regard ”unknown heroes” as result of a process of acculturation between inherited oral culture and informal war culture. I analyse as such a representative ethnological document, a front line diary belonging to Ioan Dicu, a Romanian householder in a Transylvanian village. Dicu died in a prisoner camp in Russia in 1945. His notebook was transmitted by his wife to ethnologist Ilie Moise in the 1970s and Mr. Moise had it published in 2010.Dicu’s discourse displays elements of his inherited rural agricultural background interwoven with recurrent motifs in the mass culture of his time, School and Church being the most important references alongside with his fondness for family and home. The author of the diary is able to cope with the draining war journey toward the Eastern front line by preserving his core values, which are love for home, faith and solidarity. The identity of the ”unknown hero” is centered around those values which assert him as an exemplary human being. He is not a revolutionary but a conservative whose greatness is the power to bear his ”village” with him in order not to get lost in an anomic world. We can speak of a category of ”unknown hero” including people who could survive the horrors of war life, even if they didn’t survive the war. The accounts of such front liners are documents to an extremely alien reality but also to a liminal state of mind of those experiencing war close up.

„Igazából nem tudjuk kihasználni a tudásunkat, tehát ez a piacgazdaság minket padlóra küldött”: Munkások és munkástudat a mai Magyarországon

Author(s): Eszter Bartha / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

„INS GRÜNE“. DIE HERAUSBILDUNG DER FREIZEITRÄUME DER STÄDTISCHEN UMGEBUNG IN DER HABSBURGERMONARCHIE IM 18. UND 19. JAHRHUNDERT

Author(s): Borbála Mészáros / Language(s): German / Issue: 1/2011

“Green merry-making”. The creation of recreational spaces around urban areas in the Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th–19th centuries. – My investigation is focused on a special phenomenon of urbanisation of the way of life in the 18th to 19th centuries: the functional and symbolical transformation of the immediate environs of the town, in the course of which the previously unconquered surrounding countryside or land used for agricultural purposes became the venue for urban leisure customs (excursions, May Day festivities, summer holidays). The period covered in the research is from the last third of the 18th century to the mid-19th century: this is sufficiently long to allow a comparison of areas of investigation having different source bases (towns within the Habsburg Monarchy of different sizes and with different traditions) and to trace changes in the various urbanisation phenomena examined. Nature in the urban environs as a recreational space is interpreted according to the aesthetic requirements of urban-dwellers. These nearby excursion places can be seen not only as compensation for increasingly unpleasant urban life, but also as a kind of cultural pattern, a symbolic expression of urbanity: the big city lifestyle pattern also appears in the smaller, barely urbanised towns. The phenomenon examined appears with differing emphasis in the leisure time of the different social groups. The petty bourgeoisie and the poorer social groups are encountered in these micro spaces mainly in connection with festive use, while visits to the green areas in and around the town are practically an everyday practice among the middle classes. Certain traditions dating from the period before the urbanisation in the Modern Age – such as church fetes in the vicinity of towns, and student traditions – play an important role in the emergence of the new customs. In addition, the social composition of the individual towns, the nature of their trend-setting strata, the denominational tradition, the existing educational or other institutions, in short the differing urbanisation histories also had a substantial influence in shaping leisure spaces in the urban environs. Where an important Protestant school operates in a town, middle-class townsfolk, intellectuals and officials are found in considerable numbers and if the urban elite and leaders are supporters of innovation, green leisure spaces appear earlier and in greater number. In towns with a strong Catholic tradition, the profanization of green fetes also contributes to leisure use of the urban environs, but at times Catholic customs can also be found in a Protestant environment.

„Já tu Bratislavu miluju.“ Ze vzpomínek a dokumentů rodiny českého lékaře

Author(s): Jana Pospíšilová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 3/2018

One of the stages of the Czechoslovak history is the 1920s and 1930s period when Czechs settled with their families in Slovakia, driven by a long-term perspective and working as civil servants in state administration, or in the private sphere. MUDr.Viktor Sedlák graduated from the Charles University in Prague and worked at the Dermatology and Venerology Clinic of the Comenius University in Bratislava since 1919. He later opened a private doctor’s office for skin and venereal diseases and treated the employees of Slovak Railways. In the spring of 1939, he was forced to leave Bratislava and moved to Brno. While in Bratislava, he lived with his wife and two children in a small Czechoslovak villa colony on Lermontov Street (formerly Günther Street) in a house designed by Dušan Jurkovič, in the neighbourhood of other intellectuals. The narrated memories and documents preserved in the family archive together with other objects that were carried to Brno reflect the professional career and private life of the Czech doctor who had lived in Bratislava for twenty years, and show the daily life of his family and social contacts within the predominantly Czech population. The text depicts the family memory culture.

„Ja, Europljanin“: kulturna reprezentacija Hrvatske na putu u Europsku uniju

Author(s): Sanja Potkonjak,Tomislav Pletenac / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 26/2014

The paper deals with different ways of institutional and spontaneous self-representation of the Republic of Croatia on the path to joining the European Union. It is based on the ethnography of EU Bus Croatia Programme, which was launched by the Delegation of the European Commission to the Republic of Croatia in 2007. Ethnographic research encompassed the programme implementation in different Croatian cities and the final event, including the creation of Croatian visual identity on the eve of the symbolic accession to the European Union, as a part of the programme of the official celebration ceremony. The paper questions representational speeches’ strategies, i.e. the counter response to the symbolic promptings which were calling for the “meeting” of Croatia and the European Union throughout the accession process.

„Książka w rogatywce” – najcenniejsze zbiory biblioteczne zgromadzone w wojskowych książnicach w Polsce i na świecie

Author(s): Sergiusz Czarzasty / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2016

The aim of the article is to discuss the most valuable military-related collections held in military libraries in Poland and in the world. The article will present the history of the Marshal Piłsudski Central Military Library in Warsaw (henceforth referred to as CBW) in the context of the most valuable collections associated with the Polish army and the broadly conceived military sciences that were gathered during the period of more than ninety years. The further part of the article provides a few examples to present the collections of military libraries (with particular reference to special collections), functioning all over the world. The final part of the article will discuss the activities of the digital military libraries.

„Kwestia żydowska” w literaturze religijnej. Analiza treści modlitewnika Machzor li-Jom Kipur

Author(s): Agata Rybińska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2018

The analysis of the prayer contained in the Hebrew-Russian prayer book allows to describe the linguistic image of God and his people — Israel/Jews. Appealing to the patriarchs, to the covenant between God and Israel, to the Torah, Jerusalem and temple worship, that is, the centuries-long Jewish religious tradition, are cultural codes, and at the same time key components of Jewish identity. They are a point of reference in considering so called the Jewish question, taking into account primarily the Jewish perspective, not the Christian one.

„Kамени спавач“ на Мак Диздар или довикување меѓу вековите

Author(s): Naume Radichevski / Language(s): Macedonian / Publication Year: 0

With the Stone Sleeper, his unique poetic achievement, Mak Dizdar has established himself not only as a dreamer and a remarkable thinker, but as a rare, unattainable, and never fully graspable prophet and visionary. Most impressive is the fact that he achieves this through an imaginary, and a dominantly poetic dialogue with the ancestors from the order of the Bogomils, that is, Bosnian Christians. Through the inscriptions on their tombstones in that already deepened poetic venture and project, he appears as both their reader and interlocutor. On account of this very analytical ungraspability, this contribution insists on detecting at least some of the connections between the 20th-century poet and prophet, on the one hand, and, on the other, his impossibly possible, if not doubles, then at least fellow travellers sharing his sentiments and ideas, but above all his fate in the triviality and transience of space and time. In this reading of Dizdar’s Stone Sleeper as an attempt to find the connections between the identicalities divided by temporal infinity, or as an attempt to transcend time, that is, to enter time eternal, to reach timelessness, one nevertheless humbly concludes by interpreting this poetic endeavour as an incredibly profound and endlessly existentialist and philosophical poetogram that is an expression of man’s defiance of infinity.

„Más nemzeteknél, mint a szászoknál…” - Ortodoxia és lutheranizmus kölcsönhatásai a dualizmus kori Erdélyben

Author(s): Barna Ábrahám / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 04/2017

With their well organized economic and social life, mentality, and particular system of values, the Saxons have played a distinguished role in the nation-building process of Romanians in Transylvania. While until the middle of the 19th century the relationship had been dominated by antagonism and the struggle of the Romanians living on the Saxon territory for political emancipation, the emergence of modern, bourgeois Hungary brought about a positive turn in this respect. The Romanian elite recognized and tried to adopt the organization of Saxon cooperatives, schools and scientific life, and to use their experience, generally showing up the Saxons’ solidarity and democratic way of thinking as a model to be followed, especially as they identified as one of the main sources of such virtues the public activities of the Lutheran pastors. They were convinced that the Romanian priests would not emerge as the effective leaders of their own communities unless they were elevated to the social status and prestige of Saxon pastors (or Hungarian and German Roman Catholic priests, for that matter), and, last but not least, equal them in modern and comprehensive education.

„Na kwadracie i na jego obwodzie”. Ursynowski rap lat 90.: konfrontacje, identyfikacje, aspiracje

Author(s): Piotr Kubkowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2017

The text is an attempt to define the relationship between the urban space of Ursynów housing estates and the early works of Polish rap created in this district. The first Warsaw rappers were coevals of the district (born in late 70. and early 80.), also their nicknames were borrowed from the elements of its space, and most of the songs – in which they imitate the practices of black American rappers – were also devoted to Ursynów. Nevertheless, a crack in this narrative can be observed – the artists mostly origin from good families, their sterile auto-creations seem not to be compatible with American rap stereotypes as imitated. The author follows and interprets these narrative discontinuities.

„Neues Werk, neue Menschen“: Die Rekrutierung von Arbeitskräften für das albanische Stahlwerk „Stahl der Partei“

Author(s): Visar Nonaj / Language(s): German / Issue: 72/2013

The Steelwork „Steel of the Party“ would be the most prestigious project of the industrialization of the socialist Albania and it meant a break in the communist industrialization policy. The process of the recruitment of the work force, which should deploy his construction, is in the focus of this article. The historical research has not picked the steelwork up as a central theme and there are not published studies, which are concerned with the Albanian worker in the State Socialism. The steelwork had not only to make the economic autarchy possible, but also to become a smithy of the “New Socialist Man“. It will be researched, which measures took the regime for providing enough qualified work forces for the construction and the putting into service of the steel plant and it will be responded the question, if the implementing of the measures was in accordance with the intentions of the communist leadership. Primarily, I will discuss about similar projects in other countries of the Eastern Block, so that I can analyze to what extent the economic planners in Albania have been influenced from these experiences. Subsequently, I will describe the concrete planes, which were developed for recruiting enough manpower for the steel plant. The local power authorities stood under special pressure on the part of the leadership of the party and of the government. They had to allocate the necessary work forces within the period prescribed and to care for their qualification at the same time. This proved to be impracticable in that way, despite the much rigid measures of the socialist regime by comparison with the other states of the Eastern Block. The local responsibles had to map out strategies, so that they could keep the ideological demands and manage the routine problems. This, in turn, had unexpected effects, as the fluctuation of the work forces or the illegal migration with all their side-effects. The Chinese support also could not equalize the structural weaknesses of the Albanian economy. Even in a small country as Albania the Stalinist regime could not determine every aspect of the working life. In Elbasan it had to come to terms with the management as well as with the potential work forces.