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Abstract
This article delves into the post-war urban planning of Racibórz (Ger. Ratibor), a mid-size city in Poland, shedding light on the socialist city's historical roots and its adherence to socialist urbanism models. Using planning maps and other archival documents, it examines the reconstruction process that aimed at creating green spaces and quality housing, while at the same time revealing its medieval past. The article also investigates the city's deviation from known recovery patterns and highlights a lesser known approach to creating a city with a national form and socialist content. Overall, this research offers a comprehensive exploration of a reconstruction process in a mid-size city, enriching the understanding of European post-war urban history.

AbstractA pictorial postcard condenses a cityscape into one iconic image, which claims to summarize the place, usually in a highly aestheticized version. If that is the case, how does one present an industrial city: with factories and worker housing or rather with churches and the palaces of industrial tycoons? Using four digitalized collections (over 700 postcards) this article analyses images of industrialized cities from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Cold War. The main argument is that this idealized depiction does not focus on industry, but rather taps into the imagination of the European city.

This paper examines the debates that surrounded the renovation of the royal castle in Krakow during the last decade before World War I. When the Galician crownland took over the castle in 1905, it bore little resemblance to a royal seat, having been used as military barracks since 1846. The debate that followed focused on what should be preserved, what demolished, and what recreated. In this discourse the "meaning" of a historical monument was examined and different interpretations within the circles of architects, preservationists, and artists were propagated. The debate conducted during the meeting of the Central Commission for Research and Conservation of Historic Buildings revealed that the division was not along national lines, but rather among different philosophies of preservation of built heritage. The point made by the paper is that the discourse conducted 100 years ago allows us today to draw conclusions about the role of historical buildings in a national(istic) worldview and examine its inherent contradictions. That is because, I argue, the past as such matters little in the national(istic) understanding, despite its ostentatious interest in history. What matters is the usefulness of historic symbols in the present.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, located near Konin in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, provides a unique insight into a nationalistic discourse in contemporary Poland. It was created not only as a Catholic shrine but also as a place of patriotic indoctrination. This paper examines not only the architecture and design of the Church and the surrounding Sanctuary, but also the ideas of Rev. Eugeniusz Makulski, the site's founder, and Barbara Bielecka, its architect, in order to understand one of the important currents in a debate on the Polish post-Communist identity. A close analysis of this religious shrine is intended not only to understand this particular site but also to examine how national identity is (re)defined in architecture. As this paper shows, the employment of symbolic devices allows the creation of a coherent story of the Polish nation as a religious community with a history intrinsically linked to the Catholic Church. However, the annexation of the lay sphere (nation) by the sacred one (religion) leads to problematic results when it comes to the universality of the religion and the "nationalization" of the Catholic Church itself.

Defence date: 15 January 2016 ; Examining Board: Prof. Pavel Kolár, European University Institute; Prof. Pieter Judson, European University Insitute; Prof. Dr. Claudia Kraft, Universität Sigen; Dr. Jim Bjork, King's College London ; This dissertation examines the symbolic urban landscape in the four cities of Prussia and Austria-Hungary in the period 1867-1914. Following a theoretical discussion of the symbolic politics and construction of collective memories three chapters deal with the key elements of city-text: street names, monuments and architecture of public buildings. The following chapter focuses on public responses to reshaping of the four cities in that period. Finally, in the conclusions all the different threads are pulled together and further lines of enquiry are presented. Using a variety of primary sources (administrative files, newspapers, address books, maps, iconography) street names, monuments and architecture of public buildings are examined in terms of who was involved in creating these symbolic items, where in the given city space they were located and what symbolic messages they conveyed. The examination of the processes which resulted in erecting of symbolic markers in the four cities allow us not only to better understand how definitions of German and Polish national communities changed in the second half of the long nineteenth century, but also how different social, economical and political circumstances influenced the understanding of each national category. Furthermore, the examination of the symbolic sphere gives an insight into power relations on municipal as well as state level. As this dissertation shows, the symbolic urban landscape was an important arena on which emerging power of the cities confronted the existing power structures of the state and the army. Moreover, powerful individuals used the symbolic resources to strengthen their position within the given community, but also to legitimise their social class. For this reason this dissertation not only contributes to the field of nationalism, memory studies and symbolic politics, but also to the political history of Prussia and Austria-Hungary.

Das von Tim Buchen und Malte Rolf herausgegebene Buch ist der 17. Band aus der Reihe Elitenwandel in der Moderne = Elites and Modernity von De Gruyter. Die Reihe wird von Gabriele Clemens, Dietlind Hüchtker, Martin Kohlrausch, Stephan Malinowski und Malte Rolf ediert und befasst sich mit der Veränderung der Bedeutung von Eliten in der spätmodernen europäischen Geschichte, insbesondere mit der Frage der Fortdauer der Macht des Adels im Kontext des Aufstiegs der Massenmedien und der sozialen Mobilisierung. Im Zentrum des vorliegenden Bandes stehen die Karrieren von Vertretern nationaler Minderheiten im späten 19. Jahrhundert. Auf die Einführung, in der der Begriff der imperialen Biographie definiert wird, folgen elf Fallstudien auf Deutsch und sechs auf Englisch: neun aus dem zaristischen Russland, sechs aus der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Monarchie, und je eine aus dem Deutschen Kaiserreich und dem Osmanischen Reich. Der Sammelband besteht aus vier Teilen; so wird zunächst der Schwerpunkt auf Staatsbeamte gelegt, dann auf ihre Karriere in der Armee und in der Politik, auf Experten und Unternehmer und zuletzt auf Intellektuelle und Akademiker.