German-Polish tandem seminar “The Other”: Impressions of Others in history, in the media and in everyday life

Poznan, April 24-27 / Munich, June 3-7, 2008

The inaugural event took place in Poznan. Four mixed groups of German and Polish students developed research questions and then embarked on their respective research.

As neighbouring countries, Germany and Poland share a long history. Widely diverse experiences of migration, shifting boundaries and wars have engrained themselves on the collective memories of each respective nation; some stories are passed down through families, others can be found as landmarks of history in books and memorial sites. Despite increased media coverage, our understanding of Polish reality is generally restricted to what is presented to us in German media. The tandem seminar “The Other”, headed by Dr. Sanna Schondelmayer (European Ethnology, LMU) and Dr. Izabella Main (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) gave German and Polish students the opportunity to see the perspective from the respective other side. During the inaugural event in Poznan, which took place from April 24 to 27, 2008, four mixed German/Polish groups developed their own research questions as fields of study. Between April 27 and June 3, the teams conducted ethnographic and historical surveys in Poznan and Munich. The interviews were then analyzed, together with texts from archives and internet research, and the results compared and contrasted in highly successful presentations in Munich from June 3 to 7.