Session Abstract

Minorities and Migrants: Studies in Central European Urban Dynamics

 For almost all of their history, Central European cities were multi-ethnic and multi-cultural environments par excellence. No Workshop exploring this history can forego some investigation of inter-ethnic relations and multi-cultural life in these compacted spaces. These four papers explore the urban dynamics of German, Polish, Jewish, and “guest worker” minorities in several Central European cities. Howard Louthan re-positions the quintessentially Polish city of Cracow as a multi-ethnic polity with a large and influential German population in the 16^th century. The city’s kaleidoscopic ethnic cum religious diversity, which he sees as a microcosm of Europe, challenges established perceptions of the Polish capital and German-Polish relations.  The two papers by Elizabeth Drummond and Kristin Poling on nineteenth century Posen/Poznan investigate ethnic relations in an urban setting with hotly contested claims of primacy. As intimate portraits of the city’s space and inhabitants, both papers add significantly to our knowledge of the multi-cultural lived experience.  More importantly, they differentiate between that local life and the larger slogans, campaigns, and movements about “Germandom,” “Polishness,” and “Jewishness.” The authors’ critical juxtaposition of loud national discourses with real existing urban communities highlights the gap between pronouncement and practice that was typical of this border region.   Michael Spicka explores a converse relationship, minority communities of guest workers in the cities of West Germany.  He calls attention to the immediate importance of local/urban policies in shaping the lives of immigrants.  This maintains the session’s central stand of coherence: exploring the (dis)similarities between local practices in specific urban communities and larger policies that sought to manage ethnic interactions on a national scale with a national agenda. All four papers inquire about the extent to which urban policies and practices (in Cracow, Poznan, and Frankfurt) conformed to perceptions of minorities and migrants that were framed by kings and parliaments. The session also invites comparison between urban experiences of early modern pluri-confessional religious cohabitation and modern multi-ethnic life. As the final session of the Workshop we are asking the audience to comment, to allow more time for discussion of both this session and the entire Workshop. The audience should extend to those interested in urban history, ethnicity, religion, and Central European politics.