When Tadeusz Kantor climbed into the plane to travel from Warsaw to Nuremberg on 29th April 1985 he was accompanied by the members of his famous theatre “Teatr Cricot 2“ who had already made a name fo...
The Bochum Art Museum (Kunstmuseum Bochum) probably contains the most comprehensive and important public collection of Polish 20th century art in Germany. In 2015 it comprised around 100 works from th...
When, in 1969, “Polskie Radio“ (Polish Radio) broadcast a jazz concert with Oscar Peterson on the piano and Ray Brown on the double bass a 14-year-old boy by the name of Vitold Rek was listening to hi...
There are two moments in history when German enthusiasm for Poland was particularly manifest and these have left their mark until the present day: 1831 and 1981.
Stanisław Mikołajczyk is one of the most famous Poles to have come from the Ruhr area. He was born on 18th July 1901 in Holsterhausen (today Herne) and later became the Minister President of the Polis...
Jan Łukasiewicz was one of the most influential logicians of his time: a philosopher, mathematician and one-time Polish Education Minister. In December 1938, in the midst of increasing political tensi...
During the Second World War around 2,800,000 Polish forced labourers in Germany wore the letter ‘P’ on their clothing. The slave workers were forced to toil in factories and on farms for the German “f...
An jenem Donnerstag, dem 17. März 1796, konnten nur wenige von den geladenen Gästen der Hochzeitsgesellschaft ahnen, dass die große Liebe der jungen Eheleute, nicht nur zwei Menschen, sondern auch gle...
“Boring!" was how the 11-year-old Julia described the arguments of her fellow Polish students when they were discussing the nationality of the major astronomer Nicolas Copernicus. “It makes no differe...
In 2011 the Polish Sejm secured the return from Germany of all the documents, writings and personal objects belonging to the writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. They had previously been lent to the eponym...
On 31st May 1919 a body was fished out of the Landwehrkanal in Berlin. It was quickly clear that it was the missing Rosa Luxemburg. It was also clear that she had been murdered: and that the motive wa...
The publication of Stanisław Przybyszewski’s “On the Psychology of the Individual” was a bombshell that unleashed a blazing fire for a modern version of the “Sturm und Drang” movement in Berlin. Stani...
At 5.45 on 1st September 2001 a red-and-white wardrobe made of cardboard was destroyed. This symbolic destruction of the wardrobe, that was witnessed by a handful of people, marked the opening of a sh...
In 1933 the Polish citizen Count Antoni Sobański described the “Heil Hitler!“ salute in the following terms: “It is indescribably comical to see two podgy old men with briefcases tucked under their ar...
In 1960 the town of Bochum opened the Kunstmuseum Bochum (as it is now known), in order to be a “foster town” for the pictorial arts alongside its support for music and drama. The town council had de...
Pola Negri was already a star in Poland – the femme fatale of the screen – when she arrived in Berlin to be greeted by hordes of enthusiastic fans. After a series of brilliant theatre performances and...
The history of Polish citizens in Germany is intimately linked with the history of their pastoral care. Most Polish-speaking immigrants to Germany were members of the Catholic Church. In terms of numb...
