Nationalism on the Margins - Brendan Karch

diverging memories and their hardening into historical narrative have greatly enriched our
understanding of how Upper Silesia’s historiography became so rigidly divided. Through the
study of lieux de mémoire serving as sites of rapprochement, this literature also resulted in a
welcome détente in conflicts over historical memory in the region. 11 Yet this literature is
also prone to a sort of bilateral national accommodation, whereby each side respects the
other side’s national narrative, thus reinforcing the logic of a nationalist-centered approach.
A more provocative historiography has unearthed the historical origins of Upper Silesian
identity in the century before 1945. 12 In reclaiming Upper Silesian identity as a topic of
inquiry, historians have also opened up questions about the role of regional movements in
resisting the seemingly universal nationalization of modern European societies. Two recent
works, by James Bjork and Guido Hitze, focus on the specific role of Catholicism in forging
an enduring Upper Silesian regional loyalty. 13 Bjork in particular, by tracing the robustness
of Catholic society and politics in countering the regional rise of Polish nationalism before
World War I, has argued eloquently for the national indifference of Upper Silesians. My
work seeks to continue in this tradition by tracing the intersection of indifference and
alternative identities among Upper Silesians in the period from 1848-1945. Rather than
address any one marker of identity, I examine the multiplying political and social loyalties
11 Czapliński et al., Schlesische Erinnerungsorte. See also Kai Struve, ed., Oberschlesien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg:
Studien zu einem nationalen Konflikt und seine Erinnerung (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2003), particularly the
contributions of Masnyk, Nordblom, Suchoński and Büsching.
12 Kai Struve and Philipp Ther, eds., Die Grenzen der Nationen: Identitätenwandel in Oberschlesien in der Neuzeit
(Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2002), Tomasz Kamusella, Silesia and Central European <strong>Nationalism</strong>s: The Emergence of
National and Ethnic Groups in Silesia, 1848-1918 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2007), Philipp Ther,
"Die einheimische Bevölkerung des Oppelner Schlesiens nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Die Entstehung einer
deutschen Minderheit," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000).
13 James E. Bjork, Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), Guido Hitze, Carl Ulitzka (1873-1953), oder, Oberschlesien zwischen
den Weltkriegen (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002).
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