Mehrzahl Moderne IV – Warsaw 1905: Making history and leading the way into the modern age
New lecture series: “Mehrzahl Moderne. An Introduction to the Intertwined Histories of Central and Eastern Europe”
Fourth event: lecture titled. „Warsaw 1905: Making history and leading the way into the modern age”
Dr. Clara Frysztacka followed by a commentary from Dr Johannes Bent (Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder).
04 JUNE, 18.00 | Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin
The event will be held in German.
Progress and revolution are regarded as central categories of the modern sense of time. Whilst the idea of progress conceives of history as an overwhelming force of development, revolution simultaneously opens up the notion that people can actively shape historical processes. During the lecture, Dr Clara Frysztacka will analyse how these two closely intertwined concepts – the overwhelming power of history and its malleability – shaped perceptions of the present during the 1905 Revolution in Warsaw.
The focus is on the Warsaw mass press, which interpreted the demonstrations, strikes and repressions of 1905 within the tension between progress and revolution. In this way, it sought to define Warsaw’s place within Western modernity and to understand the Polish capital under Tsarist rule as part of a changing European present.
Dr Clara M. Frysztacka is a historian. Her research focuses in particular on the history of historical theory and conceptions of modernity, post- and decolonial history of Eastern Europe, social and political change during the long 1970s, and ideas of Europe and processes of Europeanisation in the 19th and 20th centuries. She was a research assistant at the Chair of European Contemporary History at the University of Siegen (2012–2015) and at the European University Viadrina. Since July 2023, she has been working as a contemporary history officer at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. She is also co-editor of the Copernico portal for history and cultural heritage in Eastern Europe.
Lecture series “Mehrzahl moderne: An Introduction to the Intertwined Histories of Central and Eastern Europe”
The Pilecki Institute Berlin and the Public History department at the FernUniversität in Hagen are jointly exploring how the recent histories of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus can be narrated as part of European history. How can the historical experiences of these societies be recounted without perpetuating historical notions of asymmetry, backwardness and superiority? One answer to this question is to understand modernity as a plurality of diverse, interwoven processes. An awareness of the region’s polyphony, complexity and interdependence enables us to sharpen our focus on the so-called periphery. By placing its past at the centre, we remind ourselves that the future of Europe is being decided today in Ukraine.
Curators of the Mehrzahl Moderne series are Prof. Felix Ackermann and Dr. Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk.
