the intelligence services systems of the People’s Republic of Poland and the German Democratic Republic did not develop a significant level of mutual cooperation in 1989, mainly due to the insurmountable political differences. The article discusses the problems of East German intelligence measures taken in the area of, broadly understood, ‘peaceful revolution’ in Poland. It was possible to retrace these problems through the research conducted at the Poland’s National Remembrance Institute [IPN] and the German Stasi Records Agency [BStU]. Comparative analysis of the material from both sources has made it possible to present all the forms of what was referred to as ‘cooperation’ as well as the antagonisms occurring between the security services in both countries.

Approach to the heritage of communism have been one of the most important subjects of public debate in Poland. Initially a field of conflict between post-communist leftist and post- ‘Solidarity’ parties, these controversies eventually turned into a conflict between the ‘liberals’ and the ‘conservatives’ from the two main post-‘Solidarity’ political parties – namely, the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) and Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość). The article reconstructs the most important political debates on de-communisation and ‘vetting’. The other issue highlighted by the author is the heated debates between historians on contemporary history. Subjects such as various forms of resistance against the communist rule, including the post-war armed Underground, along with the question of interpreting documents of the former secret police remain a field of controversies. Recent years have seen the opening of new debates related to the politics of memory and the questions of the role of museums and historical exhibitions in Poland.

The Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland was brought to life in March 1945 as a central institution entitled to conduct investigations and collect evidences of war crimes committed during the German occupation of Poland (1939-45). In 1949, the Commission was renamed as the Main Commission for the Investigation of Hitlerite Crimes in Poland, in order to mark the propagandist division between the ‘progressive’ and ‘antifascist’ East Germany and the ‘revisionist’ West Germany; yet, its activities were at the same time put on halt. In 1958, West German authorities created the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, based in Ludwigsburg. The first, semi-official, contacts between these two institutions were inaugurated in 1960, despite the lack of official diplomatic relations between Warsaw and Bonn at that time. The venue of the contact was the Polish Military Mission in West Berlin, where the prosecutors from Ludwigsburg could get acquainted with documents from the Commission’s archive.

The article focuses, with a comparative perspective, on the economic reforms that were implemented in Germany during and after the unification in 1990. The fact is stressed that after the collapse of communism, most politicians and economists considered neoliberal reforms based on deregulation, liberalization and privatization as the only viable model. Although the reforms in East Gemany were not labelled as such, they amounted to a „shock therapy“, much like in neighboring Poland. The result of the radical and hasty liberalization and privatization, in combination with the currency union of Juli 1990, was the closure of many factories and mass unemployment. The government tried to compensate the losers of the transformation with welfare payments, but that resulted in a systemic crisis of united Germany, leading eventually to a second round of neoliberal reforms under the center-left coalition government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 2001 to 2005. The widening social gaps and the fear of social dislocation eventually contributed to the rise of right-wing populist parties in Germany.

The list of publications by Professor Jerzy W. Borejsza in 1958-2018, with about 350 entries, over a dozen of books among them, shows two main areas of interest. The first is the history of Polish political emigres, European emancipation movements and 19th- Century socialism. The phrase coined by Borejsza – “The Beautiful 19th Century” – which became known in Polish historiography, – illustrates his fascination with the history of this period. He was especially interested with histories of Polish left-wing movements, the insurgents, emigres and deportees, who had fought for “The Polish Cause”. He wrote extensively about them, publishing initial studies and complete biographies. In the 1970s, apart from continuing various topics from 19th Century, he started to study the Italian Fascism, in time expanding his interest to Fascist movements and authoritarian regimes of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, National Socialism in Germany and Stalinism in the Soviet Union. He became the pioneer of reflection ranging beyond the genocidal policies and moral nihilism of the Third Reich, basing on ever-perfected definitions of Fascism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Arguably the most original contribution of Jerzy W. Borejsza to the scholarship of the “Century of Destruction” was identifying and describing the anti-Slavic views of Adolf Hitler.

Reflection on the process of defining and redefining the notion of Polishness after 1918, and thus, an attempt to answer the questions: ‘What is Polishness?’; ‘Is it possible to talk about its single, monolithic, well-defined form in relation to a specific point in history as well as at present?’ – were the main topics of an international conference organised by the Centre for Historical Research on 21st–22nd June 2018 and held at the glamourous Louise-Schroeder-Saal of the Rotes Rathaus (Red Town Hall) in Berlin. Held on the occasion of the centenary of Poland’s regained independence, the event was simultaneously a festive farewell to Professor Robert Traba, the founder and Director of the Berlin-based Centre for Historical Research, Polish Academy of Sciences. The attendees included researchers from Poland as well as scholars from Germany and France, representing various fields of science: history, literature, sociology, political science, law, Slavic studies, Polish studies, and art history. A total of twenty-seven papers and comments, in Polish and/or German, were submitted. The conference ended with a panel discussion (lasting over two hours) on ‘Individual identities in the face of collective ideas of Polishness’ (now available on the CHR website: http://www.cbh.pan.pl/de/fotobericht-und-film-zur-konferenz-derunvollendete-krieg).

The article tackles the question of the decline and revival of statehoods in Europe, in a broad historical context. This analysis is based on the history of political systems, philosophy and politics of memory across Europe, rather than on the politological concept of ‘failed states’. The phenomenon of consecutive diminishment and rebirth of states remains a constant feature of European politics and history, beginning with the collapse of the Roman Empire, through to the Partition of Poland in the eighteenth century (as an exemplary event), to the Soviet Union, and the civil war in former Yugoslavia. Kąkolewski points out the parallel phenomena of integrative and disintegrative processes taking place after many decades and having a potential of shaking state structures that initially seemed to be solidly integrated – as, for example, in Scotland or Catalonia. The European Union is the most recent example of this pattern: founded upon voluntary limitation of its Member States’ sovereignties, its has encountered disintegrative nationalist movements occurring in many parts of Europe.

The article discusses the temporary exhibition ‘Krieg. Macht. Sinn. Krieg und Gewalt in der europäischen Erinnerung’ that was inaugurated at the Ruhr Museum in Essen on 11th November 2018, as part of the Horizon–2020 UNREST (Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe) project. In doing this, it succinctly engages with the theoretical framework underlying the concept of the exhibition, the so-called ‘agonistic memory’. Furthermore, addressed are some of the display selections made by the curators, which are explained by resorting to the aforementioned theoretical framework.