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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2023

Slavic Archaeology as “A Special Obligation”? Researching the Early Slavs in Communist Poland and East Germany

From the book Digging Politics

  • Anne Kluger

Abstract

In this chapter, I identify and compare the arguments used by archaeologists from Communist Poland and East Germany to legitimize their research on the early Slavs. I address both the conflicting prehistory of Slavic studies before 1945 (with its Polish-German antagonism) and the new conditions after the Second World War, when Poland and East Germany were seen as socialist brother states. The chapter focuses on two protagonists of prehistoric and early medieval archaeology: Witold Hensel from Poland, and Joachim Herrmann from East Germany. This microhistorical-comparative approach highlights the ideological frameworks of research, and the political positioning of Slavic archaeologists in East Germany and Poland in the Communist Period.

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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