Active Borders in Europe: Identity and Collective Memory in the Cross-Border Space PDF
Preview Active Borders in Europe: Identity and Collective Memory in the Cross-Border Space
Contributions to Political Science Karel B. Müller Editor Active Borders in Europe Identity and Collective Memory in the Cross-Border Space Contributions to Political Science The series Contributions to Political Science contains publications in all areas of polit- ical science, such as public policy and administration, political economy, compar- ative politics, European politics and European integration, electoral systems and voting behavior, international relations and others. Publications are primarily mono- graphs and multiple author works containing new research results, but conference and congress reports are also considered. The series covers both theoretical and empirical aspects and is addressed to researchers and policy makers. All titles in this series are peer-reviewed. This book series is indexed in Scopus. Karel B. Müller Editor Active Borders in Europe Identity and Collective Memory in the Cross-Border Space Editor Karel B. Müller CEVRO Institute Prague, Czech Republic ISSN 2198-7289 ISSN 2198-7297 (electronic) Contributions to Political Science ISBN 978-3-031-23772-0 ISBN 978-3-031-23773-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23773-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Prologue: Identities—Memories—Languages—Borders There is perhaps somewhat of a dilemma when it comes to identity, which we have been aware of from the very beginning. I remember it was discussed at one of the first meetings of the Euroregion Presidium, and Jurek Nalichowski, then governor, said a little jokingly in that company of three: “I am waiting for the birth of Euro- regional patriotism.” He said: “For example, me, as a sports fan, I would be happier if, for example, the footballers from Budyszyn [Bautzen] won than if it was someone else from Warsaw or Lublin, because it is our Euroregion.” That was a bit of a joke, but that way of thinking has been and continues to be here. But we have been aware from the beginning that there are still three nations, three legal orders, three histories, three mentalities, three different senses of humour, not to mention linguistic differences, so it is virtually impossible to patch it together into a single whole. We can only create the climate and the conditions to make it work, and I think we can say that we are succeeding in doing so. But whether it will be possible to move on to some higher level—I don’t think so. And I don’t think that there is any need for that. I consider myself to be a bit of a right-wing patriot, and I respect, for example, Polish traditions, Polish history, and so on. But there is no contradiction here. It is true, of course, that for our Polish Warsaw, what happens there on the periphery, on the border, is not important for them. Jacek Jakubiec Long-time director of the Polish part of the Nisa Euroregion June 2018 It always surprises me that the generation that has lived through it, that they can really live well with it. That they’ve dealt with it, they’ve gotten over it. Their kids, they swear about how their father was kicked out of somewhere back then, how he was treated there... These people are often more radical than those personally affected. We have these regular meetings here... And I’m always very surprised at how those who meet here can deal with it all. They’re sad, but they have no regrets. I’d say they’re kind of saying to themselves: The Germans started the war, so they blame themselves, not literally themselves, but a kind of primary (collective) blame. And then I often hear them say: You younger people, don’t ever allow this to happen v vi Prologue:Identities—Memories—Languages—Borders again. Cherish peace and good relations. We’ve seen those bad things that have happened, and it just cannot be fixed entirely. And you can never rectify an evil with further evil. Mayor of a town in the Saxon borderland July 2019 For example, there are all these different committees, monitoring committees, inter- governmental commissions, I don’t even take my headphones anymore because they get in the way. How did this happen? When there is a trilateral meeting, Polish- Czech-German, the chairman must react immediately. And sometimes it is the case that the interpretation runs from German into Czech and then only after from Czech into Polish. Two or three minutes—the reaction is no longer adequate to the situation. So, I set my radar so that I can react if necessary. And it just so happens that I at least understand. Andrej Jankowski Director of the Polish part of the Nisa Euroregion July 2018 It was a dad at my daughter’s kindergarten in Zittau in 1997 who was imbued with the idea of allowing his children to grow up bilingual. He got in touch with a kindergarten in neighbouring Hrádek nad Nisou. And from then on, we brought our children to Hrádek once a week. In the beginning, we met with smiles or rejections from parents and teachers. Today, the bilingual exchange of children from both facilities is normal and part of the regular kindergarten program. Regina Gellrich Head of the Saxon State Office for Early Childhood Education in Neighbouring Languages in Görlitz (Gellrich 2009) There was a family living in Hartava, and their father wanted their daughter to go to a Czech school so she could learn Czech. We accepted her, it was no problem, although we didn’t get money for her from the state, but we didn’t mind. It was so interesting that she was learning here. She didn’t know much Czech, but she was smart, so she integrated within a short time. But then the German authorities came and said that she was breaking the law by going to a Czech school and not educating herself in Germany. Therefore, they were going to take her out of their custody. Her dad took his sleeping bag and went to the Ministry of Education in Dresden, and he said he was going to strike at the Ministry until they gave him permission. And they finally gave him permission. The girl graduated and had a Czech school. They didn’t really care what kind of school she was going to have, they just wanted to have somebody who knew the Czech language ... I remember we had a Czech teacher teaching German here, and they convinced her to come to their house and teach them Czech. The parents wanted to learn Czech too. The border didn’t really exist Prologue:Identities—Memories—Languages—Borders vii for them, because they wanted to belong to this environment here and they didn’t care if they spoke Czech or German. They didn’t know that much Czech, so they wanted to learn it. Jaroslav Polácˇek Headmaster of Lidická Primary School in Hrádek nad Nisou June 2018 Taking on the task of becoming mayor of a small municipality today is a lottery. In terms of personal reputation, property, family. This is particularly evident in the territory of the former Sudetenland. There has been such a shift of population, both national and local, that several more generations need to grow up before the inhabitants feel truly at home here. Citizen of a Czech borderland town April 2020 Czechs and Poles have different competences and different qualities than Germans. I always like it when all three get together, learn from each other, and do certain things together in a completely different way than when one meets just Germans or just Czechs... by encountering other cultures, we are becoming more tolerant and more mindful... I would like to have a vision that it will fuse again and grow together like before the First World War, as I know from history books. I wish there was even more permeability. Realistically, I can see that borders may be built again, and that would be a great shame for this region. I really like when I am shopping in Görlitz and I hear Polish and Czech around me, or when here in Zittau I can talk to Czechs when shopping. And if we lose that, we lose a lot of our humanity. Ute Wunderlich Chairwoman of Schkola, the cross-border school association May 2019 Contents Introduction: Euroregions, Active Borders, and Europeanization ...... 1 KarelB.Müller Active Borders and the Europeanization of the Public Sphere: How the Same Can Be Different and Vice Versa ...................... 11 KarelB.Müller Borders and Identity. The Place Where Europe Lives! ................. 33 Ludeˇk Fráneˇ, Daniel Kný, and Karel B. Müller Borders and Language. Minor Misunderstandings, Big Troubles, and the Fruits of Multilingualism .................................... 59 KarelB.Müllerand Ludeˇk Fráneˇ Borders and Memory. From Historical Roots to Dialogical-Like Routes ............................................................ 101 Kamil Fleissner and Karel B. Müller Conclusion or I Ja Za Toba˛ Polak ................................... 131 KarelB.Müller Primary Sources .................................................. 141 Secondary Sources ................................................. 145 ix Introduction: Euroregions, Active Borders, and Europeanization Karel B. Müller Under the pressure of current challenges such as immigration, climate change, and epidemiological threats, Europeans more than ever need to reflect and critically assess the issue of borders and the transformation thereof. This relates to both internal borders between member states within Schengen, a symbol of freedom and pros- perity, and the EU’s external borders, a symbol of unity and security. Both levels are important since the EU derives its legitimacy both from the principle of a single legal community and from the principle of the shared sovereignty of individual member states. The issue of Schengen’s internal borders, therefore, remains a key element in shaping European politics as well as European civil society. However, we must not forget that the transformation of Schengen’s internal borders remains intrinsically linked to the protection of external borders and the degree of permeability thereof (De Genova, 2017; Follis, 2017a, 2017b; Jones, 2017; Skleparis, 2018). Contemporary scholarly discourse is infused with general attempts to understand borders transformations in a dynamic transnational environment.1 Border studies have so far paid considerable attention to questions of the securitization of borders, but considerably less attention has been paid to questions of the de-securitization of borders and to understanding how various forms of civic participation and engage- ment are treated and managed in cross-border spaces (Hataley & Leuprecht, 2018). The present publication tries to fill this gap. The theoretical framework for our research was provided by the concept of active borders, which was born during the cooperation with the Saxon-Czech Higher Educa- tion Initiative, at whose meetings and conferences we were welcomed guests. The concept of active borders was first introduced in March 2011 in Oberwiesenthal at the 1 See, e.g., Anderson et al. (2003), Borland et al. (2002), Paasi et al. (2018), Bufon et al. (2014), and Perkmann (2003). B K. B. Müller ( ) CEVRO Institute, Jungmannova 17, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1 K. B. Müller (ed.), Active Borders in Europe, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23773-7_1
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