Re-evaluating the historical burden and the heritage of injustice
The signing of the “Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland on the confirmation of the frontier between them” on 14 November 1990 in Warsaw and its ratification in Germany and Poland brought to an effective end in international law a political and territorial dispute that had encumbered relations between Germans and Poles for 45 years. In the overall complex of German-Polish relations since the end of the Second World War, the controversy surrounding the Oder-Neiße line as the German-Polish frontier had been the subject of bitter political, legal, moral and historical debate. Germany’s eastern and Poland’s western border, established in 1945, was the outcome of an arbitrary decision. It made a clean break with over 800 years of German presence in the territories east of the Oder and Neiße, and yet it did not come entirely out of the blue. Count James von Moltke and other Germans, anticipating the end of National Socialist rule without illusions, foresaw the pressing back of the German people and their culture as the fatal outcome of a policy that began with Hitler’s seizure of power, with the support of a majority of the German population, and found its self-destructive end in the Nazi policy of annihilation in eastern and east-central Europe, in the fundamental negation of European civilisation. Polish historians and politicians, in thrall to the “idea of the Polish West” (mys’l zachodnia), had dreamed of a “return of ancient Polish territories to the mother country” and of a Polish western frontier on the Oder and Lausitz Neiße for decades – long before Hitler. Yet it was neither Germans nor Poles who decided on the new German-Polish border – the most recently established of all Germany’s external frontiers. It was the victorious powers in the Second World War, primarily the Soviet Union, that determined its course. The border was decided in Yalta and Potsdam not by claims of historical legitimacy but by the defeat of Germany and power politics.

To really understand the unprecedented overcoming of a historical burden and the reconciliation achieved by Germans and Poles after 1945, reference must also be made to the diabolical game played by Stalin in his nationalities policy. For him, the drawing of borders served as an instrument of power in confining the conflicts between nationalities that he himself produced or spurred on. Thus, alongside consolidation of the new western border of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s objective in pursuing his Poland policy was to sustain and cement German-Polish antagonism forever, to chain Poland to the Soviet Union as the sole guarantor of Poland’s territorial integrity vis-à-vis anticipated German advocacy of border revision and to lend legitimacy to the unpopular Polish Communists in their homeland as fulfilling the Piast idea of the state (territorial orientation of Poland towards the West, modelled on territorial expansion during the Piast Dynasty at the turn of the last millennium). As years went by, the Poles responded with increasing justification to the claims of homeland rights made by expelled Germans, by referring to the homeland rights of Poles born since 1945 in Germany’s former eastern provinces, Poles whose families in turn had been expelled from their old homes in the eastern territories lost to the Soviet Union.

In the 1950s and 1960s there seemed to be virtually no movement on the border issue between Germans in West Germany and Poles, until in various circles in society increasingly loud demands emerged to leave the plane of international law, to abandon the hopeless entanglement in historical accounts and scores and to assess the shift in the frontier after the Second World War in the broader context of the moral and historical dimensions of the German-Polish relationship, and of German responsibility and guilt for the fate of Poland in the Second World War, and to explain 1945 by reference to 1933. In the 1970 “Warsaw Treaty”, the Federal Republic of Germany recognised the Oder-Neiße line as the western border of Poland.

To the complete surprise of Germans and Poles, the expression “Oder-Neiße line” returned to bother international law one last time when the “People’s Spring” of 1989 in east-central Europe ended the division of the continent and of Germany. The peace settlement that had been vaguely sought for Germany in the Potsdam Protocol and that almost no one in Europe had still believed in became the top item on the agenda of European diplomacy in 1990. The “2 plus 4” agreement on the establishment of German unity called upon first the two German states and then the united Germany to conclude a border treaty with Poland that gave final confirmation in international law of the existing German- Polish frontier on the Oder and Lausitz Neiße. This is what happened in the Treaty of 14 November 1990, which in its close political connection with the Treaty of 17 June 1991 on Good Neighbourly Relations and Friendly Cooperation ascribes a wholly new quality to the German- Polish border.

1990: The Oder-Neiße border a true “frontier of peace” for the first time
Following the unification of Germany and the establishment of human and civil rights and democratic freedoms in all of Germany and in Poland, the frontier on the Oder and Lausitz Neiße is meant no longer to separate the peoples but rather to link Germans and Poles. The politicians and relevant social groups on both sides are eager to give the German-Polish border the same character of openness that the internal borders of the European Community have acquired in the course of recent decades.

Recognition of the Oder-Neiße border as a catalyst for new approaches in the quest for historical truth
Three socio-cultural phenomena in German- Polish relations in the 1990s are directly linked to the re-evaluation of the Oder-Neiße border that has occurred since 1990.
There is no longer any German-Polish minority problem, at least not in the form that had poisoned German-Polish relations since the 19th century and remained a latent presence until final recognition of the border. It is impossible to overestimate the value of this advance, this relief to the relations between the two peoples. The German-Polish Good Neighbourhood Treaty even conferred upon the German minority in Poland – and Polish-speakers in Germany – the function of a “natural bridge” between Germans and Poles. Hence, the minority is not merely defined as a group that is entitled to respect, a group that enriches Polish society. It also takes on a positive instrumental role in bilateral relations.

One feature of German-Polish relations in the 1990s, following the great turning point and recognition of the border, was the joint occupation with a topic that had hitherto been politically taboo in Poland: the flight and expulsion of Germans from the areas they had settled beyond the Oder and Neiße. For decades, a morally, psychologically and politically motivated hesitancy to concern themselves seriously with the issues of “flight and expulsion” had been apparent among German historians and social scientists. Not without reason, they feared being misunderstood. There was an obvious potential for political exploitation of these topics in support of territorial claims. The whole complex of questions invited misuse in current political affairs, in attempts to weigh German crimes and systematic mass murder prior to 1945 against the injustices and crimes inflicted on Germans after 1945. The generational transition at the universities and the historical paradigm change now make it easier to study the subject with less inhibition. Those who are now bringing the subject of the flight and expulsion of the Germans out into the open are a young generation of Polish scholars and journalists. At the same time, this creates a chance that the palpable embarrassment that has been felt to date in Germany about tackling feelings relating to what has been lost and talking about these losses can decline, without a “nation of perpetrators” redefining itself as a “nation of victims”.

A further phenomenon resulting from the recognition of the Oder-Neiße border as a truly peaceful and passable border is the intensifying Polish encounter with the German cultural heritage in the western and northern voivodeships of Poland since the beginning of the 1990s – the growing feeling among the population living in these parts that they have a German cultural heritage to preserve, thus consciously giving the lie to the thesis of a return to ancient Polish territories. A mixed balance sheet for developments since 1990 However, in spite of many changes for the better, the common German–Polish “Two Rivers Balance Sheet” since 1990 shows mixed results on both material and mental planes: the border is no longer a point of dispute, but nor has a new development region (an Oder River “Silicon Valley”) come into being along the Oder and Neiße – neither as a vision nor as an idea with any broad social support. Crucial enabling conditions were lacking for such a development.

It became evident almost overnight that though the issue of the border was solved, the Oder-Neiße line was almost totally lacking in positive connotations, either in Poland or in Germany. Neither Poles nor Germans associate anything with the Oder – an unremembered river of destiny. Neither the Germans nor the Poles see the Oder as “their” river, yet nor do they associate it with the neighbouring country. The Vistula, the Bug, the Narew: these are Polish rivers; the Rhine, the Mosel, the Elbe: these are German rivers – but the Oder? One almost feels sorry for the Oder – it is not part of German life, nor yet part of Polish life – even with Opole (Oppeln), Wroclaw (Breslau) and Szczecin (Stettin) as Polish cities on the Oder – albeit only for the past 57 years.
Thus, a mixed balance sheet for the period might look something like this:
On the positive side we can enumerate a range of basic conditions that create a structure conducive to German–Polish cooperation in the border area:

• a broad consensus in favour of the democratic parliamentary system on both sides of the border;
• an identity of interests at governmental level concerning the incorporation of Poland into Western alliance structures;
• an identity of interests at governmental level concerning an extension of trade relations to the advantage of both countries;
• a contractual regulation of long-term cooperation;
• the establishment of a broad institutional framework for lasting cross-border cooperation (in part supported by the European Union’s INTERREG and Phare Cross-Border Cooperation Programmes);
• the German–Polish Government Commission for regional and cross-border cooperation, including committees of experts;
• the German–Polish Spatial Planning Commission;
• the Europa University “Viadrina” (1991).

However, it is striking that – apart from the democratic consensus – what are concerned here are predominantly conditions that fundamentally have to be regarded as the outcome of politics “from above” (though having said that, the active role played by a fair number of border municipalities, particularly in initiating several “Euroregions” must certainly be acknowledged).

The first regional cooperation projects in the area of nature and environment protection and infrastructure policy were announced even before the signing of the Good Neighbourhood Treaty. A characteristic feature of early German–Polish contacts was that they occurred between individual towns and municipalities and predated agreements between the relevant voivodeships and federal states. The local authorities in all border towns inaugurated their cooperation even before the signing of the treaties.
In the initial contacts between Polish and German local authorities, the will to cooperate generally found expression in such areas as culture and education, information exchange, partnerships in various social and professional domains, local economy, agriculture, housing construction and environmental protection.

The Euroregions play an important role in the border region. The idea of founding these regions was not initially welcomed by all leading politicians in Poland. Quite the contrary: it was feared that the partners on the German side, being stronger, would pose a threat to Polish interests. For Poland, the Euroregions were envisaged as a type of bridge in the process of European integration. Four Euroregions arose on the German- Polish border, two of them being Polish-German (Spree-Neiße-Bober and Pro Europa Viadrina), one Polish-German-Czech (Neiße) and one Polish-German-Swedish (Pommerania). Thus, the entire German-Polish border region from the Baltic to the Czech border is incorporated in Euroregions.

The new situation on the German–Polish border revealed how the border infrastructure had been neglected for 45 years. After 1945 none of the bridges over the Oder and Neiße that had been destroyed in the war had been rebuilt; all that existed were a few road and rail border crossing points for passenger and goods traffic. After the introduction of visa-free travel for Poles and Germans (April 1991), the existing border crossing points were constantly overburdened, and as a result this problem was a recurrent topic even in the earliest bilateral talks, at both government and local level. In 2001, there were 24 road, 8 rail and 5 river border crossing points on the German–Polish frontier. Compared to before this was certainly significant progress, but at least a dozen more new border crossing points would be needed.

On closer examination, it is impossible not to see the shortcomings of present German – Polish cooperation. A deficit analysis, covering the border zones on both sides, will specify four principal areas of deficiency, two of which are apparent in the area of settlement and physical structure and two in the social and cultural domain:

• sparse settlement;
• deficits in the cross-border infrastructure;
• lack of mutual knowledge and interest;
• absence of a “shared conception of history on the two sides of the border”.

It would be easy to add to this list of shortcomings. In the public consciousness, moreover, the negative phenomena evidently make more of a mark than the changes for the better. And to be sure, negative phenomena have certainly cropped up in the German-Polish border zone since 1989, phenomena that previously barely existed or at least occurred to a lesser extent. For numerous types of crime originating in Poland, successor states to the Soviet Union and south-eastern Europe, the German-Polish frontier was the gate of entry to the West; smuggling of a variety of goods flourished as never before. Assaults on drivers of cars and lorries are more frequent here, prostitution has become a veritable plague. A new form of crime is the smuggling of asylum seekers from third countries across the Oder and Neiße into Germany. These criminal occurrences in the border region were – and no doubt are – part of the price we pay for open borders and freedom in Central Europe.

So it remains an enormous task for Germans and Poles to make the Oder-Neiße frontier – now no more than a harmless Schengen border – and the border region on either side of the Oder and Neiße mentally, physically and materially fit to face the challenge that the enlargement of the European Union will undoubtedly entail for the cross-border region. It may no longer be political and emotional dynamite but for both sides it remains for now a problem zone. Unemployment is on the rise on both sides, and on the German side the process of depopulation has still not been halted. Görlitz, restored as a town of stunning beauty, has shrunk in the past few years from 90 000 to 65 000 inhabitants. The German- Polish border region is still awaiting its opportunity. And the arrival of this opportunity will depend on whether policy in Germany and Poland devises and implements common programmes for the region in the coming years.

It is, perhaps, a bitter yet hopeful irony of history that German politicians and entrepreneurs now increasingly see it as their business to persuade their fellow countrymen that the one great chance of development for the border region lies in Poles crossing the Oder and Neiße and, by acting long-term – or indeed permanently – as customers, investors, entrepreneurs, individuals and members of society on the German side of the river, contributing to the revival of a region long settled and developed by man, but now threatened by depopulation. The “flight from the east” has now, in a process that has a certain historical continuity, spread to areas that were earlier part of the German heartland. Following the failure of his advertising campaign in Germany, the head of the Internal Medicine Department at the completely modernised Sankt Carolus Hospital in Görlitz hopes to be able to recruit Polish or Czech doctors to fill the vacant position of senior consultant and the three assistant physician vacancies. After advertising in Polish and Czech newspapers, a stack of applications a hand high is already lying on his desk.
Will the future motto of the Oder-Neiße region have to be an adaptation of the wellknown aphorism of Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (ex oriente lux, ex occidente luxus):
Ex oriente lux et luxus?