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Masuria
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Background article
Agata, Dorota, Iwona, Jolanta
"What luck that we had this kindergarten!" All four say. That was in the early 1970s. Agata and Jolanta now live in Germany, Dorota and Iwona have stayed in Masuria. Lehndorff Castle, the "Pałac", was a place they all felt happy. In those stately rooms they had a feeling of security and comfort, they played among the old oaks, went swimming in the lake. It was a microcosm away from the adult world with its worries and traumas.
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Background article
Antje Vollmer
She is known as a Green Party politician and for her longstanding role as Vice President of the German Bundestag. After retiring in 2005, she became a freelance author. Her first book project “Doppelleben” (Double Life) tells the story of Heinrich von Lehndorff, one of the conspirators of the events of 20 July 1944 , and his wife Gottliebe. It is a moving biography of two young aristocrats that tells of their daring and their love.
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Biography
Bettina Bouresh
"I’m a typical post-war child," says Bettina Bouresh. Born in 1950, she grew up burdened with German guilt and the traumas of her mother's family, who had lived in Allenstein until 1945. She herself felt homeless for a long time. Until one day she found her place: in Masuria. Here she found a home – and in Steinort Palace her life’s work. Today she is vice-chairwoman of the Lehndorff Society.
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Cultural office
Cultural Office for Pomerania and East Brandenburg
Rivers run through the old maps like veins. For Pomerania and East Brandenburg, the Oder is the main artery. Anyone who is curious about the past and present of these historically developed regions (which lie either side of the Oder) will discover a wide range of services and resources provided...
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Biography
Eva Anna Therese Puschke
As far back as the 19th century, the Puschke family worked as teachers in Steinort and in the neighboring church village of Rosengarten. They played an important role in village life and had close ties to the noble Lehndorff family. The last teacher of the dynasty was Eva Puschke, a "lay teacher" in Rosengarten from 1940 to 1944. After the Germans were expelled, she lived in Hamburg. She left behind a suitcase full of family documents.
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Editing project
Gedichte und Briefe aus der Verbannung (“Poems and Letters from Exile”)
In this edition project, all the poems Wolf von Aichelburg wrote in exile will be collected, along with precise details of how they were recorded and passed down, and accompanied, where appropriate, by the author's own statements or other contextualizing information.
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Research project
Interethnische Beziehungen im regionalen Kontext (“Interethnic Relations in a Regional Context”)
Over the centuries, Romanians, Hungarians and Germans have shaped the history and culture of Transylvania. Dr. Enikő Dácz at the Institute for German Culture and History in South-eastern Europe (IKGS) is researching how this interethnic coexistence was portrayed in the press in the early 20th...
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Research project
Literarische Stätten in Südosteuropa (“Literary Sites in Southeast Europe”)
Kronstadt/Brașov/Brassó: The multilingualism of this Romanian metropolis is reflected not only in its name but also in the city's literary history. Also, a recurring theme in the works of local writers was the city itself, as a space for encounters and experiences. A research project of the...
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Research project
Negotiating Post-Imperial Transitions 1918-1925
What effects did the upheavals after World War I have on local and regional actors – and how did they themselves actively shape these transformation processes? A cooperative project examined the Romanian cities of Kronstadt/Brașov and Hermannstadt/Sibiu and their German minorities as participants...
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Preservation Project
Nimm ihm Saures! (“Take its Acid!”)
Historical holdings in a new guise: Almost 1,500 German-language books that were cleaned, deacidified, restored, or rebound and protectively packaged as part of the project "Nimm ihm Saures!" (“Take its Acid!”) have returned to the library of the Institute for German Culture and History of...
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Museum | Archive
Ostpreußisches Landesmuseum mit Deutschbaltischer Abteilung ("East Prussian State Museum with a Baltic German Department")
This museum, located right in the center of Lüneburg, is dedicated to the subject of East Prussia and the Baltic Germans. Here you will discover a fascinating region in East Central Europe, which, for 700 years, was shaped by the German language. Never before has a museum in Germany focused on the...
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Object story
Papierówki – “Paper Apples”
A summer apple. The first to ripen. In Polish, it is called "papierówka", in German "Papierapfel" (paper apple). It once grew almost everywhere in Masuria and Warmia, including in the garden of Stefan Tymiec's grandmother, Gertrud. "It smelled and tasted delicious," he remembers. "And that yellow!" For his 60th birthday, he brought seedlings from a Polish nursery all the way to Wuppertal.
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Permanent exhibition of the East Prussian state museum
East Prussia: Formerly the easternmost German province, today it covers parts of Poland, Russia and Lithuania. With its family-friendly presentation style and high-quality, informative exhibits, the East Prussian state museum conveys as complete a picture as possible of the history, art, culture and...
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Biography
Stefan Tymiec Junior
Stefan Tymiec was born in Sztynort in July 1950. “I had a happy childhood”, he says. He hardly felt anything of the tragedies that his parents had lived through. His mother was German and remained in her homeland in 1945. His father was Ukrainian, one of many people who had been forcibly resettled from southeastern Poland. Stefan's childhood happiness lasted eight years, then the family set off for the West.
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Editorial
Steinort – a European place of remembrance
Steinort is a European place of remembrance, because it is a place where the most diverse stories and memories intersect, intertwine, and overlap. The interview project by Ulla Lachauer and Agata Kern explores these subjective strands of memory and reveals a number of different cultures of remembrance.
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Introduction
Steinort/Sztynort Migration Stories
Steinort Palace in northern Masuria was the seat of the noble Lehndorff family until 1945. The last Count, Heinrich von Lehndorff, was one of the conspirators of July 20, 1944. These stories tell of the fate of the East Prussian noble family and follow the lives of people who lived in the village, which is called Sztynort today. Others tell of German and Polish enthusiasts who are working to revive the run-down manor house. 17 biographical texts explore themes of expulsion and new beginnings, tragedy and awakening in this multi-ethnic region.
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Biography
The Four Lehndorff Daughters
"I lost my home," Vera von Lehndorff once said, "but lost childhood is a better description." When her father was executed on September 4, 1944, she was five years old. Her sister Eleonore, "Nona," was six and a half, and Gabriele was two. Catharina was only 19 days old; she was born in the Torgau prison hospital. The Nazis had taken the girls and their mother Gottliebe into custody, a practice known in German as "Sippenhaft” or “kin liability". It was a traumatic time and was by no means over when the war ended in 1945.
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Object story
The linen dresser
A simple chest of drawers, which came from the Steinort manor house, probably from the servants' quarters. In 1945 it was still quite new, made of pine, unpainted. Ten years ago, an old gentleman donated it to the Museum of Folklore in Węgorzewo, formerly Angerburg, along with other things he had taken from the manor after the end of the war.
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Biography
Verus von Plotho
"There was no culture of remembrance in my family," says Verus von Plotho. He grew up in a cosmopolitan world. He was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1969 and grew up in Munich. His mother is Gabriele Freifrau von Plotho, the third daughter of Heinrich and Gottliebe von Lehndorff. There was hardly any talk at home about his grandfather and his resistance to Hitler, nor about his earlier life at Steinort Castle. Grandson Verus grew up – unencumbered – in the shadow of a dramatic past.