Eastern Europe Research in the Second Polish Republic.The Relationship between Politics and Science.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ralph Schattkowsky
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 232651409

This project pursues the relation of political general public, scientific expertise and political invol­vement up to the consequence of the development of an Eastern Europe research with an interdisci­plinary character and analyses the functionality of this research in the politics as well as its position in the scientific system. The purpose is to identify the institutions and persons who found their sub­ject-matter by working on the scientific-journalistic tasks concerning the European East, who un­dertook the leadership funcion supporting effectively an Eastern European image and who represent a close connection between the science, journalism and politics. This research project sees the key issue of the occidentally European positioning of Poland in the attitude against the East. Thus, the concern is to establish the baselines, which fix the East in the history of the modern Polish state and describe it.The project is focused on the analysis of the journalistic materials of institutions, administration unions and persons, who assumed the leadership at the centre as well as in the periphery. Warsaw, Vilnius and Lviv are here not only the regional centres of an institutionalised Eastern European re­search but they represent also the defenitive paradigmatic accesses to Eastern Europe in the form of a historical-regional orientation, geopolitical-imperialistic approach and nationalities-political focus which regards the relations to the Eastern neighbouring countries.The objective of this research paper is to elaborate the efectiveness and specifics of the Polish rese­arch on Eastern Europe in relation to the science and politics and to describe the constitution of this field of study in its differentiation. But it is also a question of explanation, how the general thought structures of the historical and politological research, which were formative in the period between the world wars (such as the ethnic and arable land research or the elements of the German research on the Eastern Europe), were adopted and applied, or, which supranational impact the Po­lish research on the Eastern Europe developed and which dimension of the Polish location for science this research influenced. It shall to be attempted to elaborate the effectiveness of the rese­arch in the functional politics as for instance by the comparition with the political objectives and by the influence on the foreign and minority policy but also on the social awareness of the modern Po­lish state. Last but not least it is a matter of the general and specific use of the term 'Eastern Europe' as an extremely flexible intellectual conception.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants