On May 23, 1618, the Second (according to some researchers, the Third) Defenestration of Prague took place in Prague. Two imperial governors and their secretary were thrown out of the windows of Prague Castle (Hradčany), which triggered one of the bloodiest conflicts in early modern Europe, known as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). This was…
Demographic and cultural transformations that took place in West Pomerania after 1945 constitute one of the most dramatic and complex chapters of Poland’s post-war history. Immediately after the war, the region became a melting pot where the remaining German population encountered Polish settlers. Alongside Poles, representatives of various national and ethnic minorities also arrived or…
A coat of arms is a graphic symbol placed on the field of a shield, created according to specific rules, symbolically representing its owner. However, we can only call such a graphic sign a coat of arms when it becomes hereditary, when a given person, family, clan, or city uses it continuously without changing it…
“When I began dealing with the affairs of the Szczecin Land, which was in the spring of 1945, I had just turned thirty-four. Behind me was a rather eventful life: prisons, the Bereza camp, emigration, service in the Soviet Army and the Polish Army. There was enough time for my views, in the light of…
Terror from the sky and the Nazi phantom factory in Police: how the Third Reich wanted to win the war with synthetic fuel from coal Introduction World War II left behind many non-obvious material traces embedded in the contemporary cultural landscape. Among the more intriguing are the remains of Nazi synthetic liquid fuel…
