Polish inheritors now show more interest than Germans in expellee memory sites

Evidence

Rather than the descendants of expellees or other citizens of contemporary Germany, it is among the descendents of the Polish settlers who inherited Silesia that one i nds the greatest interest in the decaying remnants of expellee memory culture in the former West Germany. As they assign their own meanings to the formerly “German” spaces they inhabit and grow curious about the prewar heritage, a few of them have even ventured to the old Patenst ä dte in western Germany in order to learn just what the expellees had commemorated i fty years ago inside a medieval tower in Goslar. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 1132

Categorization

• SEED: Possible angle: a short essay on how memorial value migrates to the inheritors of contested space when the original claimants’ generation dies out.