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Sepulchral palimpsest? The translocation of the monument and memory based on the example of the fallen in the War of 1866 in Köslin/Koszalin and Poznań
Ćwiek-Rogalska, K. ; Kessler, Vojtěch ; Šrámek, J.
The article aims at analyzing two war memorials, established after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 in the Prussian cities of Köslin (now Koszalin) and Poznań, subsequently in the years 1867 and 1870. They commemorated the successes of Prussian armies in the battles of Hradec Králové and Náchod, as well as the fallen Prussian soldiers, often of Polish nationality. However, the reception of both monuments changed during the 19th century. Both war memorials were perceived as „Prussian“, or respectively „German“, which led to their demise after the re-Polonization of both cities after 1918 (Poznań) and 1945 (Köslin/Koszalin). Thus, these war memorials constitute an interesting example of specific phenomena concerning treatment of sepulchral-military monuments, which defy general classification and theoretical concepts commonly accepted both at the cultural-historical and commemoration-historical level. Their specificity lies in the unusual degree of translocation, when soldiers of nationality „A“ fell in country „B“ for the interests of state „C“, while a monument devoted to their memory was built in locality „D“. Furthermore, the analyzed monuments represent a certain „monument utilitarianism“, as their meaning was rewritten, and they were themselves destroyed and their parts secondarily used. The range of these factors, integrally connected with both memorials, then becomes an interesting subject of historical analysis, concerning the study of historical and collective memory.
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