Thread by @aga_tumilowicz

I am part of the 2nd generation born in the so-called "Recovered Territories"– formerly German lands that are now part of Poland.
In the spirit of Lower Silesian pride, I'd like to give you an idea of what it means to live surrounded by traces of a foreign population.
🧵

Of course, most traces of the past are to be found outside, sometimes they simply emerge from underneath the old paint peeling off the walls...

...or they surprise you mid-hike, as there was never a need to replace parts of the infrastructure that are working and still doing just fine. (here: a German sewer flap, smack in the middle of a trail through the mountains.)

...also, in the most random of places.

But sometimes they simply lurk in the background, you need to have your eyes open and work harder to find them. Who would have thought – snow can be of help!

A letter came from Dresden, more than a century ago, it seems. The envelope is still around but the address doesn’t match. Why is it still here then? I will never know. Filing it in the “questions unanswered” pile.

Be it Jewish tombs in Poland, Polish in the Eastern Borderlands or, like in this case, German in the Polish “Recovered Territories”, one thing is equal. There’s nothing sadder than the sight of an abandoned, nameless and an overgrown grave.

Also an attic find:
Someone’s grandparents peeking out from under a thick layer of dust.

In 2020 news broke that the producers of Mission Impossible 7 want to blow up this railroad bridge in Lower Silesian Pilchowice ('Mauer'.) The idea was simple – filming an explosion scene and then paying for the reconstruction of the overpass. Well, the locals were not amused...

...From the perspective of both Americans and the decision-makers, it might've seen like a good idea –getting rid of a junky piece of infrastructure and building a new one. 🇵🇱Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage said that "not every old thing is a heritage site"...

...but I've never seen locals so mad. It became the top subject of angry conversations; Tom Cruise suddenly became persona non grata here. Grassroots organizations protested and the railroad bridge entered the register of protected heritage sites, voiding the filmic plans.

Why the hell would you fight for a defunct, dilapidated railway bridge built by the Germans in 1905? Well, we 'adopted it' over the years. We've been coming to admire it with our grandparents, good friends and first dates. It became our heritage; it's part of who we are now.

Some German engineering plans of a rail bridge (?) and a water tower we found in the attic. Now to be found in the local archive - and a kindly reminder - if you ever find old documents, donate them to your local archives, you never know what they can reveal 🧐

Ummm I never suspected I will upload to Twitter a photo from the ladies room 😅 so please forgive but turns out we have those reminders of the past literally everywhere and I think it’s cool! Crossing paths with some old Bahnhof Breslau plans.

Among other finds inherited from the house’s former German owner - this contraption: a violet ray electrotherapy device invented by Tesla. Glass wands and electric discharge in the color of plum…seems that my previous neighbor believed in the healing power of electricity ⚡️

My first school. As a kid, I liked to think that the sound of my footsteps on the stone floors resembled my mom's – she had been a pupil here before me. I didn't fathom that these sounds also resonated with the footsteps of girls who had gone to höhere Mädchenschule, 1908-1945.

At my aunt’s, another remnant of the lives lived before the war. This one made me especially sad. A trace of a couple’s 25th wedding anniversary, left behind. An item that, despite being separated from its owners, continues to commemorate their milestone event.

Took a stroll around the town, found a hidden portal to the past and a random, possibly a hundred year old German safe, kicked out from the nearby post office. What can I say, this place full of wonders.

This is just Lower Silesia in a nutshell. Incongruent, eclectic marriage of the old and the new, founded on respect towards the past and the need to move on. It’s not always pretty.

I’ve shown my German accounting book-turned-diary but today I also found this - another notebook I started (over)writing even earlier, where I described how I found it. It hurts to look at what I did with this historical record but the layering of realities looks familiar…

Easter Monday stroll - unexpectedly ran into a forgotten, local village cemetery. Fragments of stones strewn around, some of them with letters, only one legible gravestone of the Hornig family. Blurred outlines of the past in a quarry of absent memories.

Just thinking about the things from the place’s past that persist against all odds.

By now I should know and accept that it was normal for Polish institutions (and archives) in the “Recovered Lands” to reuse Nazi papers and yet it still takes me aback every time I find some while doing my research…

Patterns stuck in limbo of not knowing what’s coming next. On the left - some German tiles in a room that used to be a bathroom and now doesn’t know what it is, on the right - scraps of a beautiful old wallpaper the previous owners left in the attic.

I love using the metaphor of weaving so I was all the more excited to stumble upon these sgrafitti on walls of buildings built in the 1920s, on a street that used to be named Leinweberweg - linen weavers’ way. It’s all about the weavers.

Today's writing day is sponsored by one of my fav 'pieces of junk' my family rescued from being thrown out. P.F Welzel Breslau Piano № 2240 - almost met his demise being played in a local bar, then nobody wanted to tune it, but it saved me from dropping out of music school ❤️

Field visit, in the midst of writing, yielded a fantastic discovery - antique metal window shutters. Wondering - were they always black? 🤔
Either way, gotta love strangers who let you in to rummage and wander around🤭

Just for the record, as it is not always easy to interact with these remnants.

https://twitter.com/aga_tumilowicz/status/1682371802742374401

Saw Oppenheimer in a movie theater built by the Germans in 1936. Poles reopened it already in September 1945, changing its name from Capitol to Lot (so, just keeping the last three letters and tossing the rest)

@CigarRegal …sense of nostalgia attached to these places, and I believe Germans feel the same way about the lands I’m from. I met someone the other day in the archive, he was looking for the traces of his ancestors and said that he’s never been here but it all feels “strangely familiar.”

@WolfArktik (and yeah, a separate question is still how it ended up in my house. It's not particularly close in terms of distance. But you're right, someone might have known them. I don't have the exact person nailed just yet, still working on it.)