Reconquest, Reconstruction, Resumption: Churching Poland after the Second World War.
This article examines how the Roman Catholic Church in Poland navigated the enormous increase in church buildings at its disposal at the end of the Second World War. This expansion was largely due to the mass acquisition of post-German churches in lands transferred from Germany to Poland. But rapid...
| Published in: | German History Vol. 42; no. 2; pp. 231 - 248 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Jun2024
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=177292760&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 177292760 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02663554 31M jtl: German History issn: 02663554 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2024 vid: 42 iid: 2 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 177292760 10.1093/gerhis/ghae017 ppf: 231 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 191KB tig: atl: Reconquest, Reconstruction, Resumption: Churching Poland after the Second World War. aug: au: Bjork, James affil: King's College London , UK su: World War II Postwar reconstruction Sacred space Catholics Worship (Christianity) Land title registration & transfer Church buildings Poland sug: subj: Poland World War II Postwar reconstruction Sacred space Catholics Worship (Christianity) Land title registration & transfer Church buildings ab: This article examines how the Roman Catholic Church in Poland navigated the enormous increase in church buildings at its disposal at the end of the Second World War. This expansion was largely due to the mass acquisition of post-German churches in lands transferred from Germany to Poland. But rapid reconstruction of most of the churches destroyed during the war as well as the resumption of new construction also played a role. Although access to increased worship space might seem to have been a boon for Poland's postwar Catholic Church, the appropriation, reconstruction and completion of thousands of church buildings presented the church with an array of challenges. Refounding local Polish religious life in post-German, and often post-Protestant, houses of worship raised difficult questions about how various constituencies in newly formed communities could be made to feel at home in their new surroundings. Trade-offs between the expectations and customs of divergent groups were exacerbated by the prominence within the postwar church of Catholics who were themselves post-German, having spent the war categorized as German before being recategorized as Polish after 1945. Close attention to how Polish Catholics encountered new sacred spaces and one another reveals the complex negotiations and balancing acts required to form an ostensibly homogeneous religious-national community. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: © 2019 German History Society. item: German History holder: Oxford University Press / USA dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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