The reviewed book was written basing on Piotr Szlanta’s habilitation thesis defended in 2015 at the University of Warsaw. It deals mainly with “the Polish question”, by describing the relations between Emperor Wilhelm II and his Polish subjects. The title deals with stereotypes of the Emperor and his Polish subjects, and its evolution during subsequent decades. Piotr Szlanta managed to grasp the ambiguous relation between these two sides. On the one hand, the Emperor sought for acceptance and recognition from the side of “his Poles”, on the other hand, he underlined on almost every occasion the historical role of Germans in civilising east territories and its inhabitants. The last attempt of gaining support of Poles towards his politics and himself was an attempt of creating “The Kingdom of Poland” in autumn 1916. Piotr Szlanta’s book, basing on a broad research in various archives managed to highlight this complicated chapter of Polish-German relations.

This study investigates the possible errors related to Mandarin tone perception and production by German speakers. In a preliminary test, 23 German listeners should identify the tones of 186 monosyllables. Results show that exposure to Mandarin Chinese can help to discriminate lexical tones as highly expected. In the main experiment, 17 German subjects were asked to take part in a perception and production test. Stimulus of perception involves 48 monosyllables uttered by a standard professional Chinese speaker; acoustic measures were conducted to analyze the production of 72 monosyllables for each subject. It is found that German speakers have much smaller f0 range than Chinese native speakers. Findings can provide implications for cross language studies and teaching practices.

The question of what is the difference between borrowing and code-switching has attracted the attention of scholars far and wide and gave at the same time rise to a plethora of publications in order to draw a boundary between these two terms. In the most recent of these publications (Grosjean 1982, Poplack & Meechan 1995 & 1998; to name but a few), it has been often argued that borrowings are donor-language items that are integrated in the grammar of the recipient language at a community level, while code-switches take place at individual level and they retain the grammar of the language from which they derive. However, the current political and economic uncertainties in various regions of the world have been found to cause mass refugee movements to conflict-free places, where contact between newcomers and locals usually lead to some kind of linguistic interinfluencing. The current study discusses the contactinduced German-origin lone lexical items used by Iraqi-Arabic-speaking refugees in Germany. It is the aim of this study to show whether or not these lexical items can be considered as code-switches or established borrowings. The data I am analyzing come from spontaneous and elicited conversations of the first and second wave of Iraqi- Arabic-speaking refugees and asylum seekers to Germany as well as from online- and paper-pencil-questionnaires.

In the fi rst half of the 20th century, the German historiography of medicine created genuine ideas of methodology of research on the history of the medical sciences and medicinal practice. They were a continuation of the native historiographic tradition which was present in German university didactics and literature about the history of medicine in the 19th century. The uniqueness of German anti-positivist methodologies was based on a perception of cultural context in the genesis of medical theories and doctrines. They were researching cultural factors in the overall structure and analysing their infl uence on academics’ and common folk’s perception. There were two rival methodological trends — neoromantic and sociocultural ones, and the second gained wider infl uence in the historiography of medicine. The sociocultural trend had a few research schools, among them: Kulturgeschichte der Medizin, Sozialgeschichte der Medizin and Alltagsgeschichte der Medizin. The main purpose of this paper is to show the genesis of German anti-positivist trends in 20th century, the most important achievements of sociocultural historiography in Germany till 1933 and after 1945, and its infl uence on the standard American historiography of medicine in 20th century. The paper also presents a wide range of literature printed in both Germany and USA about the aforementioned historiographic trends.

For many centuries, Upper Silesia was the scene of intensive language contact between a continuum of West Slavic dialects (or the Polish and Czech languages) and German colonists, mainly in the 13th century. The process of colonisation under German town law led to the establishment of hundreds of new towns and villages, some with German names. The oldest historical sources for Upper Silesia are Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis (Book of endowments of the Bishopric of Wrocław), dating back to c 1305, as well as registers of such endowments from c 1325. German medieval place names in Upper Silesia are a minority, and no such town names can be found in many areas. This article is an analysis of the percentage of German place names in relation to all place names [in Upper Silesia]. It defines the areas with the largest number of such names and contains a linguistic analysis of the names. Interestingly, the area with the largest number of German place names is the Duchy of Teschen, with the castellany of Oświęcim (which was once part of the Duchy of Teschen), the neighbouring part of the Duchy of Racibórz and the western part of the Duchy of Opole. In the Duchy of Bytom (the Siewierz part of which no longer belongs to Upper Silesia), German place names were not very common. For the areas covered by the Diocese of Kraków, the names of parish priests are known as well. The presence of the German name of parish priests in towns and villages with German place names half a century from their establishment indicates that German people may have lived there, especially because it is certain in some cases that they did.

The article treats of one of the most innovative series in the Polish humanities after the 1945, the Poznań German Library. The series is a scientific-editorial project initiated 1996 to introduce readers in Poland (both specialists and nonspecialists) into the most important questions of German history, sociology, political science etc. in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century.

This article presents a media-studies profile of the bilingual periodical Dialog. Magazyn Polsko-Niemiecki / Dialog. Deutsch-Polnisches Magazin, which is the biggest project of this kind in Europe. In spite of occasional problems with funding, it has been around without a break since 1987. Committed to the goal of building a better understanding between two nations torn apart by war and strife, the editors have opened their magazine to all aspects — political, cultural and economic — of Polish-German relations.

Ármin(ius) Vámbéry and the problem of antisemitism. In his article the author deals with the problem of antisemitism Á. Vámbéry was confronted with. The author has narrow his survey to some topoi and their reflections in contemporary German-speaking newspapers as well as statements of German-speaking academics concerning his “Jewishness”.

The hydronym Szywra refers to the small river in the Warta basin flowing in the central part of Greater Poland. Although its name remained unclear for most of the researchers, it was believed to be of Pre-Slavic or Balto-Slavic origin. The paper reveals that these hypotheses were based on the wrong interpretation of the source material, and provides a new etymology for the name Szywra. Based on the critical analysis of all of the reachable records of names referring to the river Szywra, it has been proven that its Polish name is an adaptation of the former German name Schieferbach. Such a process was possible due to the long-term bilingual situation in the region of Greater Poland.

Radosław Ptaszyński devoted over 700 pages of his book to Stanisław Stomma, a catholic intellectual who, during his life was confronted with two totalitarian systems, German Nazism and Soviet Communism. Stomma remains until today a symbol of „stommizm”. This name, created basing on a Stomma’s surname remains a symbol of political realism, and willingness of compromise (with direct limits), and accompanied by a strong moral integrity. Stomma, a devoted catholic played also an important role in the long process of Polish-German reconciliation. According to the Author “stommizm” itself can be recognised as a new kind of heroism, however remote from other well-known patterns of heroism.

Teresa Willenborg’s book is devoted to analysis of the situation of the German population of former German territories which were granted to Poland in 1945 basing on diplomatic conferences of great powers: USA, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Willenborg focuses on experiences of Germans who decided to remain in their hometowns and villages. The subject of her interest is here mainly a term of becoming ‘foreign’ and ‘solitare’ in their own homeland after 1945. Thanks to usage of various Polish and German sources the author managed to stress the fact, that the history of post-war expulsions and national minorities often requires a transnational approach.

The year 2000 was the year of the creation of ‘The Polish Library‘ also known as ‘Beauty Unknown‘. This year is the 20th anniversary of her birthday and at the same time a great opportunity to recall the creation content and promotion of this impressive 50 volume collection. The following article is dedicated to these events.