"Who owns Poland?“

For a long time, the trench warfare on the Western Front dominated historical accounts of World War I, while the dramatic events of the war in Eastern Europe have only recently received greater attention. One of the main theaters of war played a prominent role in this: Poland, which had been divided among Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary since the end of the 18th century. As a sovereign state, Poland had disappeared from the political map in 1795. It was not until the period leading up to World War I—and especially after its outbreak—that the “Polish question” regained significance, with Polish efforts toward unification and independence once again playing a role on the international stage and sparking lively debates over who Poland actually belonged to. 

Although Poland was not among the belligerent powers, its territories were of immense strategic importance from the very outset of the war. Successive occupations ravaged vast swathes of the country and left the affected population in a state of cautious apprehension. At the same time, Polish volunteer units underscored their determination to assert Polish interests, even by military means. This contradictory situation manifested itself in fierce military and political conflicts, which were always accompanied by media coverage. Thus, all parties to the conflict engaged in vigorous visual propaganda, sparking a veritable “war of images.” The postcard, a popular and widely used medium of mass communication, played a role that can hardly be overestimated: The small-format visual messages of the propaganda postcards ultimately conveyed the virulent conceptions of Poland prevalent between 1914 and 1918 in an extremely vivid manner, even into the private sphere.

Drawing on 60 propaganda postcards from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Poland, and France, the exhibition highlights the situation and mood of the Polish people during this fateful period and illustrates their complex position in international politics. The selection of postcards is primarily based on the private collection of Prof. Dr. Rudolf Jaworski, supplemented by several items from Polish museum collections. The picture postcards on display naturally represent only a tiny fraction of the vast production of Poland-themed imagery during World War I.

The aim of this exhibition is to provide a reliable cross-section of the motif groups common at the time, thereby offering a quick overview of the images of Poland propagated during World War I. In addition to the patriotic self-portrayal of the Poles and the French perspective supporting them, this also includes the viewpoints of the three partitioning powers: Russia, Prussia-Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Only by bringing these competing perspectives together can one gain an overall impression of which narratives were propagated at the time and how they were visually represented.

The collection was assembled by Prof. Dr. Rudolf Jaworski (*1944) beginning in the late 1960s. He has also published extensively on this topic, for example in the books “German and Czech Views – Collective Offers of Identification on Picture Postcards in the Late Habsburg Monarchy” and “Mothers – Sweethearts – Heroines: Propaganda Postcards from World War I.” During the exhibition, many fruitful discussions took place between Jaworski and the staff of the Herder Institute. This prompted him to gradually transfer his collection to the institute’s image archive.

Exhibition concept and selection of postcards: Prof. Dr. Rudolf Jaworski