German-Polish scientific cooperations in divided Germany – Janusz Korczak associations in East and West Germany since the 1970s

Abstract

The Polish-Jewish paediatrician, pedagogue and writer Janusz Korczak (1878/79–1942) has not been honoured in Germany until many years after his death in Treblinka in 1942. The German division led to the development of two separate German academic associations since the end of the 1970s, which aimed – under different political circumstances – to popularise and disseminate the memory of Korczak and his works. Both associations estab- lished personal and academic contacts and cooperations with the Polish Korczak Committee, whose history can be traced back to 1946, when contemporary witnesses of Korczak founded the Committee to honour Korczak’s memory. This paper aims to reconstruct the early scientific cooperations of both German Korczak associations with Polish scientists and the Polish Korczak Committee. While in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) major research stimuli emanated at the faculties of education at Gießen and Wuppertal, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) a first publicly perceived research focus crystallised at the only existing, state-controlled publishing house for schoolbooks (Volk und Wissen – Volkseigener Verlag) in East- Berlin. In the early 1980s, the work of the young associations was focused on biographical and bibliographical studies. Here it becomes obvious, that Korczak studies in East and West were substantially inspired and advanced by the then still living contemporary eyewitnesses of Korczak and their personal contacts to individual members of the existing Korczak associations. The history of the international Korczak bibliography is a characteristic example, that shows, how closely contemporary witnessing is linked to scientific research on Korczak.