Since the end of the Cold War and the reconfiguration of the map of
Europe, scholars across the disciplines have looked anew at the geopolitical
and geocultural dimensions of East Central Europe. Although geographically
at the periphery of Eastern Europe, Germany and its changing discourses
on the East have also become a subject of this reassessment in
recent years. Within this larger context, this special issue explores the
fraught history of German-Polish border regions with a special focus on
contemporary literature and film.1 The contributions examine the representation
of border regions in recent Polish and German literature (Irene
Sywenky, Claudia Winkler), filmic accounts of historical German and Polish
legacies within contemporary European contexts (Randall Halle, Meghan
O’Dea), and the role of collective memory in contemporary German-Polish
relations (Karl Cordell). Bringing together scholars of Polish and German
literature and film, as well as political science, some of the contributions
also ponder the advantages of regional and transnational approaches to
issues that used to be discussed primarily within national parameters.