Alexander Tölle

Towards a religious cross-border space. Projects along the Polish-German border

The Polish-German borderland, located along the rivers Oder and Neisse, is an area characterized over the decades by two ethnic groups – though living side by side – at the same time separated from one another by a hermetically sealed border. The same was true in the area of religion, with the society on the East German side being predominantly Protestant and over the years increasingly secular, while on the Polish side, society was always Catholic. The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 meant the start of a cross-border integration process, which affected the socioeconomic, cultural, and religious spheres, the latter being often neglected in the field of border studies. There emerged places that had an impact on the new cross-border environment – sacred sites that gained additional cross-border functions, post-sacred sites that acquired new religious or non-religious cross-border functions, as well as new religious cross-border sites. Examples include the reconstruction of St. Mary’s Church in Chojnie as a place of ecumenical worship and Polish-German reconciliation, restoration of the Parish Church in Gubin as a landmark highlighting the symbolic center of the Polish-German city of Guben-Gubin as well as its region, conversion of the Church of Peace in Frankfurt-upon-Oder into a ” European Ecumenical Center ”, establishment of a new Catholic Student Center as a Polish-German joint venture in a former municipal bathhouse in Słubice, and the rediscovery of the historic Way of St. James in the Polish-German borderland. An analysis of such projects gives evidence to the claim that a religious cross-border space is emerging in the Polish-German borderland, a geographic space that reflects values such as reconciliation and understanding between Poles and Germans following the horrors of World War II, a feeling of solidarity and belongingness between residents on both sides of the border, tolerance, and ecumenism.