Western Institute


The Western Institute in Poznań is a scientific research society focusing on the Western provinces of Poland - Kresy Zachodnie, history, economy and politics of Germany, and the Polish-German relations in history and today.
Established by professor Zygmunt Wojciechowski in 1944 in Warsaw, since 1945 based in Poznań. There were branches in Warsaw, Wrocław and scientific posts in Kraków and Olsztyn.
Full name: Instytut Zachodni. Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy im. Zygmunta Wojciechowskiego w Poznaniu

History

The Western Institute was founded in 1944 and became the flagship of the Polish Research of the West.

Mission

The mission of the Institute is to conduct research projects within fields of political science, sociology, history, economics and law-especially focusing on Polish-German issues as well as European politics. It has been founded by a group of Poznań University professor in 1944, and incorporated with Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1992

Praise

Professor Władysław Bartoszewski, Polish survivor of Auschwitz, and renown figure of Polish-Jewish and Polish-German reconciliation praised the work of the institute:
The work of the Institute carried out while Poland was a communist country has been criticised by German-American historian Richard Blanke as having anti-German bias
Other criticism of work from this period have included allegations of propaganda and dullness while admitting that the Institute produced "some good works on political sciences and legal systems"
German historian Gregor Thum has written that the premise of the research concept of the Western Institute in the first decades was the idea of an eternal German-Polish antagonism and thus the Institute's research, like its German counterpart, the Ostforschung, was based on explicit political objectives, active support of the territorial claims of the state and the distribution of research results by popular science.
After the fall of communism, the Institute has been one of the leading institutions in joint Polish-German scholarship and cooperation.

The directors