Kortau i Kortowo. "czyściec" i kampus - narracje 'nie-pamięci', 'nie-miejsca' w przestrzeni
Kortau and Kortowo. “Purgatory” and campus — narrations of ‘non-memory’ and ‘non-places’ in space

Summary/Abstract: The subject matter of the study focuses on the landscape of places of memory and non-memory in Kortowo – a university district of the city of Olsztyn. The present location of the campus of the University of Warmia and Mazury was created in 1880 as the site of the Kortau psychiatric institute for the German province of East Prussia. During the Second World War from the hospital in Kortau transports of patients were organized with the aim of their extermination as part of the “Lange action” and the so called euthanasia action (“T-4”). In 1945 the district was burned down as a result of the Red Army attack. In 1950 Kortowo became the home of the College of Agriculture and since 1999 it has been a university campus. The article deals with the problem of contemporary narrations connected with Kortowo: a) fictionalized history; b) urban legends; c) current shaping of the space of places of memory and non-memory in the city’s cultural landscape. The relation between local memory (or its absence) and “national” memory in the memorative practices of today’s inhabitants of the so called Recovered Territories remains an open question.

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