South Bend, Indiana and Łódź, Poland

by Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker, Fulbright Scholar in Wrocław, Poland

How might the factory buildings from nineteenth century industries be used in today’s twenty-first century information age economies? The Polish city of Łódź offers a creative and compelling model, one that albeit requires significant public and private investment to succeed.

Postcard with a view of Izrael K. Poznański manufacturing plant at Ogrodowa Street, end of the nineteenth century, Łódź City Museum

South Bend, Indiana and Łódź Poland share a similar economic trajectory. They both rose to industrial importance in the second half of the nineteen century, and they both declined in the twentieth.

This picture shows Łódź before development began.

In the late 1700s, Łódź had been mostly farmland, Łódź City Museum

The two cities have the skeletons of the industrial past within their midst.

South Bend Studebaker factory in 1890 Source

The annual mid-year meeting for Fulbright students and scholars took place in 2022 in Łódź Poland, and my visit to Łódź showed me one way that beautiful architecture of the past could be re-developed for new purposes.

As part of two days of activities, students learned about the city and its past through a city tour where we spent time in factory campuses created by the Izrael Poznański and Karol Scheibler. In these places, entrepreneurs created not only vast factory spaces for spinning textiles but also built homes for workers, as well as fire stations, schools, and kindergartens.

Workers gathered in front of Karol Scheibler’s factory in Wodny Rynek (Wodny Market Square) at the end of the nineteenth century, Łódź City Museum

Our tour guide mentioned that so many of the workers’ needs were met within the network of the factory buildings that if the rest of the city of Łódź were to disappear, the workers would have barely noticed it.

As in Łódź, in South Bend, the Studebakers and the Olivers also created vast factory spaces – in their case for the carriages and cars they produced.  Like Łódź entrepreneurs, they also created workers’ homes and social services.

In Łódź, when I strolled through the beautifully restored buildings of brick, thronged with shoppers on a sunny Saturday, it felt bittersweet to think back to South Bend with its similar set of buildings full of possibility that also await the possibility of restoration.

For Łódź, finding the funds for redevelopment has taken time, and the redevelopment has not happened overnight. As Łódź was a city of 30% Jews before the Holocaust, the leaders had to wait for property rights to be determined before the city could be redeveloped. Up to 90% of Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and it was difficult to find their descendants. In the last 30 years since the fall of communism, the city has slowly begun building.

In these structures it is possible to see the beginnings of the sanding, cleaning and refining of the old brick, starting from the top of the building.

Only the top of this building has been renovated, so far

Like South Bend, Łódź, Poland is also a city with cold and gray winters and hot sticky summers. Yet like so many other European cities, there is a culture of walking and using public transportation which make developments like this much more possible. The willingness to pay taxes and to invest in public spaces also separates Europe from the United States where it is much more difficult to create a massive project like this one. I wonder if it is also a certain willingness to wait that makes the slow steady progress of a place like Łódź, possible.

I was struck that right across from the beautiful Art Museum, buildings still awaited renovation with holes in the building and graffiti.

Initial funding for the Manufaktura project came from private French investors, but European Union, Polish government, and other regional and city funds also made it possible.

Can we in the US, with so many beautiful historic buildings do something similar?

South Bend’s Studebaker buildings are just waiting…

Image from the South Bend Tribune

Image from the South Bend Tribune

Image from the South Bend Tribune

Learning Polish Language in Wrocław

By Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker, Fulbright Scholar in Poland

On the third day of Polish class at the University of Wrocław, after our class of seven students from Guadeloupe, Belarus, Germany, Morocco, Japan, and Brazil had finished, I found my head spinning. I was so rusty after not speaking Polish for so many years, and ninety minutes of class only in Polish was a challenge. Some of my fellow students had been living in Poland for years and seemed to be following much more than I could.

Still, I wanted to be the good student.

I approached my teacher after class to ask – how should I prepare for class?

What tips did she had for me? Should I try to use note cards to memorize vocabulary? Should I buy Polish grammar books and review grammatical rules? Should I write down the lyrics to Polish songs and memorize them?  I was already meeting with a virtual coach on Verbling weekly; how could my coach best help me prepare for class and learn Polish?

Or, I thought, should I try to follow the example of my quite old-fashioned Russian teacher… I have memories of summer intensive Russian when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley and my teacher with his long grey beard expecting us the stand in front of the class and declaim the memorized Russian-language dialogue that was our homework.

The tricky grammar of Polish, (for foreigners) difficult pronunciation, for example the different forms of “sh” in “szczęśliwy” [lucky], I thought, maybe could best be mastered by trying to swallow whole sentences.

In response to my question, my teacher told me that I should go to museums, concerts, films, and performances, that I should try to immerse myself Polish culture while I am here and listen to the music of the Polish language. She had already handed out “What’s Playing” little booklets. If I really insisted on working through texts, I should try to decipher those texts as these little summaries of events were the ways that people actually spoke, but more importantly, then go to the films and performances.

June 6-22 What’s playing?

It was a culture clash.

I had approached the class wanting to learn how I could be as efficient as possible in my four months in Poland. I wanted to learn as much of the language as I could and reach my goals as fast as possible: to be able to communicate in Polish well enough for daily life in Wrocław; and to build a foundation for future study so I may be able to read Polish research on my topic on women in Wrocław/Breslau in the nineteenth century.

Now after three months here, I am still not as far along as I had hoped, but I can see clear progress. I’m following my teacher’s advice by watching Polish films and listening to Polish music, as well as my own tried and true methods of learning language using flashcards and writing and rewriting assignments.

My homemade flashcards – I haven’t been able to find them in stores!

Some of the most helpful suggestions have come from my IU colleague and Professor of Polish Lukasz Sicinski. He encouraged me to focus on vocabulary and start reading secondary sources in Polish in my field of study. He liked my idea of watching Netflix in Polish and listening to Polish music. He also encouraged me to not worry so much about grammar at this point because at my level that would interfere with being able to communicate.

Trying to learn a language in midlife has been a different experience than learning one as a college or graduate student. The new words do not pour into my brain as they had when I was younger. I seem to forget a week later the words that I had only recently memorized. It has been a challenge to feel helpless and unable to communicate. This despite the fact that Polish people in in Wrocław for the most part feel quite positively toward Americans and are usually happy to try to help me.

As I spend these four months in Wrocław and study the Jewish family the Bauers of Breslau and their descendants, I often think about those Jewish immigrants to the United States and other parts of the world in the 1930s where they were like me, trying to learn a new language in midlife – But unlike me they also faced hostility and open antisemitism. I think of my housemates from the Ukraine who are trying to learn Polish as they forge ahead with the continuing war close by.

Learning language has both such broad implications and is so specific and concrete. In this way it is both intensely personal as well as tied up into larger systems of cultures and politics.

And with that thought, I will sign off and head back to my Polish language flashcards, my Polish homework for Wednesday’s class, and a favorite Polish song, Krążę krążę, by Faustyna Maciejczuk.

Art in the Jewish Studies Department and Beyond

by Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker, Fulbright scholar in Wrocław, Poland

“You must see the department’s art,” the Chair of the Jewish Studies Department Marcin Wodziński told me at our first meal together. After a bit of miscommunication (his original email landed in my spam folder), I found myself with Marcin and another visiting faculty member, Atsuto Anzai, as we started in Marcin’s office and then made our way through the hallways and classrooms.

The Jewish Studies department is housed in a former medieval Augustinian Monastery, a building that was later rebuilt in the early 1700s and then used as the first university library.

Home of the Jewish Studies Department, Uniwersytet Wrocławski

During the 1945 siege of Breslau, it became the headquarters for the National Socialist defense of the city. Breslau fell, in fact, four days after Berlin. Marcin shared with me that National Socialist military officials in charge of Breslau’s siege planned their strategy around the table and in the room that now serves as the department seminar room, filled with books donated by the Jewish studies and gender studies scholar Ada Rapoport-Albert (1945-2020). Fitting symbolism for a new era for the University!

The Taube Philanthropies and Koret Foundation donated funds for a complete renovation of the building, and before construction began, the department invited artists from the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design to construct an exhibit of paintings on the walls themselves, art that was meant to exist only for the short time before the renovation was to begin. A few pieces from that time remain in department offices as special treasures, and Marcin is considering now the best ways to display them.

The most prominent art appears along the hallways by Mira Zelechower-Aleksiun whose work displayed here brings together Jewish sacred texts with Polish history and popular culture.

These images don’t quite do justice to the size of the pieces, that can be seen below in the Jewish studies hallway

In pieces like the one below, Zelechower-Aleksiur draws together Biblical narratives of Jacob with references to twentieth century culture – the art of Bruno Schulz and a short story Ptaki (Birds) that speaks, in Zelechower-Aleksiun’s words, of “autumn, the depths of winter, and yellow nights.” 

In the main lecture hall, works of Lev Stern make reference to creation in Genesis and the division of land and water.

Marcin and Lev Stern installing paintings, photo courtesy of Monika Jaremków

Along the wall, the ten frames of paintings, in Stern’s signature style of building up layers of paint and using tools to scrape away lines or layers, suggest the ten decades of the twentieth century.

One seminar room hosts the powerful and immediate photographs of Agnieszka Traczewska whose moving images document the Hasidic community.

The collage works of Anna Szpakowska-Kujawska make reference to the Holocaust, here in her pieces in which the word “Dlaczego” [Why] repeats.

Dlaczego / Why

During our walk, I asked about presenting this valuable art in areas where they could be stolen or vandalized. I wondered out loud about the exposure of these precious pieces.

Perhaps taking such risks seem obvious and natural in a city like Wrocław where art seems to be everywhere. Along the Riverwalk outside of the University library fly the sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz.

Birds by Magdalena Abakanowicz.

And her playful sculptures shine outside of the National Museum

Modern buildings vie with historic ones

Murals cover the sides of buildings…

Bright red cartoon-like apples seem to hang from the tree.

Even Aldi / Trader Joe’s gets into the act

Watch out for monsters!

Outlined against historic buildings, even late winter trees seem spookily dramatic with their long curving branches

The role of the art in public spaces here reminds me of the ideas of Americans for the Arts that “Public art humanizes the built environment and invigorates public spaces. It provides an intersection between past, present and future, between disciplines, and between ideas.”

For the members of the Jewish Studies Department, the impact of this decision for Marcin and other department members was clear, “Putting the art on our walls created a new feeling in the department, especially for our students. It created a new sense of solemnity and purpose that you could see in the students’ faces and in their eyes as they entered this space.”

With thanks to Monika Jaremków for her help with this article.

Inauguration of new premises

ą ż ó ł

Arriving in Poland

by Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker

Landing in Poland, I was surprised to learn that during my flight the Russian invasion of the Ukraine had begun.

Ukrainian soldiers cross a destroyed bridge, an image printed in the New York Times
“Morning” newsletter March 4 Chris Mcgrath / Getty Images

I had come to Wrocław, Poland to start research for a four-month Fulbright fellowship that had already been delayed one year due to Covid. My project on the first generation of women’s activists in Wrocław between 1880 and 1930 will take me to libraries and archives throughout the region.

At least for now, I feel safe, and Fulbright program staff in Poland have assured us that we should remain in Poland. If things change swiftly, they would be ready to help us, even with an emergency evacuation.

While the crisis has not impacted my personal security, I’m seeing its repercussions around me. My mentor Professor Kamil Kijek here has decided to use part of his sabbatical to assist and has been driving refugees from the border into Silesia. The boarding house where I’m staying now hosts Ukrainian refugees; local colleagues have found work for my Ukrainian housemates and local schools for their children.

The crisis makes quite a contrast between my quiet days and the reality of the invasion of the Ukraine. The Jewish studies department is in an absolutely beautiful, renovated building. The chair of the department Marcin Wodzinski and my mentor Kamil have arranged for a lovely space for me to work.

office where I’m working

the view from my office window

looking down the hallway from my office

The library I’ve been working in is stunning, and I sit reading books overlooking the Oder. 

Near Wrocław’s beautiful main square are cozy cafes and streets for strolling – I’m partial to a vegetarian restaurant, Vega. Tourists are encouraged to seek out the little dwarves that hide throughout the city.

As I’ve begun to settle in, getting to know colleagues Barbara Pendzich and the wonderfully helpful librarian Monika Jaremków, I’m mindful of the greater challenges to help refugees that they face at the same time as they answer my questions like: where was that beautiful bookstore that we visited on my first day in Wrocław? Can you order this inter-library book for me?

As residents of Wrocław and local businesses do what they can to collect materials for refugees, even making piles of sandwiches for distribution or hosting them in their homes, we too can assist in helping refugees leaving Ukraine. The best way to do that from the US is with donations, and the New York Times has highlighted four charities in particular: Direct Relief, Mercy Corps, International Medical Corps, and Save the Children.

Here is also some advice from that article, “If you decide to donate, specify that your gift go toward the conflict in Ukraine. Otherwise, your money may end up paying for a charity’s general operating expenses.” It is best to try to donate to these or other vetted causes to make sure that your donation goes to those who will do the most good.

As I sign off, I am struck by two different and conflicting emotions – gratitude for the beauty and generosity I am experiencing and grief at the war, so close and yet removed from my daily experience, at least for now. 

Woman on Wheels: Touring Vietnam by Bicycle

On March 23, 2016, IU South Bend archivist Alison Stankrauff gave a presentation on her summer 2016 trip traveling solo through Vietnam, a trip she described as “nothing short of amazing” and “days of wonder.”

She encouraged all her listeners, but especially women, to consider embarking on an adventure on their own and referred them to resources for solo women travelers.

She told her audience that traveling solo had empowered her, allowed her to forge a deeper connection to the places and people where she was visiting, and helped her to think about who she is and what kind of person she would like to be.

This talk was sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and International programs. Thanks to media services for filming the talk.

Alison’s guides introduced her to the people, culture, and food of Vietnam

She had a chance to visit cities

as well as the beautiful countryside

and she loved exploring the public markets

but best of all were the people that she met,

…and the chance to do it on her bike.

More resources for women traveling alone:

Solo Women Travelers – A closed group on Facebook – a*very* affirming group, offers good advice!

Woman  Travel Guide:

HostelWorld – “Solo Female Travel: Nine Myths and One Truth”:

Young Adventuress 

“…one of my big big BIG opinions that I frequently and loudly profess in real life as well as online is the following; I am a strong believer that all women should travel solo, at least once in their lives.”

Jessie on a Journey:  “How Solo Female Travel Changed My Life (And How It Can Change Yours, Too).”

GypsyGals:  A love letter to traveling solo and female in Hanoi!

Women’s Adventure Magazine has Vietnam in its Top 10 Places for Women to Travel Solo:

Women Traveling to Vietnam:

“I have never felt that my gender has been particularly relevant in Asia.”

 

Duisburg – a city in transformation by Lisa Zwicker

Here in Duisburg Germany to do research at the Gidal images archive in the Ludwig Salomon Steinheim Institute, I am met at every turn with the message that Duisburg is in transformation.

Even hair salons have gotten on the bandwagon.

“Structural Change: Your Hairdresser in Duisburg”

Trash cans spread the message:

“Duisburg, we await your contribution.”

Like the upper-midwest, Duisburg faces the challenges of moving beyond the production of industrial materials. Situated near the Rhein and Ruhr rivers, Duisburg grew in the nineteenth century to become one of the largest steel and coal producers in Europe. Because of its connections to waterways, Duisburg also became important for milling and processing grain. As the “Second Industrial Revolution” of chemicals and electricity gained momentum, Duisburg had a leading role. The importance of Duisburg as an industrial center (see left for the chemical factory Matthes and Weber) meant that during World War II the Allies rained more bombs down on Duisburg than any other city in Germany. Duisburg revived in the 1950s and 1960s and returned to its global role of steel, iron, and coal production. At that time, Germany dearly needed those goods to rebuild. In the 21^st century, as in the US, the growing parts of the German economy focus on high tech and services as opposed to creating or exporting raw materials. Now, Duisburg, like the US upper mid-west rust belt, faces the challenges that come with the loss of industry and loss of jobs. In Germany traditions of reform from above and solidarity have lead to large building projects. The inner harbor, subject of the photo above, has now become a cultural center with a walking path that meanders by a children’s museum, a Duisburg history museum, the city archive, parks, and new apartment buildings. In the image above, the waves in the red city archives echo the water of the inner harbor, and the cranes out front recall Duisburg’s industrial past. The beautiful Duisburg Landscape Park represents the largest of these projects. Built by architect Peter Latz, the park reuses what had been a polluted industrial wasteland. It incorporates elements from the previous chemical and coal production facilities, but has made this area into a park now safe for recreation for all. A set of interlocking climbing walls with different levels of difficulty replaced stone storage structures for coal. Here lavender grows in orderly rows and its scent wafts up to the walking path above This park attracts tourists from across Europe. The other efforts — the museums, restaurants, and new developments — seem to have had less success so far, at least as far as the foot traffic on this albeit rainy and cold early summer week would suggest. Duisburger leaders and boosters argue that Duisburg has already lived through a number of transitions in the past:
* from a thriving medieval city until the path of the Rhine river was shifted, a change which led to a concentration on handicrafts
* a rapid transition to an industrial economy in the nineteenth century, which destroyed the livelihoods of many small artisans Will the immense investments in new cultural institutions and transforming city spaces pay off in economic development?

The city leaders’ campaign “Duisburg in transformation” does not suggest an endpoint, perhaps, a smart move considering how quickly economies move and change. In the meantime, we can all enjoy the fruits of these efforts, the beautiful museums, the new developments, and most of all the gorgeous parks.

Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker is Associate Professor of History and Director of International Programs at Indiana University, South Bend. She specializes in German history and spent time in Duisburg in 2015 as part of a research trip that focuses on turn-of-the-century Jewish women in German speaking Central Europe. In Duisburg she worked at the Gidal images archive at the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim institute.

David Bacon, Award Winning Photographer at IU South Bend on Tuesday

David Bacon at IU South Bend this Tuesday!
Bacon, an award winning photographer has written and photographed immigrant workers, workers on both sides of the Mexican border, and has discussed how US policy has exacerbated the problems low-wage workers experience both in the United States and Mexico. He will be speaking at Wiekamp 1001 at 11:30 am and then at 4:00 in SAC 220 (co-sponsored by the Latino Students Association). Both events are open to the public.
http://dbacon.igc.org

The Sonneberg Emergency Room

From across the swimming pool where I was playing with one-year old Lexie, I heard my six-year old son Lucas scream and then sob. It was not the I’m so sad cry, or the you took my place on the slide cry, but the help me I’m in pain cry.

We were in Germany for my research and to visit grandparents and a dear Uncle. Our sons Lucas and Max (four-years old) had convinced us to travel to Sonneberg for the biannual model trainshow there. The sunlit Sonneberg indoor swimming pool with its spiral slide was an added benefit.
“Uh oh,” I thought. With my one-year old under my arm, I walked quickly to Lucas and saw the Sonneberg Bademeisterin – swimming pool master- had gotten there first.
She asked Lucas his name and where he was from and what he was doing in Germany; in this way she expertly distracted him at the same time she applied steristrips to the deep cut on his chin.
“You really should go to the emergency room.”
My husband Marcus and I looked at each other and with our eyes asked each other
Is it really that bad?
What will we do with Max and Lexie while we wait?
Should we just go home and see how Lucas looks tomorrow?
“Really,” the Bademeisterin told us. “You need to go to the emergency room.”
Marcus and I thought back to our experience in the US in July the previous year. At 8pm in the evening I had called the 24-hour nurses line in South Bend Indiana because of Lexie’s high fever. “Go to the emergency room,” the nurse had told us.
By the time Lexie and I arrived at Memorial Hospital, the Tylenol had kicked in and he slept on my lap. That Friday evening a series of gunshot victims came into the hospital that needed more urgent attention than my peacefully sleeping baby. Lexie and I checked in at 9pm; we saw a doctor a 5:30am.
Back in Germany, Marcus and I decided to follow the advice of the Swimming Pool Master. We got into our car, drove a few miles to the local hospital, and steeled ourselves for the long wait.
But instead, a doctor almost immediately invited Lucas into an examining room, checked the cut on his chin, pronounced that the Swimming Pool Master had done an excellent job, and told us that a doctor should have another look at Lucas’ deep cut in a few days.  Two weeks later we got the bill: 30 Euros or about $40.
Generalizing from a few experiences is unwise. Nevertheless our family’s adventure with the emergency room illustrates some differences in the US and German systems.
The financial pressures on US hospitals mean doctors are almost never as available as they were to us in Sonneberg. The large number of uninsured in the US means that expensive emergency rooms become a place where too many people receive primary care or come to the hospital after not receiving proper primary care. The robust social safety net in Germany means that health care is subsidized – the only way to explain our $40 bill. American healthcare economists might counter that having a doctor waiting around ready to see us might not be the best use of health care resources.
In any case, Lucas turned out fine – only a small scar on his chin is still visible. The rest of  us were happy that we could go home, get a good night’s rest, and start the next morning with another day of trains – for the boys – and reading and writing for me.

Travel to and study in Berlin & Prague!

Recruitment is underway for the Berlin & Prague trip this summer.
For more information see our website:
https://www.iusb.edu/intl-programs/Overseas%20Study%20Programs/berlin_prague.php

Find us on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/IusbInternationalPrograms

Memories of teatime

I arrived at a snug cottage in a London suburb, and my host mother greeted me across her white picket fence, “A cup of tea after your journey, Luv?” I was eighteen years old and in Britain for a photography tour organized by Ventura Community College. We learned about photography back home in California, took photos in Europe, and then developed our pictures in the darkroom at the college.

… and we drank a lot of tea – tea in the morning when we woke up, tea before we headed off to take pictures, tea with lunch, tea when we got home for the day, and tea in the evening before we turned in for the night.

As I learned quickly, my host mother’s question “some tea, Luv?” also meant, “would you like to sit and chat for a bit?”

Talking through my impression with my host mother over a cup of tea helped me to assimilate what I had learned. She explained what I had found to be new or strange in London. The ritual itself, the day punctuated by moments of pause and connection, was different than American hustle bustle. Sometimes I was impatient with the sitting and chatting, but I grew to appreciate it, and especially the way that she welcomed me into her home and wanted me to have a good experience in London.

Although I did not bring the teatime custom with me back to the US, I still think about my host mother Maggie when I read books and snuggle with my sons, when my husband makes one of his delicious café lattes and we talk over our day, or when I sit on our lawn with neighbors and watch neighborhood kids ride bikes. I remember that moments of connection with other people make up the stuff of life, and I think back to my experiences in London — the teatime and cozy conversation.