Military issues in the research of Poznań historians from 1919 to 1939

Abstract

Established in 1919, the University of Poznań brought together scholars from Lviv and Kraków, a significant number of whom were historians. The fact that the University was located on the westermost border of the new country determined a specific direction of many research activities. That applied in particular to the humanities and above all history. In this discipline, from the very beginning, the selection of topics was focused on issues that did not arouse much interest outside Poznań, such as the Greater Poland Uprising, resistance to the Prussian rule in the 19th century and military struggles along the western state borders in earlier periods. The aim of the article is thus to trace these research achievements, rescue them from oblivion and draw attention to their interpretative specificity, which is largely due to the political conditions of the Poznań academic circle.