Meanings of Modernity in Central Europe: Gdynia and Upper Silesia: Two Faces of Modernist Poland

Presenter: Andrzej Szczerski, lecturer, Institute of Art History, Jagiellonian University, Kraków. This two-day symposium addresses the framework for modernism in the region covered by the German and Austro-Hungarian empires and their successor states, from roughly 1890 to 1945. The state of affairs summed up under the term "modernity," and the cultural responses to it designated "modernism" or, more radically, "avantgarde," are commonly understood to derive from historical developments in the nation-states of western Europe and North America.