Am Planetarium 7
Phone: +49 (0) 3641 9 44070
Mail: j.p.kochanowski@uw.edu.pl
Jerzy Kochanowski (born 1960, Warsaw) received his PhD in 1991 and his postdoctoral degree in 2001 from the University of Warsaw From 2000 - 2005 he was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. In 2005 he became a university professor and in 2012 a full professor at the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw. Since 2020 he is a Professor at the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw. From 2006 - 2007 he was a research fellow at the Munk Centre of International Studies at the University of Toronto and in 2007 has been a visiting professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, as well as Fellow at the Hoover Institution at the Stanford University (2024). He previously held an Imre Kertész Kolleg fellowship 2011 – 2012 and 2018.
The Survival Strategies in Occupied Poland 1939-1945. A new Perspective
The project aims to provide an original perspective on the German occupation, or rather the German occupations. Within the area occupied by Germany alone, which from the summer of 1941 (after the aggression against the USSR) covered almost the entire pre-war territory of Poland, the range of different experiences was vast, both between occupational administrative units (e.g., the General Government, the Wartheland) as well as within them, between city and countryside, between individual social, professional, ethnic and age groups. The occupation was not a static and homogeneous phenomenon but rather a diverse and dynamic one, full of complex interactions. The occupation also forced the development of ingenious survival strategies. The planned project will be the first comprehensive attempt to categorize and analyse Polish survival strategies, which under contemporary definitions are understood as a system of values serving to recognise and assess opportunities and threats, on which the actions depend that aimed at securing existence. These were planned, long-term, carefully thought-out but also dynamic phenomena, prompting social actors to adapt to changing circumstances and use resources appropriately.
The project will be supplemented by cross-sectional perspectives, both in terms of territory (going beyond the previous research focusing on the so-called General Government) and socially by taking into account not only the intelligentsia but also workers and peasants. Cross-cutting perspectives also include the struggle against hunger and cold, as well as spatial mobility, i.e. the voluntary, intentional, and purposeful crossing of borders, both internal and external, established during the occupation. The last part of the project will be an attempt to define and describe the process of ‘taming’ the occupation, both materially and psychologically. The project may be treated as an encouragement and invitation to interdisciplinary, methodologically innovative, cross-sectional research on Polish society during WWII.
Jerzy Kochanowski, The Other October Revolution. Poland, 1956-57 (Padernborn: BRILL-Schöningh, 2023)
Jerzy Kochanowski, Pomiędzy. Krótka historia Warszawy [Between. Short History of Warsaw] (Warszawa: Muzeum Warszawy, 2023)
Jerzy Kochanowski, „Wolne miasto”. Zakopane 1956-1970 [A ‘Free City’. Zakopane 1956-1970] (Kraków: ZNAK, 2019)
Jerzy Kochanowski, Rewolucja międzypaździernikowa. Polska 1956-1957 [An Inter-October-Revolution. Poland 1956-1957] (Kraków: Znak, 2017).
Jerzy Kochanowski, Trough the Back Door. Black Market in Poland, 1944-1989 (Frankfurt/Main-New York: Peter Lang, 2017).
Jerzy Kochanowski, Jenseits der Planwirtschaft. Der Schwarzmarkt in Polen 1944-1989 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013).
Jerzy Kochanowski, Ryszard Kaczmarek eds., Wiesław Złoch, Swój plan wykonam. Dziennik górnika z 1972 [Wiesław Złoch, I will carry out my plan. Diary of a coal miner from 1972] (Warszawa: Scholar, 2023)
Jerzy Kochanowski, Klaus Ziemer eds., Polen und die Sowjetische Besatzungszone Deutschlands. Eine Dokumentenauswahl (Osnabrück: Fibre-Verlag, Fibre-Verlag, 2023)
Jerzy Kochanowski, Claudia Kraft eds., Rooms for Manoeuvre. Another Look at Negotiating Processes In the Socialist Block (Göttingen: V&R Vienna University Press, 2021)
Jerzy Kochanowski, Joachim von Puttkamer eds., 1956. (Nieco) inne spojrzenie. Eine (etwas) andere Perspektive (Warszawa: Neriton, 2016).
Jerzy Kochanowski, Piotr Długołęcki eds., Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1979 [Polish Diplomatic Papers 1979] (Warszawa: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2014).
Jerzy Kochanowski, ed., Warszawiacy nie z tej ziemi. Cudzoziemscy mieszkańcy stolicy 1945-1989 [Warsaw dwellers from beyond. Foreigners settled in the Polish Capital City 1945-1989] (Warszawa: Dom Spotkań z Historią, 2013).
Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jerzy Kochanowski, Joachim von Puttkamer, eds., Schleichwege. Inoffizielle Begegnungen sozialistischer Staatsbürger zwischen 1956 und 1989 (Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau, 2010).
Jerzy Kochanowski, The Black Food Market in the General Government, Poland, 1939–1945, Global Food History, 10:3, 2024; 271-288.
Jerzy Kochanowski, Życia Codzienne w okupowanej Polsce, czyli o czym (nieraz) zapominają historycy [Every Day Lives in Occupied Poland, or what Historians (sometimes) forget about], Kultura i Społeczeństwo, 1, 2024, 17-35.
Jerzy Kochanowski, Everyday Lives in Occupied Poland. Some Ideas for a (slightly) different View, Acta Poloniae Historica 125, 2022, 49-74.
Jerzy Kochanowski, 'A 'Great Change, or, the Poles' unfulfilled Daydream about having the Car (1956-7)", Acta Poloniae Historica 115 (2017): 71-95.
Jerzy Kochanowski, 'Les visages de l'occupation nazie en Pologne, 1939-1945: Les experiences des Polonais. Le destin de la population juive', Guerres Mondiales et Conflicts Contemprorains 261 (2016): 75-98.
Jerzy Kochanowski, Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt oder die fortdauernde Teilung Polens; The Hitler-Stalin-Pact or the Continuing Partition of Poland, in Riss durch Europa. Die Folgen des Hitler-Stalin-Pakts. Perspektiven aus Ostmitteleuropa/ Rift through Europe. The Concequences of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Perspectives from East-Central Europe, edited by A. Hilbrenner, Ch. Meißner, J. Morre (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2024) 90-113.
Jerzy Kochanowski, Staatsbürgerschaft in Polen – eine sinusförmige Entwicklung, in Staatsbürgerschaften. Frankreich, Polen, Deutschland seit 1789, edited by D. Blume, D. Gosenwinkel, R. Gross (München: PIPER, 2022) 43-53
Jerzy Kochanowski, Verborgene Einblicke in die Besatzungszeit, in K. Wyka, Leben als ob. Aufzeichnungen aus dem besetzten Polen (Paderborn: BRILL-Schöningh, 2022) VII-XXV.
Jerzy Kochanowski, A ‘Free City’? The Zakopane of Władyslaw Gomułka, 1956-1970, in Rooms for Manoeuvre. Another Look at Negotiating Processes In the Socialist Block, edited by Jerzy Kochanowskii & Claudia Kraft (Göttingen: V&R-Vienna University Press, 2021) 119-139.
Jerzy Kochanowski, Passports and profits: Foreigners on the trade routes of the Polish Peoples’s Republic (PPR), in Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century, edited by Włodzimierz Borodziej, Joachim von Puttkamer (London-New York: Routledge, 2020) 104-112.
Luminita Gatejel, Jerzy Kochanowwski, Transport, infranstructure and communication, in The Routledge History Handbook of Central and Easter Europe in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 1: Challenges of Modernity, edited by W. Borodziej, S. Holubec, J. v. Puttkamer (London-New York: Routledge, 2020) 129-182.
Jerzy Kochanowski, Black Market In the General Government 1939-1945: Survival Strategy or (Un)Official Economy, in Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, edited by Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Peter Haslinger, Agnes Laba (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) 27-47.
Please find the full list of publications on the website of the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw.