Through an Orientalist Lens: Colonial Renderings of Poland in German Cinema after 1989

Summary

In his autobiographical travel narrative, Berlin–Moskau: Eine Reise zu Fuß (Berlin–Moscow: A Journey on Foot), the journalist Wolfgang Büscher gives an account of his 2001 hike across Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Setting off from Berlin, and after two days of walking east to Küstrin, he arrives at the Oder River and takes the first look over the German-Polish border to the other side:

Drüben war Polen. Ich saß auf dem Deich und sah zu, wie Rauch aus den beiden Schloten am anderen Ufer der Oder quoll, reich und fett wie in optimistischen alten Wochenschauen, sie stieg und stieg, die schwarze Fahne, dann fuhr der Westwind hinein und schwenkte sie weit nach Osten. Ich drehte mich nach Deutschland um, wo die letzte Sonne die mürben Ziegelsteine des Tagelöhnerhauses unten am Deich noch einmal durchglühte, bevor sie verlosch. Rauch, Wind, das niedrige alte Haus an den Deich geduckt—einen Moment lang konnte ich den Winter riechen, der drüben auf mich wartete, weit, weit drüben an anderen Ufern. Ein afrikanischer Mond ging auf, eine monströse Orange über dem Oderbruch.

[Over there was Poland. I sat on the embankment and watched the smoke drift out of the two chimneys on the other bank of the Oder, rich and fat like in the optimistic old news reels, it rose and rose, that black flag, then the west wind came in and swept it away eastwards. I turned to face Germany, where the last of the sun made the crumbling brickwork of the day laborer’s cottage further along the edge of the embankment glow before it faded away. Smoke, wind, the low, old house crouching on the embankment—for a moment I could smell the winter that lay over there waiting for me, far, far away on the other bank. An African moon rose, a monstrous orange over the flat, watery landscape of the Oderbruch.]

Büscher takes the elevated position of a spectator looking east to the unknown Polish side. He accentuates the panorama using dichotomies that amplify the difference between the occidental sphere he is about to leave, the Abendland, and the orientally coded terrain on the other bank of the river. While the juxtapositions of the past and the future, summer and winter, light and darkness, are projected onto the landscape, the reference to “African moon” and “other coasts” awaiting the eager traveler place the description unmistakably within postcolonial discourse.