The Limits and Merits of Internationalism. Experts, the State and the International Community in Poland in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Employing the example of two Polish technical experts – the metallurgist Jan Czochralski and the architect-urbanist Szymon Syrkus, who both reached the peak of their careers in the Interwar period, the article sketches a particular space of expertise in the newly developing states of Central Europe after 1918 and in Poland in particular. For experts like Czochralski and Syrkus a new and pronounced state activity helped to bring about a space of opportunities but was also a source of severe restrictions and demands for loyalty. With the Second World War and then with the establishment of a socialist regime this space vanished and a particular kind of experts, relying heavily on the transnational structures still being in place in central Eastern Europe before the war almost ceased to exist.