Date: 2009
Type: Working Paper
The Limits and Merits of Internationalism. Experts, the State and the International Community in Poland in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Working Paper, EUI RSCAS, 2009/41
STEFFEN, Katrin, KOHLRAUSCH, Martin, The Limits and Merits of Internationalism. Experts, the State and the International Community in Poland in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, EUI RSCAS, 2009/41 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/12235
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
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.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/12235
ISSN: 1028-3625
Series/Number: EUI RSCAS; 2009/41