Anna Wolff-Powęska was born in Tarnopol (now Ukraine) in 1941. Directly after the end of the Second World War, her family was relocated away from Eastern Poland which had been annexed by the Soviet Union. She grew up in Wągrowiec, a town which belonged to Prussia after Poland had been divided between 1793 and 1918. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
The prizewinner worked, for example at the Adam Mickiewicz University and as the Director of the Institute for Western Affairs (Instytut Zachodni) from 1990-2004. She currently teaches at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities) in Warsaw and is chair of the Scientific Council at the Centre for Historical Research at the Polish Academy of Science in Berlin. As a publicist, she publishes articles, for example in the “Gazeta Wyborcza”, Poland’s second largest daily newspaper, and the periodical “Przegląd Zachodni”.
Prof. Dr. Anna Wolff-Powęska is considered to be one of the most important Polish experts on German history and German-Polish relations. She has published fundamental articles on these topics. Her key fields of research cover a broad international, political, cultural, philosophical and ethical context. Her research interests focus in particular on the 19th and 20th Centuries, totalitarianism and its conquest, German-Polish neighbourship and political philosophy.
She has already received several awards for her academic achievements and for her efforts towards reconciliation and the fostering of German-Polish relations. For example, she was awarded the Ryszard Kapuściński Prize of the Voivodeship Greater Poland, the European Citizens’ Prize (2014) and the Viadrina Prize of the European University Viadrina Frankfurt Oder (2016).
In its statement on the reasons for awarding the prize to Prof. Dr. Anna Wolff-Powęska, the jury of the Pomerania Nostra Prize refers to her publications on German-Polish relations that are held in high esteem amongst German and Polish historians and publicists. Many articles from other researchers would be hard to imagine without her works on Germany and the German-Polish relations.
The Pomerania Nostra Prize was created in 2003. The prize benefactors are the Universities of Greifswald and Szczecin, the newspaper Kurier Szczecìnski (Szczecin) as well as the town of Greifswald and city of Szczecin. The biannual prize honours personalities who have made notable contributions to the areas of the arts, science, industry or politics and have thus played a significant role in the advancement of German-Polish dialogue. The former prizewinners are Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Berthold Beitz (2003), Prof. Krzysztof Skubiszewski (2005), Janina Jasnowska and Prof. Dr. Michael Succow (2007), Prof. Dr. Władysław Filipowiak (2009), the cultural festival polenmARkT (2011), Prof. Dr. Eugeniusz Kus (2013) and Prof. Dr. Norbert Hosten (2015).
Further information
Important publications of Prof. Dr. Anna Wolff-Powęska
- · “Doktryna geopolityki w Niemczech” (1979)
- · “Polityczne i filozoficzne nurty konserwatyzmu w Republice Federalnej Niemiec” (1984)
- · “Niemiecka myśl polityczna wieku oświecenia” (1988)
- · “Wspólna Europa. Mit czy rzeczywistość” (red., 1990)
- · “Polen in Deutschland, Integration oder Separation?” (Düsseldorf 2000)
- · “A bliźniego swego. Kościoły w Niemczech wobec “problemu żydowskiego” (2003)
- · “Pamięć – Brzemię i uwolnienie. Niemcy wobec nazistowskiej przeszłości, 1945–2010” (2011)
More Information about the Prize
Contact at the University of Greifswald
Jan Meßerschmidt
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Tel.: +49 3834 420 1150
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