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TheWestern Institute inPoznań (Polish:Instytut Zachodni, GermanWest-Institut, French:L'Institut Occidental) is a scientific research society focusing on the Western provinces ofPoland -Kresy Zachodnie (includingGreater Poland,Silesia,Pomerania), history, economy and politics ofGermany, and the Polish-German relations in history and today.
Established by professorZygmunt Wojciechowski in 1944 inWarsaw, since 1945 based inPoznań. There were branches in Warsaw (1945–53),Wrocław (1948–49) and scientific posts inKraków andOlsztyn.
Full name:Instytut Zachodni. Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy im. Zygmunta Wojciechowskiego w Poznaniu
The Western Institute was founded in 1944 and became the flagship of the Polish Research of the West.[1]
The mission of the Institute is to conduct research projects within fields of political science, sociology, history, economics and law-especially focusing on Polish-German issues as well as European politics. It has been founded by a group ofPoznań University professor in 1944, and incorporated with Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1992[2]
ProfessorWładysław Bartoszewski, Polish survivor ofAuschwitz, and renowned figure of Polish-Jewish and Polish-German reconciliation praised the work of the institute:
The work of the Institute carried out while Poland was acommunist country has been criticised by American historian Richard Blanke as having anti-German bias[4]Other criticism of work from this period have included allegations of propaganda and dullness while admitting that the Institute produced "some good works on political sciences and legal systems"[5]
German historianGregor Thum has written that the premise of the research concept of the Western Institute in the first decades was the idea of an eternal German-Polish antagonism and thus the Institute's research, like its German counterpart, theOstforschung, was based on explicit political objectives, active support of the territorial claims of the state and the distribution of research results by popular science.[6]
After the fall of communism, the Institute has been one of the leading institutions in joint Polish-German scholarship and cooperation.[citation needed]
