Podwójnie zapomniane: diakonisy Śląskiego Ewangelickiego Domu Sióstr w Cieszynie i Bielsku

Abstract

The first Lutheran Sisters’ House in Austrian Silesia, the Schlesisches Evangelisches Schwesternhaus, was established in 1892 together with the General Hospital of the Lutheran Church in Cieszyn. The contribution of this Sisters’ House to the development of medical care and women’s professional activity in Cieszyn Silesia has not yet been recognized by historians and local communities, while for the Lutheran community it was an element of its difficult German heritage. The article focuses on processes related to social memory: the Silesian deaconesses were “doubly forgotten”: as women, the memory of whom very quickly vanishes as unimportant in patriarchal culture; and as members of a German-speaking institution, expelled from Polish history and memory. After the Second World War, the Silesian-Cieszyn Lutheran community cut itself off from the German heritage, and mainly emphasized its Polish character, because religious minorities are particularly sensitive to such processes. The project used the anthropological method of extended case study.