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58 Ewa Nasalska 6

exists in the Polish textbooks as well. The displacement is interpreted as the act of the historie justice justified by a long chain of events going back totheMiddle Ages, including even atrocities committed by the Teutonic Knights.

Comparison of data listed in Table 2 shows the disproportion between the Polish and German textbooks with respect to the text area that contains the Information about the displacement of Germans and the change of bor-ders between Poland and Germany. It is the result of the tendencies to ex-pose the territory losses and the sustained prejudices, on the one hand, and to present the German territory expansion as the obvious fact, on the other hand. The content analysis shows negative connotations with the term "Pole” (Specification 1).

2.1.2. IMAGE OF POLES "AT THEIR OWN PLACE”

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The image of Poles in their own country has both positive and negative elements. The fight against the authorities imposedby Russians after the Se-cond. World War or, in generał, the fight against the communistic rule is pre-sented as positive virtues. This interpretation evidently has its roots in ideology and politics. Aspirations of Poles for freedom and their struggle for the democracy and human rights are also indicated (Specifications 2 and 3). At the same time, however, the shorteomings such as bad management, corruption or even absurd activity ("Lebendige Vergangenheit”) are distinct-ly suggested in the textbooks. There are freąuently exposed such motifs as bad administration (of the government), protests against the inereasing of labour norms (of the blue workers), disorganised State economy, failed cre-dits, corruption). Aforementioned examples suggest and sustain negative ste-reotypes of Poles that are summarised in the popular in Germany and ex-tremely pejorative in the meaning saying — "die polnische Wirtschaft” (Specification 3).

The image of Poland under Soviet domination is negative; as an inca-pacitated satellite State and a member of the Warsaw Pact, Poland is percei-ved as the potential danger for Western Germany. The Polish state is badly ruled and, despite the economic help from the West, fights against politicał and economic reforms in its own country. In principle, such an image haś not been changing sińce the Polish opposition came into power, mainly be-cause the information about the time after 1989 is scarce and incomplete (Specification 3).

2.2. IMAGE OF GERMANS IN FOL1SH HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

Before the year 1991 only one history textbook for the highest class of the elementary school was obligatory in Poland^ Since 1992/1993 Polish teacher has been able to choose freely the textbook he preferred. At the same time, the new textbook, beside the old one, was published and followed soon by other textbooks as well. The two analysed in this paper, however, are the most freąuently used at school. The old textbook stresses out the pa-triotic and national interests to a higher extent. The new ęne is morę open to