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which, without any further context, are obviously positive. On the second level, Germany as the economic and military power is perceived. This fea-ture is considered as uniąuely negative and potentially dangerous from the point of view of the Polish community. It has its origin in the commbn con-viction of German enmity towards Poles (Adamski 1991, Jasińska-Kania 1991, Nowicka 1991). The latest research polis show that the animosity of Poles towards Germans has been decreasing but still Germans are among the three most disliked nations in Poland (PGSS 1993).

The German image of the Pole is different and, in many respects, opposite to the Polish image of the German. Poland is considered as a weak, badly ru-led, not very organised country. Poles are viewed as bad, disordered workers. Studies indicate that young Germans are steadily less concemed with Poland and still locate this country in the Eastern rather than in the Central Europę (Dammer and Weber 1992). The negative image of Pole in the conscious-ness of German youths is mainly built on the basis of their contacts with Poles who came to Germany looking for work or to make the "street business”. This basis obviously cannot give seriously motivated positive impressions (Dammer and Weber 1992).

Many scientists who work on the Polish-German relations are c<?nvin-ced that the year 1989, that is the year of the end of the totalitarian system in Poland followed by the similar changes in East Germany, closes the post-war epoch in these relations. It seems that the manipulation of the social consciousness has been finished in this year and the democratic changes give good opportunities to overcome the mutual national antagonisms. In fact, this could happen by creating wide possibilities of dialogue between both nations (Wolf-Poweska 1993). One of the reasons for which I have been working on the subject is a verification of the hypothesis that it is necessary to pro-mote a new substance into the educational politics. Of course, it stimulates the European integration. The real integration can only happen by oVerco-ming many existing prejudices in the social consciousness of both nations.

The State borders are luckily open now, but the borders in human men-tality are still solid and it must take a long time to stop people's wrong no-tions and prejudices. The new political situations in Europę, the commonly accepted need of the integration not only of the western but of all the nations of Europę, make it necessary to smear out many dissents existing in the present national consciousness. Especially the divisions into “ours” and “others” must disappear from many places as soon as possible. The inten-tion of this contribution is to present the content analysis of the jecent offi-cially accepted history textbooks in the context of still existing numerous obstacles on the way towards the European integration.

The type of ethnocentrism existing in the textbooks is typical of nations with a long history of common borders. The most appropriate here are the concepts of ‘‘good folks” opposite to ‘‘bad strangers” (ChalasinSki'1935, Estel 1983), ‘‘a stranger close in space but socially distant” (Simmel 1975) or ‘‘a stranger in the right place” (Nowicka 1990). The stranger is dominantly different and certainly worse than folk (Fuchs, Gerhards, Rollerl993).

The role of history textbooks is to present the facts from the past ac-cording to the recent scientific knowledge. I am far from postulating to pass over the difficult facts in order not to stimulate the existing mutual antago-nisms. I am convinced, however, that the role of the textbook$ in modem