Lviv: A City of Many Sides. Presentation of the Anthology

We invite you to the presentation of the anthology Lviv: A City of Many Sides, edited by Jagoda Wierzejska, that presents a carefully curated collection of primary sources documenting the events of 1918–1919 in Lviv and Eastern Galicia from the perspectives of different national communities that experienced them.

The volume brings together memoirs, testimonies, reports, and contemporary documents produced by Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, Austrian, and German witnesses, allowing readers to reconstruct the conflict over the city in its historical complexity. The collected texts represent not only different national viewpoints, but also diverse social positions and forms of experience, including the voices of soldiers, civilians, women, clergy, local observers, as well as diplomats and political actors. By juxtaposing these heterogeneous testimonies, the anthology highlights the multiethnic and socially differentiated character of Lviv and demonstrates how the same events could be perceived and interpreted in markedly different ways.

By assembling such a wide range of perspectives in a single volume, the book creates conditions for a more nuanced and historically grounded discussion of the conflict over Lviv and Eastern Galicia. The coexistence of divergent testimonies makes visible the complexity of the past and encourages interpretation that takes into account the plurality of experiences rather than a single, unified narrative. Making these materials accessible in a critical edition enables readers to confront differing memories, expectations, and political languages that shaped the accounts of the events. Familiarity with this diversity of viewpoints is important for informed scholarly and public reflection on the region’s history, particularly in situations in which interpretations of the past continue to influence contemporary debates.

The event will be held in Polish and Ukrainian with simultaneous interpretation.

Participants of the presentation

The presentation will take place as part of the public program "Source as a Choice" organized by the Center for Urban History in partnership with Documenting Ukraine / IWM and Research Centre Ukraine / Max Weber Foundation.  

During the meetings, researchers will share their work with various sources on war and mass violence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The choice to create and preserve sources can be one of the tools for embodying this violence or, on the contrary, for opposing it. Our choice to talk about these events through the prism of certain sources creates a field in which the complex past will live on in the present and future.

Credits

Cover Image: Lviv: A City of Many Sides / fot. Centrum Mieroszewskiego