Multi-heirs heritage: a case study of pottery from a Polish-German Town

The article focuses on the phenomenon of pottery produced in Boleslawiec, a town that underwent a shift in state affiliation: after World War II the formally German town became Polish. Nowadays, Polish Boleslawiec ceramics is widely recognised as a trademark, part of the Polish heritage and a national symbol. The article was initiated by a simple question: how is it possible, considering that only a couple dozen years before, Boleslawiec pottery was in fact Bunzlau pottery, made by German craftsmen for hundreds of years? The authors analyse the process of creating heritage by re-constructing the biography of the ceramics and emphasising two coexistent forces that influenced the course of cultural production: political ideology and neoliberal mechanisms. Finally, they propose two terms: 'multi-heirs heritage' and 'economics of (non)memory' that enable them to grasp the complexity of the actors (people and institutions), attitudes and strategies that affected the researched case.