The bridge, geopolitical metaphor of new German-Polish relations

Since its reunification Germany has constantly defined itself as a bridge in the centre of the new Europe. The bridge metaphor, also applied to the borderland between Germany and Poland and to former German territories lost in 1945, is the geopolitical instrument that has, since 1990, helped to construct new mental maps. It helped to soften the Drang nach Osten cliche and to go beyond the fatal Mittellage. Looking back on the historical and geographical evolution of Prussia/Germany and Poland one nevertheless becomes aware of how problematic this apparently innocent image is, for until the end of World War H bridges and bridgeheads had always been interpreted as the signs of German expansion.