Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, director of the Polish Institute in Berlin, was dismissed without notice last Wednesday, the German newspaper TAZ reports. Wielga-Skolimowska had been appointed in 2013, but her cultural programme has not found favour with Poland’s ruling right-wing PiS government, which was elected in 2015. According to TAZ, the Polish foreign ministry sees the Institute’s programme paying ‘too much attention to Jewish subjects’.
Wielga-Skolimowska’s firing comes after the ministry’s review of the 24 Polish Institutes around the world, which has seen the replacement of other Institute directors over their programmes; these include Dorota Barys, the head of the Polish Institute in Madrid reproached for, among other things, not promoting the work of celebrated Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. Such dismissals reflect a more conservative and promotional cultural policy coming out of the PiS, one emphasising Poland’s national identity and cultural traditions.
5 December 2016
