Początki organizowania struktur mniejszości niemieckiej w Bydgoszczy (1989−1992)

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a period of rapid political transformations in both Poland and Germany. These changes were also reflected in the attitude of the Polish authorities towards the German population residing in Poland. Since the early 1980s, efforts had been made among Germans to establish a legalized an organization. However, faced with persistent legal impossibility of registering and undertaking official activities, they forming informal groups. The earliest of these emerged in the Katowice and Opole voivodships. Soon, contacts were established with activists from other regions, including Bydgoszcz, where, beginning in the late 1988 and early 1989, local organizers, following the example of groups from Upper Silesia, began efforts to organize similar structures in their communities. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the formation and development of German minority structures in Bydgoszcz between 1989 and 1992 and to contextualize these events within the broader national process of organizing the German minority in Poland. The primary sources for this study are unedited materials produced by the Association of the German Minority in Bydgoszcz, housed in the archives of the Centre for the Research of the German Minority in Opole. The emerging organization in Bydgoszcz served as a repository of biographies and materials relating to the residents of Bydgoszcz and the surrounding area who identified with the German minority, functioning as a an archive of previously unrecorded fates of the local Germans.