The title of the conference was identical to the theme of an ongoing research project located at the GWZO. Antemurale christianitatis, Cyrillomethodiana and Marian cults, were explored within the wider framework of the study of post-communist memory, religion, and trans-nationalism as contemporarily effective lieux de mémoire in central Eastern Europe. It was posed that they may possibly reflect both wider, culturally specific, structures of longue durée in the region reaching back to pre-communist traditions as well as to recent cultural transformations resulting from processes of nationalisation, secularisation, and various political appropriations during communism and after. In exploring past and present continuity and change, as well as national and transnational patterns of religious identifications and representations, the conference began a cross-disciplinary interrogation.

In his key-note, SORIN ANTOHI (Târgu-Ocna) immediately reminded us that there are other tropes that could be equally important. He highlighted the significance of shared Latinity as an alternative trope in the case of Romania. Similarly, in the round table discussion GERHARD PODSKALSKY (Frankfurt am Main) pointed out the significance of the trope of ‘election’ in conjunction with the role of Saint Sava for the Serbs and much of the Orthodox Slavica in general. The particular tropes selected for this conference further cross-cut religious affiliations dominantly present in the wider region of central Eastern Europe; all having deep historical roots of religious practice and veneration as well as of political instrumentalisation and the ‘domestication of religion,’ as phrased by Dragadze1; their long-durée appears palpable exactly because of their shared legacy of both communist state suppression and nationalist appropriation, which still affect the concepts’ current situation within the post-socialist politics of identity and religion, be this within popular belief or, as Toebst said in his introduction, canonised by the institutions.

As ANNE C. KENNEWEG (Leipzig), chair of the panel on the antemurale concept (i.e. the idea of representing the bulwark of Christianity), proposed that this specific concept ‘can be found filled with various meanings,’ depending on what appears as politically considered useful in specific contexts. Following VJEKOSLAV PERICA’s (Utah/Rijeka) key-note elaborations on the ways in which it informs Serb contemporary mythopoetic perceptions of Kosovo, this concept was the explicit theme of two papers restricted to historical perspectives. MALGORZATA MORAWIEC (Mainz) traced the concept’s pre-mythic origins from papal diplomacy and strategic realpolitik in the 14th century before it expanded to denoting attitudes considered proper for a Catholic nobleman such as faithfulness and devotion to Pope. VIKTORIA POLLMANN (Hofheim a. Ts.) discussed early political utilisations in shifting historical-political contextualisation with regard to Polish history. Both presentations, unfortunately, stopped short of discussing the contemporary, post-communist expressions and implications of this concept even though today it is still operated as a national myth particularly in Poland (as well as in Croatia and elsewhere in the region, as Kenneweg pointed out). This was all the more regrettable given how clear these presentations highlighted the concept’s long history of transnationally effective and contextually shifting utilizations in the politics of transnational allegiances versus bilateral alienation.

More implicitly, historical patterns of national interpretations of antemurale emerged that were not just based on a semiotically dichotomous forms of ordering the world in obvious categories of inclusion versus exclusion. Rather, they had already served the ideological construction of ‘debt’ relations relevant for identity in the past, not just in juxtaposition to the demonised ‘other’ but for differentiation within the reference group of belonging. The positing of relations of obligations was ideologically based on the respective nation’s alleged historical ‘sacrifice’ in fulfilling its ‘bulwark’ functions on behalf of the wider group (Pollmann). Yet equally, as AGNIESZKA HALEMBA (Leipzig) elaborated later with regard to Central European Marian cults, the same myth could potentially support ideologies of self-reliance. It would have been enlightening to trace how history provides the templates for contemporarily effective ideologies, for example, in national vs. transnational politics of integration, national representation and distribution within the EU.

Cyrillomethodiana (Slavonic identities based on collective veneration of the saints Cyrill and Methodius) was the concept explored in depth in terms of a varied history of both communist and post-communist appropriations and transformations. Perhaps, as WILFRIED JILGE (Leipzig/Wien) introduced it, is this due to the ‘trivalence’ of the concept which can draw on religious, cultural and pan-communist traditions. The ‘elasticity’ in terms of the concept’s possible political interpretations became particularly apparent during the panel devoted to this topic. DANIELA KOLEVA (Sofia) outlined, on the basis of oral history and commemorative culture, how Cyrill and Methodius as a site of originally unanimous common memory and veneration amongst ordinary Bulgarians during Communism successfully became part of the ‘messianisation of politics’ and the ‘sacralisation of nationalism’. Yet this process eventually reduced the trope to a secularized signifier of the nation that today, in the context of post-communist aspirations, has offered itself as a pan-Slavic myth and a myth of shared Christianity to help positioning Bulgaria in the broader context of European integration. STEFAN ROHDEWALD (Passau) explored a contrasting process in Macedonia. Here, the Yugoslav disintegration processes made an exclusive national identity construction and emancipation of the core political-ideological objective. The concept was expanded to elevate one of the holy brothers’ disciples, Clement of Ohrid, to centre stage jointly with Cyrill and Methodius, yet as an exclusively Macedonian national saint. EVA KOWALSKÁ (Bratislava) presented a different example, which highlighted the limits to national ideology construction where it does not resonate with the people. The Slovakian national Cyrill and Methodius cult was only during Communism elated to the position of national symbols and still today remains confined to the discourse of the official and elite. Lastly, MARTIN WALDE’s (Bautzen/Budyšin) paper presented the opposite case where a people, here the Catholic part of the Sorb national minority in Germany, have chosen veneration of these saints as a token of their identity. To the Catholic Sorbs, Cyrill and Methodius - as part of their myth of early Slav (Moravian) Christianisation - prove their Slavic origins and distinguish their group identity within the German majority population. Curiously, this myth competes with another one: the myth of forced Christianisation through German colonialisation, a suppression overcome through miracles evident in the cults of Mary of Marienstern and of Lehnin.

Introducing the last panel, Halemba highlighted how Marian cults can feed into the myth of the chosen people, similar to Cyrillomethodiana and how the Marian promises of suffering, similar to antemurale, may highlight self-reliance. She pointed out how such cults enable ordinary people to identify their personal concerns with wider collective ones and speak about national and universal issues simultaneously. This was the panel that was paid most attention, especially to the bottom-up perspective and the power of popular religiosity, even though occasionally at the expense of historical depth. On the basis of her ethnography among Slovak Roma, TATIANA PODOLINSKA (Bratislava) highlighted the Charismatics’ cult’s potentials of providing narratives of both inclusion (‘Mother of All’) and segregation (‘Chocolate Mary’ – a dark-skinned Mary who is perceived as the real, not symbolical mother of the Roma). Taking a unique approach and using several Central European examples of venerated and miraculous images of the Virgin, EWA KLEKOT (Warszawa) delved into the conservationist power of emic valuations of aesthetics that emerged as primarily based on favouring the familiar and mimetic. Contrary to Polish elite evaluations of taste, in popular religious practice and perspectives she found kitsch assigned to those modern images that diverted from these ideals and were, consequently, also perceived as ‘ugly.’ Lastly, ANNA NIEDZWIEDZ (Buffalo/Kraków) demonstrated how popular sentiments fuse national suffering with the suffering of ‘Our Lady’, here of Czestochowa, could turn against the iconoclast Communist government. When it ‘imprisoned Virgin Mary’, attempting to curtail the pilgrimage by withdrawing the icon, the Polish pilgrims peregrinated an empty frame. Such powerful expressions of popular sentiment seem to still fuel nationalist-religious sentiments and politics in Poland today and resonate with tropes of resistance against the EU.

Finally, the roundtable discussion identified the tropes of suffering, redemption, salvation through sacrifice, and a people’s election to be the underpinning of all the selected topics discussed at this conference. Yet such underpinnings are not exclusive to these topics, and they are not the only ones operationalised in contemporary eastern Central Europe. They are also not exclusive to the wider Slavica, but relevant to many other (e.g. the Islamic and secular national movements) identity movements in Europe and elsewhere. Thus one question posed by Troebst would be where and why such tropes and topics are not playing any role today, for example in Protestant contexts in Europe and if these specific narratives have come out of post-communism, as Jilge asked, or just part and parcel of the human cultural reservoir of possible responses to crises and insecurities in general. Ethnographic studies such as Bowman’s2 on the nationalisation of a previously shared (Muslim/Christian) shrine in Palestine that with increasing outer tensions has become more univocal internally, would suggest so. In such a case, it seems that religious symbols and shrines anywhere may become the locus of ideological disambiguation, a rallying point of collective action, and a perception structured according to typical Manichean world views. Where post-socialist exposure to global capitalist modernity produces fundamental insecurities and is experienced as a threat rather than a chance, it is not surprising that religious populism prospers. Yet this does not necessarily have to be expressed through nationalism or transnationalism, but today it may just simply help assert conservative rural traditionalism within a given country3 and thus indicate popular re-appropriations of religious belief and practices from the previous ubiquitous state.

The conference abundantly made it clear that the ‘elasticity’ of the topics discussed was wide enough for them to not simply be analysed in terms of their political operationalisations. Particularly the last panel demonstrated how scholarly attention given to the ways in which these tropes resonate with ordinary people’s experience, perceptions, aspirations and agency allows for a thick description of ideological capacities of religious mythopoeia, expanding mere instrumentalist analyses of national identity and power politics in the past and present.

Conference Overview
Vjekoslav Perica (Utah/Rijeka): Pan-Orthodoxy and Russophilia in Post-Communist Serbia
Sorin Antohi (Târgu-Ocna): Romania's Competing Models of Transnationality

Panel 1: The Topos of Antemurale Christianitatis
Anne Kenneweg (Leipzig): Introduction
Viktoria Pollmann (Hofheim a. Ts.): Vom Antemurale Christianitatis zum Schutzwall gegen Barbarei und Chaos
Malgorzata Morawiec (Mainz): Das Antemurale-Verständnis bei den „Europa-Historikern“

Panel 2: Cyrillomethodiana
Wilfried Jilge (Leipzig/Wien): Introduction
Daniela Koleva (Sofia): St. St. Cyril and Methodius as a Lieu de Mémoire
Stefan Rohdewald (Passau): Im Schatten ihres Schülers Kliment: Kyrill und Method als Medien nationaler Identifikation und internationaler Anerkennung in Makedonien
Eva Kowalská (Bratislava): The Slav Apostels Cyril and Methodius: The Search for the Identity of the Saints within the Slovak Political Thought
Die Cyrill-Methodius-Idee bei den katholischen Sorben (Martin Walde)

Panel 3: The Cult of the Virgin Mary
Agnieszka Halemba (Leipzig): Introduction
Tatiana Podolinska (Bratislava): „Chocolate Mary” – Virgin Mary as a Medium of Integration and Separation among Roma in Slovakia
Ewa Klekot (Warszawa): The Judgement of Taste in the Context of Images of the Virgin
Anna Niedzwiedz (Kraków): The Figure of Mother of God as a Symbol of Resistance During Communism in Poland

Round Table Discussion: Religion and Remembrance:
Stefan Troebst (Leipzig), Gerhard Podskalsky (Frankfurt am Main), Vjekoslav Perica (Utah/Rijeka), Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (London)

Notes:
1 Dragadze, Tamara, The Domestication of Religion under Soviet Communism, in: Hann, Chris (ed.), Socialism. Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, London – New York 1993, pp. 148–156.
2 Bowman, Glenn, Nationalizing the Sacred: Shrines and Shifting Identities in the Israeili-Occupied Territories, in: Man (N.S.) 28 (1993), pp. 431 – 460.
3 Buzalka, Juraj: Religious Populism? Some Reflections on Politics in Post-Socialist South-East Poland, in: Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs 1 (2005), pp. 75 – 85.