In the exciting and growing research area that envisions east central Europe as a colonial space, this hit and miss collection manages to hold both to that general theme, as well as its more general declared goal of blending gender together with postcoloniality. Like most edited volumes, the introduction valiantly argues that the collection of essays, although somewhat unwieldy, belong together. The editors correctly point out that despite our having literate colonial subjects, most colonial histories of Poland are from the point of view of the colonizer, in this case, the Germans. (The authors are correct, by the way, when they state that “it is likely no coincidence” that my edited volume, Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East, self-reflexively indicated whose voice would be heard [17]). While they are right to flag this issue, the critique is at odds with the overwhelming majority of the chapters which are strictly from the German point of view. Gender is handled more successfully. As promised in the introduction, it works its way into most chapters, and, as the editors point out, such a frame of reference takes us out of the usual strictures of national framing, and allows for comparative work that includes Poles, Germans, and Jews.

The first chapters contribute to a deeper understanding of colonial tropes in German literature about Poland by building upon a framework first laid out in the groundbreaking work of Kristin Kopp. Izabela Surynt and Jawad Daheur describe “emptiness,” reference parallels to Indians on the Western Frontier, and evoke wild, murky forests. The early standout however is the essay by Clara Frysztacka, first and foremost because her work is from the Polish point of view, and secondly, because of its nuance. She illustrates how her subject, the Polish press around 1900, is sometimes self-orientalizing, tends to “other” Germans, and describes Lithuania as a land in need of Polish civilization, and thus colonization. Such complexity, away from strict black and white, colonizer/colonized binaries, is a fundamental element of east central European postcoloniality.

From here, things are, again, hit and miss: Maciej Górny's piece on German and Polish ethno-psychology is hard to unpack, but Maria Wojtczak's article on German female authors and their shifting positions vis-à-vis the German-Polish relationship from 1890 to 1939 is an accomplished study. Matthias Barelkowski introduces us to his initial findings regarding German Jews and the “progressive women's movement” in the Prussian East. It is an intervention like Grazyna Liczbinska's article on late nineteenth-century Lutheran German men marrying Catholic Polish women that has all the hallmarks of classic studies of colonial encounters, however, and more such work would have been useful and directly to the point of the volume. Masculinity is haphazardly introduced in the latter part of the collection, such as in the article by Pascale Mannert that forwards a theory of ambivalent masculinity in eastern Galicia, using one single subject's writings. Jolanta Mickute's study of idealized Jewish women in the east provides an interesting twist on the colonizing mind. Mickute makes the case for these women as excellent colonizers, but for a distant, Zionist project. Jews are central again in Christhardt Henschel's analysis of the Polish interwar attempts to integrate minorities into the military. The final section involves three studies of the Nazi occupation. Jan H. Issinger's piece on the training of German Ordnungspolizei as colonial officers is an area ripe for further analysis, and I will look out for his future work on this subject. Wiebke Lisner describes the strange situation of midwifery in the Warthegau, and Krystyna Radziszweska analyzes the perversely modernizing effect of life in concentration camps for illiterate women.

The volume closes with the always wise words of Winson Chu. After walking us through the relevant literature and pointing out that Poland was late to the postcolonial studies game, Chu explains that today, on the one hand, the liberal left in Poland self-colonizes by constantly holding themselves up to the west as the only model to strive for, while on the other hand, conservatives invoke postcoloniality in their nationalist arguments. Chu ends with his usual refrain that employing the “colonial” lense as a framework for analysis can be too narrow, and that, especially when we include literate natives, à la Frysztacka's intervention in this volume, the story becomes much more complicated.

The book is recommended for specialists due to several important essays.