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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur

@agatumilowicz.bsky.social
2K followers 1.6K following 1K posts

Scholar & Writer ✍🏻 Ph.D. NYU Comparative Literature I write on archive, nature, memory, and layers of Polish, Jewish and German heritage in my native Lower Silesia. Words in The Brooklyn Rail, Triangle House Review, CEU Review of Books, Apofenie, etc

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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Find it here: www.aup.nl/en/book/9789... (and yes, I know the author 🤣 and yes, I did read early drafts of this book and witnessed the process of its creation for many, many years…)
aup.nl
To Kill a Spy
On an August afternoon in 1910, a Polish nationalist gunned down an alleged Russian spy on the streets of Kraków. Afterward the murderer claimed that he had done a great deed for “Poland,” though no s...
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I like stories that are well-researched and engaging and I guarantee that this is one of those books - a fascinating study of nationalism and radical politics. It examines what motivates people to see "self-defense" as a justification for horrible acts. A timely read and a page-turner.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Coming back to spread the word about a very special publication, out today🥳 For history buffs and those who like like to dabble in true crime, here it is: To Kill a Spy, a historical investigation of a 1910 murder in Kraków that unravels everyday nationalism, radicalization and espionage paranoia.
Cover of a book To Kill a Spy: Everyday Nationalism and Political Violence in Fin-de-Siècle Europe
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
First time for everything - this time in the archive I stumbled upon an ID card issued by the Control Commission for Germany (British Zone). A trace of one woman’s story, from forced labor to a passage to the “Recovered Territories.”
an ID card issued in 1947 by the Control Commission for Germany (British Zone)reverse of an ID card issued in 1947 by the Control Commission for Germany (British Zone)
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Some other quiet whispers I caught this weekend. Some of them get louder and louder…Schallplatten, anyone?
The old German inscription peeking out from behind a layer of paint, juxtaposed with a Polish name of the street.Old building with a little paint peeling off.Another inscription speaking out.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Thank you, it is!!! Now just keeping my fingers crossed for Polish publishers to be more welcoming to my writing…
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Hahaha! I forgot about this thread too - neglected it, sadly, to focus on writing BUT will try to update it more often from now on 🙂
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I’ve heard about it! But thank you for this reminder and thinking about me 🤗
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Forgot that my hobby doesn’t simply have a moment of completion. Every rain strips the walls, revealing old letters and inscriptions… Traces of the past that weren’t there just three months ago are finally seeing the light of day 🫠
A ruin of an old inn / movie theater suddenly starts shedding its outer layer to show the fragments of history.Old letters peeking out from underneath the layers of the outer paint.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
In non-Lower Silesian news, I was super lucky to spend the last week in Aberdeenshire and a small part of the Scottish Highlands and I am blown away. I also felt that, with some of the mountain views, I saw a glimmer of my Lower Silesian home 🥲 Maybe we’re view-and-granite-related, after all 😂
Rattray Head Lighthouse Crovie - a remote fishing village at the North SeaHeathers, sheep and a rainbow.A very Lower Silesian view in Scotland.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Yesterday I stumbled across this archival search platform, and can I just say: this is so cool. As someone obsessed with archives, I wholeheartedly approve of this acronym 🫠 I feel seen! Dear Belgians, thanks for making my day.
A welcome photo of Agatha - the online search platform of the Belgian State Archives. Also happens to be my name.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
It’s perfect for neurotics! Highly recommend 😎
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
“Fun” fact down my alley: During communism, the official narrative attributed the canal's design to a "Dutch" engineer named Georg Steenke. Steenke was actually Prussian through and through, but it was easier to praise the Dutch in the "Recovered Territories”…The myth is not fully dead yet.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
The wildest part? The canal is over 80km long, but to conquer the massive hills, the boat is lifted out of the water, attached to a carriage, and pulled over tracks on dry land. Surreal!
The boat is sailing across the grass (on tracks)Finally, the boat is heading down towards the water…
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I sailed on grass and I liked it! Last weekend I had the chance to take a boat trip on the Elbląg Canal (formerly Oberländischer Kanal). I went specifically to experience history - the canal was built in the mid-19th century, and the engineering marvel is still running!
A print of the Oberländischer Kanal by Hermann PennerThe canal, completed in 1860, is still running.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
📢 Syllabus Award competition📢 If you teach a Polish Studies class and have a syllabus you’re quite proud of - why don’t you share it with us? My colleagues and I will be delighted to read your syllabi, and who knows? The award might be yours! 🥰
Announcement for a Polish Studies Association syllabus award competition.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Ojej, bardzo dziękuję ♥️ podróż się udała! 😊
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
lol, right?! I ask myself the same question all the time…
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
PKP(@pkpintercitypdp.bsky.social) don’t even know it, but today they’re transporting what may be their oldest passenger yet: my grandpa, aged 100 years and 10 months. We're recreating a trip we took together 30 years ago, heading to Lubuskie. Stories from the 1940s abound!
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Recently revisited one of my favorite hikes. There’s a stone there that could just as well be a monument to the good times had by all the people of this land, Germans and Poles alike. It’s been collecting “I was here” scribbles since at least 1928.
A stone bearing numerous carved names and dates, left by visitors - both German and Polish - over the years
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Thank you ♥️ it’s a blessing, indeed. Where in Lower Silesia was your dad from?
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
that’s cool! I was a child in post-communist Poland, and there was a period when I would have a recurring dream whenever I had a fever - it always ended with Wałęsa sitting on top of a wall. I always thought it was odd, but then realized how much my mind was saturated with the politics of the time🥲
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
🫶🏻 you two!
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
😳😳😳 holy smokes…I take a break from SM for a couple of hours and THIS is what he posts…?? Thanks for sharing, I wouldn’t even dare 🤣
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Stoked he’s back posting regularly. Here’s another one „20 min long water bed massage.” Still living his best life!
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
…aaaand he’s back! (+ in Lower Silesia, so I absolutely had to)
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Every trespassing adventure brings a different find. Here’s another one.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Ran into a meeting of three fab old doors 💙
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
@abertrotzdem.bsky.social I thought about you on this trip! Weirdly enough, I instantly recognized this building, from the pictures you had showed me!
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Bolków or this particular place? It’s called Ars Et Historia
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
There are also enlarged postcards of old Bolkenhain adorning the walls, and I love it. This feels like a beautiful way to engage with the past - layer it and embrace it.
Old Bolkenhain postcards adorning the walls of the library. Old Bolkenhain postcards adorning the walls of the library. A table and four hangers stand their ground, marking the present. Old Bolkenhain postcards adorning the walls of the library, embracing the past.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I’ve gotten used to exploring ruins. With so few Protestants left in the area, many former German Protestant churches either “converted” to Catholicism or were left to decay. But here’s a lovely surprise - this one in Bolków (formerly Bolkenhain) is now a beautiful library and gallery. Swoon!
An interior of a formerly German Protestant church turned into a library/gallery.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Good point! Or a “Saisonstaat”, also a similar sentiment.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
I don’t think so! No author, no source. Perhaps it was produced for/by the soldiers. I was going through what remained from the Kriegsarchiv in my hometown and there it was…
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
No. Just alone in a file. Source unknown. But grouped together with pre-1945 local files documenting the war (from the German perspective, of course.)
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Today in the archive: ran into a German obituary for Poland, from 1939. Yikes. Not sure why anyone would write something like this, but here it is.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Some tiles remind me of beautiful galaxies. Today I found another one.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
This could be a crossover between my tiles and doors threads 🤭 Either way, I was just happy to find a hallway that breathed history.
Old hallway, kept practically intact for years with original doors and tiles.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Wspaniałe!!! (Ale, tak jak już wcześniej wspominałam - żadna Pani! ☺️)
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Well, that’s a first… The least inviting of all. Not sure if this even qualifies as door, but hey, at least the stone door frame was kept!
Bricked up door with the old stone frame kept as a memento.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
That blacksmith made my day 🤣
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Another forgotten, unused and overgrown and yet - still around, still pretty.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
It’s 2026 and it’s May but the doors of Lower Silesia continue to inspire awe. What I found today knocked me off my feet. Because just when I thought I’d seen it all in my hometown, I found this 1902 gem - with this little guy 😭 Pure giddy joy.
1902 Jugendstill door with a tiny ornamentation of a blacksmith on the top. 
A tiny ornamentation of a blacksmith on the old German door.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
I’m not a car person and this is unrelated to my usual content, but I found this at the attic and I need some answers. Can anyone explain how complicated was it to fix a Fiat 125p with this fuel repair kit? Screws and springs? What’s going on?
A Fiat 125p fuel repair kit from 1980s.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Haha! 🤝
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Haha! 🙌🏻
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
What am I up to? Still misusing old German objects. This is certainly not cinnamon.
An old German container with inscription „Zimmt” - cinnamon, holding a jade plant cutting.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Thank you very much! Your perspective means a lot. And yes, this is precisely what drives me to those objects, their persistence and inevitable doubling. Thank you for reading!
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Yes! Great find. Sometimes they pop up, totally unexpectedly.
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Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur @agatumilowicz.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
A reminder that war, any war, leaves traces far beyond our lifetimes. This gate stopped me in my tracks today. It still bears the marks of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, as if it just happened.
Metal gate bearing the marks of gunfire from the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
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