While coming in contact with the remnants of German cultures after the forced disappearance of the previous inhabitants, the new settlers in Polish "Recovered Territories" after 1945 were trying to include the objects that were left into the space of their everyday practices and produce a coherent memory of the newly acquired spaces. One of such strategies that was applied, was the practice of "recycling". I understand it as a mechanism of reintroducing the "formerly German" things into the life of the new settlers: a practice of negotiation between Polish and German ghosts of the region, where ghosts were either objects or constructed social codes used in everyday life. I propose to use the term "recycling" to define, on the one hand, a common practice of re-using the "formerly German" objects, and on the other hand the sole strategy of mixing together official and individual strategies of coping with the spectral presence of previous inhabitants of the region and of "practicing the space". I understand "space" and "place" according to the distinction made by Michel de Certeau, where "place" is a stable order of reality and "space" is an effect of different actions, undertaken to situate and temporalize "place". "Recycling" was the in-between cultural practice, and not only the objects were recycled, but the memory of the new inhabitants was the result of the ongoing recycling strategies. In my paper, I will show the problems connected with the development of the identities of the new inhabitants of the region, in the light of the memory practices that were developed by settlers and imposed by the state. The main key to understand the complexity of the problem would be the stories hidden behind "formerly German" objects that were subjected to "recycling".
