„People grow on spoil heaps”: A literary History of Post-mining Allied Communities

Abstract

The article outlines the issues of the environmental history of the heaps of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin based on literary sources by authors such as Gustaw Morcinek, Wilhelm Szewczyk, and Leon Wantuła, who, due to their biographical experiences, had full insight into the changes in post-mining environments. The main problem discussed is the literary possibilities of environmental history, as well as the issues of post-dependence of industrial and post-industrial environments, completely absent from the foreground history, but commemorated in private accounts. The heaps are analyzed here as a relict landscape, an ally environment, an enclave of unemployment and poverty, an icon of local heritage, and a marginal image.