A Monument with a Social Message

Abstract

The year 2023 marked 130 years since the first Polish seasonal workers, the so-called beet girls (roepiger), arrived on the islands of Lolland-Falster, as the first group of Polish immigrants in Denmark. In 1940, a monument called “Roepiger” was erected in the market square of Sakskøbing and became part of human memory. But who this Danish sculpture depicts, and why, continues to be variously interpreted to this day. Social memory supports distances between the two cultures, differences in memory policies and attitudes in public diplomacy. Certain meanings were attached to the sculpture by the local Danish community, others by Poles living in Denmark, and still others by Polish and Danish officials. Finally, the personal memory of the sculpture’s author, Gottfried Eickhoff, about its genesis should be taken into account. The article argues that the plaque, which was funded by Polish diplomacy and affixed to the monument’s pedestal during interstate ceremonies in 2015, constitutes an appropriation. The market in Sakskøbing was given the status of a Polish memorial, passing over the coexistence of different forms of memory in cultural circuits, as characterized in Aleida Asmann’s theory of memory.