The rise of nationalism threatened the integrity of the Catholic milieu in borderlands such as Prussian Upper Silesia. Facing this challenge, the ecclesiastical elite developed various strategies. This article presents interpretations of sacred art works from the first half of the 20th century, which reveal different approaches to national discourses expressed in iconographic programs. The spectrum of attitudes includes indifference, active counteraction to the progress of nationalism by promoting a different paradigm of building temporal imagined communities, acceptance of nationalistic metaphysics, which assumes the division of humanity into nations endowed with a unique personality, and a synthesis of Catholicism and nationalism, in which national loyalties are considered a Christian duty. The last position proved particularly expansive. Based on the primordialist concept of the nation and the historiosophical concept of Poland as a bulwark of Christianity, the Catholic-national ideology gained popularity among the pro-Polish clergy in the inter-war period. This was reflected in Church art works, which were to present Catholicism as the unchanging essence of the nation and the destiny of the latter resulting from God’s will. This strategy was designed to incorporate Catholic Slavophones into the national community. The adoption of a different concept of the nation by the pro-German priests associated with the Centre Party—with a stronger emphasis on the subjective criteria of national belonging—resulted in greater restraint in expressing national contents in sacred spaces.

中文翻译：

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国家，地区还是天主教徒？-德波边境的教堂艺术困境。上西里西亚，1903-1953年

民族主义的兴起威胁着普鲁士上西里西亚等边疆地区天主教环境的完整性。面对这一挑战，教会精英们制定了各种策略。本文介绍了20世纪上半叶对神圣艺术作品的诠释，揭示了以影像学程序表达的关于民族话语的不同方法。态度的范围包括冷漠，通过促进建立时空想象的社区的不同范式，对民族主义的进步采取积极的对策，接受民族主义的形而上学（假定人类被划分为具有独特个性的国家），天主教和民族主义，其中将国家忠诚视为一项基督教义务。最后的位置证明是特别广阔的。基于国家的原初主义概念和波兰作为基督教的堡垒的历史学概念，天主教国家思想在两次世界大战之间的亲波兰神职人员中广受欢迎。这在教会的艺术作品中得到了反映，这些艺术作品将天主教作为国家不变的本质和由上帝的意志产生的命运来展现。该策略旨在将天主教Slavophones纳入民族社区。与中心党有联系的亲德国牧师采用了不同的民族概念，更加强调民族归属的主观标准，这导致在神圣空间表达民族内容的更大限制。