Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis No 4003 Studia Linguistica XXXIX Wrocław 2020 JOANNA BŁASZCZAK ORCID: 0000-0002-8332-2827 Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland MARZENA ŻYGIS ORCID: 0000-0002-2596-9171 Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics, Berlin, Germany BETTINA BEINHOFF ORCID: 0000-0003-0634-6611 Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom What infuences our attitudes? A survey study on attitudes of Polish university students towards German people * 1. Introduction Germany and Poland are two neighbouring countries that have had very difcult relations in the past. The dreadful memories of the Second World War are still present in the post-war Polish generation and this bloodstained history has deter- mined the negative attitude of many Poles towards German people. This attitude has begun to change in the last few decades, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 and with the elimination of border controls in 2007, it has become easier for Poles, especially the young, to move to Germany for study or work. Today the Polish population in Germany https://doi.org/10.19195/0137-1169.39.2 1 * We are grateful to all our respondents for taking part in the questionnaire. This research has been partly supported by the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF, Germany), Grant Nr. 01UG1411 to Marzena Żygis and by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW, Poland) and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD, Germany), Grant Nr. 57393118 to Joanna Błaszczak and Marzena Żygis. Studia Linguistica 39, 2020 © for this edition by CNS