Adam Skałkowski i jego uczniowie w archiwach ziemiańskich (1877–1945)

Abstract

The article describes the process of studying gentry archives by Professor Adam Skałkowski (the 1919 founder of Poznań historiography) and his students. These vast source materials perished along with the gentry class itself in 1945, and the works of the Poznań historian and his followers are the last trace of them. The main source material is the correspondence between members of the gentry and Skałkowski’s students, stored mainly in the Manuscript Department in the Library of Adam Mickiewicz University, but also in the Archive of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and the Ossolineum in Wrocław. This is complemented by Skałkowski’s memoirs from the author’s collection. The inquiries and trips of Skałkowski and his students to palaces and manors helped create dozens of source articles and monographs. The article aims at reconstructing these researchers’ work in archives. The series titled “The lives of esteemed Poles in the 18th and 19th centuries” (written by Skałkowski) alone included 34 book publications — the fruit of these investigations, including multiple papers by MA and PhD students.