Twentieth Century Poland Research Articles

„W lesie, w drewnianym domku": o cnocie radości i szczęścia w najnowszym tomie Michaela Krügera

Michael Krüger is one of the most important poets of contemporary Europe, combining in his works many traditions of the old continent’s literature, from ancient Greece to twentieth-century Poland. In addition, strong American influences surface in his verse. While Krüger’s early work was a search for his own mode of expression through more or less faithful imitations of very different Polish and American poets, in his mature poems from the 2021 volume In the Forrest, in the Wooden House the Munich poet finds a highly original solution to the seemingly insoluble dilemma faced by all prominent artists since the beginning of the twentieth century: whether to depict the world realistically or, on the contrary, by means of aporia and abstraction? Krüger skillfully combines the “scenic mode” rhetoric typical of post-symbolic literature and the “poetics of indeterminacy” characteristic of postmodernism to create the autonomous poem. It is a realist work that resists interpretation because it contains elements that cannot be read in the realist plane. This peculiar Krüger’s late style is combined with his ostentatious predilection for Epicureanism, references to the poetry of Hesiod and his resort to a broad phrase, reminiscent of hexameter.

Andrea F. Bohlman, Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland

Andrea F. Bohlman, Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland

Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland, by Andrea F. Bohlman

<i>Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland</i>, by Andrea F. Bohlman

Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland. Andrea F Bohlman

<i>Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland</i>. Andrea F Bohlman

Jüdische Stadtdeputierte in der Zweiten Polnischen Republik: Projekte – Strategien – Dynamiken[The Jewish city councilors in the Second Polish Republic: Plans, strategies, dynamic

Jüdische Stadtdeputierte in der Zweiten Polnischen Republik: Projekte – Strategien – Dynamiken[The Jewish city councilors in the Second Polish Republic: Plans, strategies, dynamic

The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation: The Reichsgau Wartheland, 1939–1945

The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation: The Reichsgau Wartheland, 1939–1945

From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź—Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994

From Cotton and Smoke: Łódź—Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897–1994

Olanda

Olanda

One Challenge Disguised as Two? New Scholarship on the Economic and Social Effects of Border Changes and Modernisation in Twentieth-Century Poland

Few European countries have gone through as much as Poland during the twentieth century. Even among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which during the ‘Age of Extremes’ experienced the substantial losses and movement of tens of millions of people, Poland's history is somewhat unique, as most of these expulsions affected the Polish border regions. Although not the only culprit, one can make a strong case that the border changes were a primary factor, having – for better or worse – a strong effect on the economy, the society and the general development of Poland. Poland has, nevertheless, been economically successful since the 1990s. It is thus with good reason that two questions have played a major role in the historiography of economic and social trends in twentieth-century Poland. The first one was whether the ‘border changes’ were a burden, or if Poland was able to profit from them. The second question asks whether Poland was able to modernise because of them. At the same time, few authors recognised that both issues are closely intertwined. Emphasising their interconnection is the main purpose of this review.

Awangarda: Tradition and Modernity in Postwar Polish Music. Lisa Cooper Vest.

The anglophone musicological literature concerning twentieth-century Polish music has been reenergized in the twenty-first by the emergence of outstanding scholars. These include a trio of AMS ‘Cold Warriors’, each of whom has recently produced a major study: Andrea Bohlman (Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland (New York and Oxford, 2019)), Lisa Jakelski (Making New Music in Cold War Poland (Oakland, Calif., 2016)), and Lisa Cooper Vest, the author of a new monograph on the naissance of Poland’s musical avant-garde. Exploring music and context in twentieth-century Poland has always demanded a palette of approaches, and the supple interdisciplinarity evident in work by the new generation’s forerunners—scholars including Cindy Bylander and Adrian Thomas—continues in publications by the aforementioned trio and others (for example, Daniel Elphick, Music Behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and His Polish Contemporaries (Cambridge, 2019) and J. Mackenzie Pierce, ‘Zofia Lissa, Wartime Trauma, and...

Are the birthdates of our ancestors real? Date of birth misregistration in twentieth-century Poland

This study aimed to explore the phenomenon of birthdate misregistration, using birth data from 45,226,875 Polish citizens, that is, all those born 1900–2000 and registered in Poland’s Universal Electronic System for Registration of the Population (PESEL). I transformed the data into a daily series of births, detrended by dividing each value by the daily average for the relevant year. Next, I selected the dates with the highest deviations based on the coefficients of the linear regression model with dummy variables. Finally, I estimated the size of the phenomenon in subsequent years by comparing the numbers of births on selected dates to their expected values. This paper is the first to document the specificity, scale, duration, and probable causes of birthdate misregistration in Poland in the twentieth century.

Kontrast i analogia w reportażu parabolicznym

The paper focuses on various examples of Polish literary reportage which draw upon parable, that is, a didactic story aimed at conveying moral, religious, philosophical, or existential principles by means of allegory, symbolism, and metaphor. The main purpose of the research is to examine the way in which contemporary reporters make use of contrast and analogy as tools for transferring documented facts to a universal level. In the article, the mechanism of parabolization shaped by both these devices is considered first in terms of content of reportage publication, and then with reference to the structure of journalistic narrative. The initial study includes parabolic parallels and antithesis in non-fiction books by Wojciech Jagielski and Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska. The latter part discusses selected works by Mariusz Szczygieł and Witold Szabłowski regarding transcending literal meanings through the specific segmentation of body text. This dual analysis conducted in the paper is preceded by an introduction, in which the authoress argues the symbiotic relation between the notion of parable, the poetics of contrast, and the principle of analogy. She also presents the origins and development of parabolic reportage in twentieth-century Poland. A special emphasis is placed here on the so-called Aesopian language, which enabled reporters to pass the Communist censorship thanks to hidden political allusions and other features typical of parable. In the conclusion, the parabolic tendency is recognized as still valid in today’s Polish reportage, though different in significance and strictly associated with literary techniques of contrast and analogy.

The Moment of Worldwide Renewal: Hillel Zeitlin and the Theosophical Activity in Warsaw 1917–1924

Abstract This article examines the idiosyncratic conduct of the philosopher, journalist and mystic, Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942). Both Zeitlin's writings and activities are unique or even strange when viewed against the backdrop of the Jewish streets of Warsaw during those years, even when considering other “neo-Hasidic” projects. He published poem-prayers and a personal-mystical diary, founded journals, called for religious and spiritual awakening and tried to start mystical study and prayer groups. Zeitlin's work had a messianic fervor that was lacking in the activity of other Jewish figures. Despite an expansion of scholarly interest in Zeitlin's writings and activities, no satisfactory explanation of his behavior has yet been proposed. This article contextualizes Zeitlin's writing and activities in light of those of various spiritual and esoteric movements that flourished in early twentieth century Poland, Russia and Germany, in particular, those of the Theosophical Societies in Warsaw. He was aware and deeply sympathetic to the various movements of spiritual awakening, and these affected his work profoundly.

Boycotts Past and Present: From the American Revolution to the Campaign to Boycott Israel by David Feldman

Reviewed by: Boycotts Past and Present: From the American Revolution to the Campaign to Boycott Israel ed. by David Feldman Kathy M. Newman Boycotts Past and Present: From the American Revolution to the Campaign to Boycott Israel. Edited by David Feldman. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 352 pages. $39.68 (paper). In the 1880s, a British émigré to Ireland named Captain Charles Boycott became the target of a widespread community campaign to have him shunned. Captain Boycott was a British military drop-out who had migrated to Ireland and was working as a rent collector for Lord Erne in County Mayo. Captain Boycott ran afoul of an activist group called the Land League when he refused to lower rents and then evicted 11 of Lord Erne's tenants. The Land League subsequently urged Boycott's employees to go on strike and to shun him from the community. Shun him they did, so much so that Captain Boycott could not get his mail delivered or find anyone to sit next to him at church. It got so bad that Boycott had to appeal to the British government for laborers to save his crops. The story of Boycott's shunning spread to America, and Boycott's name would forever be yoked to the tactic that had been used against him. [End Page 430] David Feldman, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and the editor of this collection, reminds us of the shunning of Captain Boycott in his introductory essay. He uses the story to show that boycotts have long been "expressive" as well as "instrumental." Boycotting is a strategic tactic, but it is also a highly emotional one, often rooted in the withdrawal of various forms of patronage from the intended target with the larger goal of hurting that target's reputation and possibly even trying to destroy the target altogether. This collection shows that the history of the boycott is surprisingly long—extending as far back as the eighteenth century. In Michael L. Miller's essay, titled, "In Defense of the Nation: Protectionism and Boycotts in the Habsburg Lands, 1844–1914," we learn about the theories of the nineteenth century economist Friedrich List, a proponent of trade protectionism, whose influence was evident in a series of "buy national" campaigns in nineteenth century Europe, such as the "each to his own" campaign in Czechoslovakia and the "buy only from Germans" campaign in Germany. Many of these "buy national" campaigns had an antisemitic component as Jews were often excluded as members of the nation. In a series of detailed and fascinating essays we also learn about the anti-Jewish boycotts staged in early twentieth century Poland (Grzegorz Krzywiec, "The Enemy Within: The Anti-Jewish Boycott and Polish Right-Wing Politics in the Early Twentieth Century"), Zionist boycotts against Palestinians between World War I and World War II (Hizky Shoham, "Zionist 'Buy National' Campaigns in Interwar Palestine"), Nazi sponsored antisemitic boycotts in Germany (Christoph Kreutzmüller, "Picketing Jewish-Owned Businesses in Nazi Germany: A Boycott?"), and boycotts staged by the radical-left in postwar West Germany, including boycotts against the newly formed state of Israel (Alexander Sedlmaier, "Boycott Campaigns of the Radical Left in Cold-War West Germany"). When we think about boycotts we are most likely to think about those organized by the powerless to put pressure on the [End Page 431] powerful so they will be persuaded to change their actions and policies. As many civil rights scholars have shown, for example, civil rights boycotts were effective in isolating local business elites from purely racist elites, thus leading to positive changes in corporate and civic policies on discrimination. In this collection we see the story of a few such boycotts, including the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott of 1953, considered by many to be a failure because the settlement that ended the boycott did not result in the complete integration of the Baton Rouge buses. However, Derek Charles Catsam argues that the Baton Rouge boycott was an important precursor to the successful and ultimately iconic Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 in his essay, "The Onward March of a People Who Desire to Be Totally Free." In another example, Lori A. Flores argues...

Janusz Żarnowski – jako historyk dziejów społecznych Polski i Europy

Janusz Żarnowski belonged to the group of Polish historians who after 1956 participated in a lively scientific exchange between the Polish and French circles of historians. A combination of traditional historical methodology with Marxist cognitive perspective and fascination for the achievements of French social history and sociology made it possible for him to develop his own original methodology of historical research into the social structures and processes occurring in twentieth-century Poland. The article presents Żarnowski’s most important scholarly works on the subject and suggests their comprehensive interpretation.

Working Out Socialism: Labor and Politics in Socialist Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Poland

This essay examines socialist workers' autobiographies as inscriptions of the self unfolding from illicit political militancy in tsarist times to the establishment of actually existing socialism in twentieth-century Poland. The autobiographies written in state socialism pin together the workers' strivings for a better life with their intellectual pursuits and their negotiation of the relationship between work and politics. While this essay is informed by an analysis of more than 100 biographical narratives of workers engaging in mass politics during the 1905 Revolution, it closely examines four typologically interesting cases. Most of these socialist autobiographies are loaded "time-vehicles," written as gestures to legitimize the existing state socialism. However, they are embedded in earlier experiences such as proletarian autodidacticism, learning via socialist printings, and prewar socialist memory. At the same time, such life writing bears witness to real and imagined continuities between past socialist militancy and actually existing socialism. The politics of writing is necessary to understand socialist autobiography, and the prior life course of the writing workers is equally crucial to understanding state socialism.

Zofia Szymańska and Child Welfare in Twentieth-Century Poland

Zofia Szymańska and Child Welfare in Twentieth-Century Poland

Neither Lenin nor Lennon

The article is a review of Andrea F. Bohlman’s monograph Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland. The author discusses Bohlman’s book, reframing its subject within the concept of the long 1980s, and contextualizes the question of solidarity and “Solidarity” against the background of popular and youth cultures. An emphasis has been put on such issues as anti-communism, anti-Semitism, and normativity both inside the “Solidarity” movement and the dominant culture in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s.

For child and social justice: radical approaches in education and care for young children in interwar Poland

The article focuses on selected educational developments in early twentieth century Poland. It begins with an overview of the changes in the organisation of education and care for young children during the pre-independence and interwar periods. The authors discuss social and political challenges as reflected in educational realities as well as attempts at reform and innovations towards child-centred pedagogies inspired by the New Education Movement. Two examples are presented in more detail: the pedagogical approach of Janusz Korczak and his collaborators, Stefania Wilczyńska and Maria Falska, in Warsaw childcare institutions, and the Workers’ Society for the Friends of Children (Robotnicze Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci), which rooted its educational system in broader efforts aimed at advancement of the working class. Both initiatives formulated their task as educating new generations of citizens conscious of their rights and capable of taking active part in the struggle against injustices in society.

TRZY TRANSFORMACJE W PROCEDURZE CYWILNEJ W POLSCE W XX WIEKU. WZORCE ROZWIĄZAŃ

THREE TRANSFORMATIONS OF CIVIL PROCEEDINGS IN POLAND IN THE 20TH CENTURY. THE LEGAL PATTERNS Summary Poland’s history over the last century was an eventful period of political, state and legal change. There were three transformations of judicial law due to changing political circumstances in twentieth century Poland. The first transformation occurred when independence was gained in 1918. At that point in Poland five different legal system were in force. The decision to temporarily keep the law of the occupying powers until the new Polish legal system was created was taken by the Polish authorities. The work on Polish civil procedure began in November 1919. Using the comparative method all modern legal answers within European civil procedures, which equated with Polish Law, were drafted in the Polish Code of Civil Procedure. The second transformation in Polish judicial law began after World War II, when Poland found itself under the political influenceof the USSR. Formal maintenance of the law of the Second Republic of Poland was decided on in People’s Poland. The legal system of the interwar Poland, including the Code of Civil Procedure (1930), did not square with the principles of the new state system. Code of Civil Procedure (1930) had been „adapted“ to contemporary governance, plitical and ideological so that it would mirror as much as possible the Soviet model. The new Code of Civil Procedure that was adopted during November 1964 retained its binding force so far. However when the third transformation came about soon after 1989, the existing system of law was revised to eliminate the rules and principles characteristic of the socialist legal system. Amendments of the Code of Civil Procedure (1964) have increased the adversarial aspect of civil proceedings. The possibility of the court to order the investigations during the civil procedure was eliminated, but the possibility of the court to obtain evidence ex officio was kept which is intended to guarantee the implementation of the principles of truth, in legal sense and not in the ideological sense.