Krzysztof Stopka

The Department of the History of Education and Culture at the Institute of History at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow) was established on February 1, 1971 in place of the Chair of the History of Science and Education. Since its beginning, it was located in the Kołłątaj Collegium at St. Anna St. 6, at first in the left wing of the building, and then – since 1980 – in its right wing. The heads of the Department in the years 1971–1997 were the professors: Jan Hulewicz, Kamilla Mrozowska and Renata Dutkowa. The Department also employed the scientific staff: Leszek Hajdukiewicz (head of the Archives of the Jagiellonian University), Julian Dybiec, Kazimierz Szczurek, Andrzej Kazimierz Banach, Krzysztof Stopka. The librarians of the Department were: Elżbieta Babuchowska, Joanna Plutecka and Krzysztof Stopka. In 1984, the librarian’s position was eliminated, and the department’s library was from that point onwards taken care of by the younger academics. Scientific research focused on the history of the Polish education: cathedral schools in the Middle Ages, secondary education in Krakow in the nineteenth century and the University of Krakow from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. Research was also undertaken on the Commission of National Education; the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences; scientific and educational patronage in Galicia during the autonomous era; Galicia as a part of the Austrian school system as well as scientific and intellectual relations between Poland and other European countries; city culture (Stary Sącz, Nowy Sącz and Zakopane); historical biography was practiced as well. The teaching staff of the Department were mainly present at the Institute of History and the Institute of Pedagogy, but they were also involved in other fields of study at the Faculty of Philosophy and History (later Faculty of History) as well as at other faculties and inter-faculty units of the university. Occasionally they also took up employment at other higher education institutions. They additionally participated in the work of committees and commissions of the Polish Academy of Sciences (and later on those of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences) as well as in editorial boards for dictionaries and bibliographies.

Identity of Armenians in Galcia

The Armenians living in Galicia formed an ethnic identity which consisted of a few thousand members, distinguished by the liturgical rite, historical tradition and close family and social relationships. The earliest waves of migration arrived at Lwów and Kamieniec Podolski from the Tatar lands, speaking the Kipchak dialect of the Turkic language group. That ethnolect fell into disuse in the 1660s. The more recent migration groups which came to Poland on the turn of the 16th and 17th century, especially those which arrived in the beginning of the 17th century, spoke various dialects of the modern Armenian language. The usage of this language, however, began to fade on the turn of the 18th and 19th century. The Armenian community was dwindling away without further waves of migration. In this situation, the Armenians were undergoing a linguistic Polonisation and, on a lesser scale, Ruthenisation. They quickly assimilated with the Polish community, belonging to the highest social strata such as the intelligentsia and land owners. During the Spring of Nations, the relationship between Polish and Armenian identity was widely discussed. The most frequent opinion held the Armenian people to be a “tribe” of the Polish nation. The 1860s saw a journalistic dispute on the group’s identity. The anonymous author of Głos do ziomków obrządku ormiańskokatolickiego (Call to fellow followers of the Armenian Catholic rite) made a call to abandon the separate rite and unite with the Poles as one nation. Answering this, Izaak Isakowicz (the future Armenian archbishop of Lwów) fervently defended the Armenian rite and traditions. He did not hold the notion that they were a cause of division among the Polish nation, because the Armenians living in Galicia identified with the Polish reason of state and the Armenian culture enriched the Polish culture. In the 1880s, the Armenian land owner Robert Rosco-Bogdanowicz called his fellow Armenians to defy Polonisation, restore the Armenian language, migrate to the Russian Armenia and propagate Western culture, including Catholicism, in that country. Although the Galician Armenians leaned towards assimilation into Polish culture, the disputes on identity led to the rebirth of the Armenian rite and many initiatives to revive the withering ethnicity. A major role in this process was played by Józef Teodorowicz, the last Armenian-Catholic archbishop of Lwów, who equally identified with Polish and Armenian culture. A popular motto among the Galician Armenians was that “an Armenian is a double Pole.”