Addenda to the biography of Michał Dzierżanowski (around 1722–1809)

The present article contains rectifications and addenda to the biography of Michał Dzierżanowski, a famous adventurer and one of the leaders of the Bar Confederacy.
In all likelihood, he was born around the year 1722 and not 1725 as has been assumed in the literature up until now. After he had enlisted in the French army, he was subsequently taken captive by the English in April 1744 while on his way to Flanders (earlier on, this event was reported to have occurred around the year 1744). It was confi rmed that in the years 1753–1754, he had served in the French army in India, where he was promoted to the rank of commander of the village of Chalambaram; it was also confi rmed that in 1761 he had visited Spain. Michał Dzierżanowski died on 25 March 1809 and not in 1808, as had been assumed earlier.
The accounts of Claude-Carloman de Rulhiere and Henryk Rzewuski concerning Dzierżanowski’s foreign adventures prior to the year 1764 had also been partly verifi ed. Further research should bring about successive addenda to the biography of this adventurer.

“Here’s a city which is a match to Sodom and Gomorrah.” The picture of Paris in the letters of Denis Fonvizin of 1778

Denis Fonvizin, one of the most eminent Russian writers of the 18th c. and at the same time secretary to minister Nikita Panin, visited Paris in the year 1778. He described his stay in the French capital in the letters addressed to his friends and relatives; in them he intimated that the city did not suit his taste. Among others, he complained about a lack of cleanliness and also a slackening of morals and excessive social stratification. He criticized the majority of the Enlightenment professors admonishing them for their egocentrism and arrogance. He did not like the saloon and cultural life in the French capital either (apart from the high level of the French comedy). He tried to dissuade his countrymen from visiting the French capital which reminded him more of Sodom and Gomorrah, rather than of the famous City of Lights which was so popular in contemporary Europe. Without a doubt, his opinions were slightly exaggerated, yet due to their expressiveness and uncompromising nature, it is difficult for a historian to remain indifferent towards them.

Zdeněk Hájek – Czech (Moravian) historian specializing in Polish history

Zdeněk Hájek (1894–1958) was one of those people who dedicated their lives to scholarship. After many years, however, it was not granted to him to fulfill his life’s mission within the strictures of state employment. Even the forced interruption of his study of history and geography at Charles University in Prague (due to his conscription into the army following the outbreak of the First World War) in many regards foreshadowed his later fortunes, which were marked by a certain discontinuity. Among some of the milestones of his life’s journey, one ought to mention: his service in the Czechoslovak legions in Russia, a two-year assistantship in a history seminar with Professor Jaroslav Bidlo, a nearly twenty-year period of employment in a state high school in Brno, popularization of scholarship in the daily press – mainly in Lidové Noviny, where he was also employed during the period of the Protectorate, his employment at the Pedagogical Faculty of Masaryk University and at the Pedagogical College in Brno (where, among various other functions, he was responsible for conducting a history seminar, he held the post of vice-dean for scholarly research and was head of the department of history and the constitution). He also took part in community life and lectured to students, teachers and the general public. His scholarly interests focused particularly on questions relating to Poles residing on Czech territories in the 19th c. Thus, Hájek became the first researcher ever to comprehensively analyze, the subject of Polish political prisoners at Špilberk Castle in the years 1839–1848, the internment of Marian Langiewicz, the Leader of the Polish January Uprising, in Tišnov (Tischnowitz) and Josefov (Josephstadt), the relationship of Henryka Pustowojtow to the Czech milieu and other aspects of Czech assistance in the Polish strivings to national independence. As a historian, he wrote about expressions of Czech-Polish solidarity in the past; as a man and citizen, he promulgated this idea in his own environment and within his sphere of activity, he actively worked toward it.

Regular students and auditors within the system of higher education in the II Polish Republic

The main goal of the article is to present the differences in the academic status of regular students and auditors in the II Polish Republic as well as the factors justifying the functioning of this category of students in the interwar period. The paper has a source character and is based fundamentally on the analysis of the national normative acts. The article has been divided into five chapters. In the introduction, the author discusses the legal foundations of the functioning of academic institutions in the II Polish Republic as well as the system of the contemporary academic education. Subsequently, the paper presents a classification of students (regular students, auditors and doctoral students) and their status within the university. Special attention is devoted in the paper to the difference between the above two categories of students: particularly as regards their participation in classes, the possibility of taking exams and obtaining academic and professional degrees. In summation the author presents the systemic premises justifying the existence of auditors in the period of the II Polish Republic as well as the reasons why this institution is no longer needed in the III Polish Republic.

Europe’s liberal potential over the span of the 20th century

The article presents a model for interpreting European history in the 20th century. On the one hand, it addresses the question of the “liberal chances” experienced by European states and societies from 1900 onward. On the other hand, it questions how to divide this period into epochs on the basis of identifiably different forms of liberal order. It argues that three conflicts structure the history of this century: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. In each of these conflicts, powers with liberal state systems and economies (Great Britain, USA, and to some extent France) stood in opposition to hostile powers representing other ideologies. Initially, the “enemy” represented models of authoritarian rule with corporative economies (Germany and Austro-Hungary until 1914), then later fascist systems (Germany and Italy), and finally, post-1945, states ruled by the tenets of Bolshevism (the Soviet Union and its East/Central European satellites). In each of these conflicts, the “liberal West” emerged triumphant; with each victory, however, western liberalism itself changed. The century can be divided into three “epochs” in which the struggle to establish social order was shaped by different notions of liberalism and anti-liberalism. The history of Poland after 1945, and particularly since 1980, will be analyzed using this interpretative framework for the 20th century.

Poles in the Holy Land towards the end of 1949

Towards the end of 1949, the number of Poles living in the Holy Land was estimated to be at the level of 115–130 individuals. The majority of them, that is around 80 people, lived in Israel; the remaining ones lived on the Arab side (in Trans-Jordan). Among them, there were those who set up their own families here, as well as a dozen or so clergymen and a small group of post-World War II refugees. An interesting source material which allows one to get an insight into the scale and character of the Polish presence in the Holy Land in the first months after the end of the Arab-Jewish war, is a short but succinct note published in the Monthly Report of the Publishing Company “Reduta” (to be circulated internally) entitled “Sprawy Bliskiego i Środkowego Wschodu” (The Problems of the Near and Middle East). As can be seen from its content, the note had been drawn up by someone who was extremely well acquainted with the contemporary realities of life in Jerusalem. The current publication had been prepared on the basis of a copy of the periodical which was found in the collection of the Polish Library in London.

The international research project about evacuations in the French-German border region

In July 2012 the international French-German research project treating about the evacuations in the French-German border region during World War II was started up. The initiative is scheduled for the years 2012–2015 and realized by Université Paris Sorbonne – Paris IV, Universität des Saarlandes, Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen. The coordinators of the reseach team are: Prof. Olivier Forcade (Paris), Prof. Rainer Hudemann (Saarbrücken), Juniorprof. Fabian Lemmes (Bochum) and Juniorprof. Johannes Großmann (Tübingen). The project has obtained funding from the French Agence nationale de la Recherche and the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The members of the both sides (French and German) research the processes of evacuations of civilian populations by the French Third Republic – from Alsace and Moselle, and by the totalitarian Nazi regime in Germany – from Saarland, Palatinate and Baden. The “management” of refugee populations from these border regions in the areas of their reception (particularly the French departments: Vienne, Haute-Vienne, Dordogne and Charente and the German states: Francony, Hesse, Lower Saxony and Thuringia) is also examined. The role of the NGOs, the International Red Cross and his national committees and of the local churches and religious associations is studied in the comparative aspect. The comparative perspective refers to the research in the French and German cases but also to the larger perspective of the comparison of the evacuations in the western and middle-eastern Europe, especially in German-Polish border regions. The investigations of members of the project team result in one or two post-doctoral works, four PhD dissertations, a few M.A. thesis prepared under the supervision of the coordinators of this research project and in a number of research articles of all the members of project group. Furthermore, two expositions will be organized: in 2014 in Saarbrücken and probably in 2015 in Paris.