Andrzej Sulikowski

The article discusses a book by Hans Graf von Lehndorff (1910–1987), famous in the West (especially in the German-speaking world), Ostpreußisches Tagebuch. Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945–1947. In the People’s Republic of Poland, this book was most strictly prohibited by the communist censorship due to its depictions of atrocities of Red Army soldiers to civilian population, especially to women raped by the Soviets on a mass scale.

Lehndorff was born into the Prussian aristocracy whose links with East Prussia went back approx. 600 years. Brought up in the chivalrous spirit since his youth, he secretly opposed Hitler’s rule and was involved to some extent in the assassination attempt of 1944. An opponent of National Socialism since its beginning, he became – like almost all inhabitants of East Prussia – a victim of Hitler’s political folly.

The analysis emphasizes the multidimensional character of inner life. Lehndorff appears in the text primarily as a surgeon providing help to suffering people – regardless of any political, racial or territorial divisions. In his practice, he acts with the greatest dedication attainable by a human, particularly during the Soviet siege of the Königsberg fortress (January–December 1945). He rejects violence, even in defense of himself or his close ones. Many times, he miraculously escapes sudden death, also surviving many arrests, detention in a concentration camp, an escape on foot from Königsberg to his native Ermland, and fi nally, departure from Poland to Germany.

Lehndorff developed his inner life consciously, joining in his youth – as a worshipper of Reformed Christianity – the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) which opposed National Socialism in Nazi Germany. The surgeon’s constant practice was everyday prayer, reading of the Bible, meditation. In his evangelical radicalism, he even resorted to conducting service to  worshippers (due to a lack of pastors) both in Königsberg and after the war, in Ermland, where he was hiding at his friends’ or relatives’ houses. He used to be arrested by the NKVD and the Polish UB (Office of Security) for “religious propaganda”. Since he treated his persecutors (Russians, Poles) as well, in critical moments he would escape death. For a reader in our century, he is a model of a heroic Christian striving for reconciliation of nations and forgiveness of guilt. Lehndorff’s atonement is service to suffering people, uniting people of goodwill and constituting an evangelical sign of Christ’s presence.

The subject of the discussion is Jerzy Turowicz’s attitude to the issues of literature (based on queries in the decades when he was the editor-in-chief of “TP”, i.e. in the 1945-1995 half-century). The special position occupied by the journal from Krakow on the map of the communist-era Polish press is stressed. Since its establishment, this journal enjoyed wide and long-time support from the professor communityof the Jagiellonian University, as well as other academies of Krakow. Assorted accounts from poets and prose authors, including Marek Skwarnicki, Jan Józef Szczepański, Jan Twardowski and others, were discussed. Attention was paid to Turowicz’s outstanding merits in discovering and advocating of literary talents (with an example of Father Jan Twardowski and Maria Jarczyńska-Bukowska). Turowicz seldom wrote on poets and poetry, but he continuously monitoredboth domestic and emigrationliterature on this subject. He also had an extraordinary aesthetic sense which allowed him to selecttalented poets as his collaborators, and published authors whose fame wentmuch further than the borders of Poland (cases of Father Karol Wojtyła, Czesław Miłosz, Stanisław Lem and others). Only under Turowicz, Polish literature had such a wide and competent coverage in “TP”. Thanks to this, readers could acquaint themselves with the foremost pens of literary criticism and were becomingthoroughly oriented in the Polish and world’s literature. It seems that since Turowicz’s passing, “Tygodnik Powszechny” has not played such a role in this regard anymore.