Monika Bednarczuk

This paper examines the experience of the first generations of women studying in Switzerland. The text corpus consists of autobiographical accounts, letters, and fiction by German, Russian, and Polish authors. Among the first female students in Switzerland, there were such figures as Vera Figner, Olga Lubatovich, Franziska Tiburtius, Ricarda Huch, Rosa Luxemburg, Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska, Gabriela Iwanowska-Balicka, Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska, and Józefa Joteyko. The paper discusses the issues of (international) female cooperation and solidarity, on the one hand, and, on the other, it highlights the disparity between the self and the world, as well as the efforts to maintain the separateness of the national group.

* Artykuł przygotowany ze środków projektu finansowanego w ramach programu Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego pod nazwą „Regionalna Inicjatywa Doskonałości” na lata 2019−2022, nr projektu 009/RID/2018/19, kwota finansowania 8 791 222,00 zł.

The studies in multilingualism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were devoted primarily to the ‘everyday’ dimension of the phenomenon. Hence, the languages the scholars focused on were Polish, Byelorussian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Russian. Taking into consideration the cultural and scientific significance of Vilnius University, its international staff as well as the students’ drive for advancement, its multilingual reality deserves more reflection.
From 1803 to 1832, Vilnius University was the educational centre for western gubernyas of the Russian Empire. Its education and science policy was Western-oriented and rooted in the Enlightenment project of knowledge exchange. Languages of instruction and academic communication were Latin, French and Polish. In the 1820s, German and Russian gained in importance. The University fostered the mobility of gifted early career researchers and excellent students by promoting study stays abroad. Some students were enthusiastic about French, English and German literature and philosophy. In addition, the majority of them and younger scholars had at least a passive knowledge of Byelorussian, Lithuanian or Ukrainian.
The impressive development of Vilnius University in both the scientific and educational fields was to a great extent due to this multilingualism, although obviously there were differences in language competence, including receptive and mediated multilingualism. The article draws on the new research in the area of multilingualism and focuses on the role and the teaching and learning possibilities of the different languages, starting with Latin. Subsequently, three modern languages (French, German and English) are subject to analysis. Special attention is paid to the significant shift in the relationships between Polish and Russian and between the various vernacular languages, for in the 1820s political pressure grew on the University, and vernacular languages also became politicized. This is illustrated with the example of Byelorussian. Finally, the author demonstrates the two-fold advantages of multilingualism on the example of the Philomaths who were exiled to inner Russia in 1824. Firstly, multilingualism was seen by them as a means to accelerate cultural transfer and, thus, to educate the Polish public. Secondly, it facilitated individual successes in Russian provinces. It also allowed students and graduates from Vilnius to save, at least partly, their inner freedom and integrity.