Wykłady, seminaria i studenci Adama Skałkowskiego (1877– 1951)
Adam Skałkowski (1877–1951): His Lectures, Seminars, and Students

Summary/Abstract: Quality biographical materials on historians are not very common. It is usually easier to recreate their views and the research they conducted based on literature. However, this does not apply to Adam Skałkowski (1877–1951). We have access to his memoirs, many letters, and other heritage. Thanks to his hand-written university lectures and manuscripts of his public speeches, it is possible to recreate Skałkowski’s activity as a lecturer. There are also accounts describing the style of his lectures. Letters and other materials give us an idea what his MA and PhD seminars looked like, how he supervised his students and organized exams. The letters let one appreciate how passionate Skałkowski was about helping his disciples and how personal his relationship with his students was. One can see that he supervised them not only on an academic, but also on a personal level—he organized study visits and trips to conduct archival research, provided letters of recommendation and even financial assistance. All that makes up a very interesting picture of Skałkowski’s work in the first half of the 20th century—work that was part of a completely different system of lectures, exams, and relationships with students than can be observed now. The lectures were purely monographical in nature and concerned only the current work of the professor; the same also applied to other historians. There were only five exams for the course: pedagogy; auxiliary sciences; ancient, medieval and modern history; and philosophy. The exams had nothing to do with the lectures, and the course curriculum had to be learned from textbooks.

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