Śląsk, masa i XIX wiek
Silesia, the mass and the 19th century

Summary/Abstract: Author deals with problem of the massification of the Silesian culture in the 19th century. Products of enlightenment and the modern world create a typical set of mental attitudes and preferences. People start to recognize the world as the emancipation of speed ideas. Changing ways of feeling and thinking lead to understand that Europe is an arena for progress and advancement. Satisfaction and pride are mixed with the feeling of nostalgia. The loss of the past individual being correlates with a march of the mass, the average culture, the mass migration. The author recognizes the mass thinking in the Upper Silesian culture in the 19th century. An analysis concerns the problems of the common practices: the collective education system, the common reading, the group insurance and protection system, the mass architecture, the common communication and the mass photography and cinematography. Conclusion is pessimistic, the author claims that the power of the mass in the 19th century has given impetus to the unbolting the door and opening it in the 20th century. After 1945 the presence of the average thinking has opened the door for the socialist ideology, the socialist collective principles and the mass practice of everyday life. Today we live among the ruins of the Silesian culture.

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