Sprawa Józefa J.
The Case of Józef J.

The Polish-German Arguments about Eleonora Kalkowska’s Stage Reportage

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the background of Eleonora Kalkowska’s best-known play, Sprawa Jakubowskiego [The Case of Jakubowski], 1929. It is also a reconstruction of the work’s reception in Poland and Germany. The diplomatic materials uncovered in the archives, which shed a new light on the trial of a Polish farm labourer sentenced to death in the Weimar Republic, draw out a broader context and the political tensions surrounding the writer’s stage debut. The author of the article also analyzes the diametrically different modes of reading the drama at Berlin’s Volksbühne and Warsaw’s Ateneum, which led to its becoming the subject of national appropriations, particularly in the case of the play’s Polish reception.

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