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Anniversary publication for Professor Urszula Augustyniak, affiliated with the Institute of History of the University of Warsaw, a renowned cultural historian specialized in the early modern period. Articles collected in the book are concerned with the broadly understood early modern history of culture, politics, and religion.
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Anniversary publication for Professor Urszula Augustyniak, affiliated with the Institute of History of the University of Warsaw, a renowned cultural historian specialized in the early modern period. Articles collected in the book are concerned with the broadly understood early modern history of culture, politics, and religion.
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The article discusses sources for genealogical research stored in the Central Archives of Modern Records. It also presents personal records of various institutions of Polish Republic and Polish People’s Republic from the years 1918 to 1990, including ministries, central offices, political institutions, associations, societies and private persons conducting scientific research. The article demonstrates how useful in genealogical research are such documents as: private correspondence, establishment plans, workforce data, the documents referring to personnel movement within the company (promotions, transfers, disciplinary penalties), lists of the personnel, pay slips, acts of promotions to different posts, collective promotion and honours requests, names of members of different committees, boards and delegations, name lists of members of different political parties, associations, societies (leaders and ordinary members). Such documents are usually scattered and need to be found through in-depth analysis of documentary evidence and the archives themselves, including specified document files. The article emphasises the fact that files containing personal data are of increased interest as they can be of considerable use in personal and family history.
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Viaţa sportivă a Basarabiei interbelice surprinde relaţiile strânse dintre urbanizare şi industrializare, identitate şi exerciţiul fizic. De asemenea, absenţa (mai degrabă decât prezenţa) Basarabiei din cele mai importante evenimente sportive naţionale aduce în discuţie însuşi locul provinciei în peisajul interbelic a ceea ce ne place să o numim „România Mare”.
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This article focuses on the ways the scientific imperialism was manifested in Serbian ‘scholarly’ discourses from the end of the nineteenth century until the World War II. The leading ethnographers, geographers, cultural historians and writers promulgated the idea that the Serbs represented one ‘race’ marked by similar physical and psychological features and customs. Joined together by the same ‘blood’, territory and history, the Serbs were presented as the dominant ‘race’ in the Balkans, thus being ‘superior’ in comparison to the other peoples, especially the Albanians. The discourse was theoretically promoted in the scholarly works at the end of the nineteenth century and just before the World War II proposals for colonization of Kosovo and extermination of the Albanians were made (in Vaso Čubrilović’s writing Isterivanje Arnauta and in the claim, supported by Ivo Andrić, that ‘the Balkans should be given to the Balkan people’). I here argue that the concept of ‘social type’ helped the leading intellectuals in the promotion of the idea that the division of the Balkans should be made according to current scientific paradigms about the supremacy of the Serbs.
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The article demonstrates the relevance that research into professional biographies can have for understanding cultural and social change. By analysing the biographies of architects: their backgrounds, educational paths, professional contacts, as well as their entire professional milieu, it is possible to better recognise the causes and course of profound social, political or even civilisational changes in the Habsburg monarchy, during the crucial period of its existence and disintegration. It was the architects who found ways of creating space that responded to changing perceptions and expectations, both individual and collective, tangibly co-creating social space. Coming from different regions of the monarchy, architects practised their profession within the framework of an imperial state whose administrative apparatus and legal system had to be, in principle, constantly adapted to a dynamic and extremely diverse socio-cultural reality. It was made up of many ethnoses, religions, languages and even geophysical factors (always, after all, influencing the living conditions of specific communities). Authors believe that their biographies are - in themselves - already an important carrier of meanings and knowledge about the conditions of everyday life and the mentality of the people living at the time.
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Neo-Gothic emerged in Croatian architecture rather late in comparison to Great Britain and the majority of countries in mainland Europe. First buildings built with elements of this style appeared at the beginning of the 19th century, however only during the 1850s and 1860s first larger neo-Gothic churches began to be built in Croatia, primarily due to the efforts of the Viennese central administrative bodies. In the same time, Croatian aristocracy accepted this style for the restoration of their castles (Trakošćan, Novi dvori). By the mid-1870s, owing to the efforts of the Đakovo bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, Viennese architect Friedrich Schmidt started his work on neo-Gothic restoration of medieval buildings in Zagreb (St. Mark’s parish church and the cathedral). In the following decades, the neo-Gothic style reached the highest level of use in Croatian architecture. The most important architects that designed churches and other buildings with elements of neo-Gothic were Schmidt’s students Herman Bollé and Josip Vancaš. From the beginning of the 20th century, the use of Neo-Gothic in Croatian architecture became increasingly rare. Croatian architecture was slowly being overcome by the influence of secession from Vienna and other major cities in the monarchy (Prague, Budapest).
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Using the example of the different professional paths of two architects, Blažej Félix Bulla and Ján Nepomuk Bobula (both of whom designed buildings intended to house the new institutions, crucial for Slovak national life and located in the provincial town of Turčiansky Svätý Martin), the article shows how the architects' work became a space for the manifestation of new values introduced into the public space and for the self-presentation and representation of the new social elites. Particular attention was paid here to the role of architectural investments confirming a real increase in the rank of a given place, appearing in semi-public and semi-private space, i.e. in a kind of internal space, partly hidden and at the same time open to subversive manifestations of one's own true identity (e.g. the discussed herein example of the temporary installation designed by Bulla – a wooden tower-gate added to the house of the Viliam Paulina-Tóth’s heirs for the time of the local ethnographic exhibition held in Martin in 1887). The examples of realised and unrealised architectural projects analysed in the article (also in terms of their exemplary impact on their surroundings, e.g. the case of architect Dušan Jurkovič, discussed here, who was fascinated by Bulla's designs) made it possible to trace the circumstances favouring the densification of communication at the local level and to analyse the phenomenon referred to here as the densification of locality, a manifestation of which was, among other things, the emergence in the area of so-called Upper Hungary of a new urban centre with a distinctly Slovak distinction and accumulated symbolic potential.
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The earthquake that struck Zagreb in 1880 has largely influenced the dynamics of the city's development. It has changed Zagreb, has changed the lives of its residents and has radically affected the professional career of an architect who at that time was at the beginning of his job in Croatia. Herman Bollé would be this "the other" architect whose entire output has remained within the borders of Croatia (mostly in Zagreb) and has become part of the national heritage. He has shaped the urban space and has educated new generations that has influenced the shape of the Croatian urban space. He has rebuilt the city, he has actually participated in the process of creating the city from scratch.
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Architects in the Habsburg monarchy were a highly mobile professional group. The most important academic centres and centres of professional practice were Vienna, Prague and Munich (which already lay outside the state borders). This article traces the professional biographies of architects who were active in Osijek, a medium-sized city on the border of the monarchy, in Croatia-Slavonia. It shows that the provincial town was linked by networks with the rest of the monarchy, while modernisation processes and architectural fashions found their local expression there. The analysis of documents related to the most important investments at the turn of the 20th century makes it clear that the monarchy constituted a common general framework for social practices, and that the professional or economic activities of local social actors did not stop at the borders of the crown lands. It thus appears that the ethno-national perspective, still dominant in the narrative of social history, needs to be modified.
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The paper explores whether Czech architects, as Slavic architects, contributed to the contemporary tourism development on the Croatian Adriatic at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, when the eastern Adriatic coast was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.Designing basic tourism architecture (hotels, villas and bathing places), aside from giving them a shape, requires specialized functional, technical and technological knowledge. To draw a conclusion, tourism architecture designed by Czech architects is explored in the context of tourism expansion and tourism architecture progress, including its influence on the space and the forming of tourist landscape. In any case, built and unbuilt examples of tourism architecture by Czech architects on the Croatian Adriatic at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century contributed to the development of architectural thought on tourism architecture, as well as to the forming of a recognizable tourist landscape.
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The essence of this comparative study is to look closer, and simultaneously, at the intellectual profiles and creative practices of two outstanding representatives of vernacular architecture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Polish and Czech-Slovak milieux, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Central Europe. The aesthetic being of Stanisław Witkiewicz and Dušan Samuel Jurkovič–in a way, men as institutions of their times–eventually gained the rank of all-cultural phenomena and inscribed themselves with nation-forming notes in the histories of their communities. The article deals with what mechanisms governed them and what processes they themselves managed, and moreover–what effects they evoked in both cases. It turns out, among other things, that the stagnant, invariably repeated statements about the similarities of the two casuses largely miss their internal distinctions. Ultimately, it goes to the point that reveals the great or unfavorable vicissitudes of people’s lives as well as their efforts and achievements.
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The paper describes the dilemmas of architects, one of the important groups of professionals in Galicia at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The paper is based on Polish-language publications of architects, as well as art historians and others, who were interested in urban architecture in Galicia. The main topics covered here are the need of new aesthetics in architecture, freed from emulations of earlier styles and decorative motifs (including the question: what an architectural style really is), including the need for a more national (Polish) architecture. Another topic was the end of a ‘monopoly’, hitherto held by architects in the field of architectural critique, and the rise of an art-historical discourse. Finally such topics as modernity in architecture, rational city planning and an affirmation of pure aesthetic values in architectural practice attracted the attention of the authors of the sources.
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Interwar Bratislava was a dynamic, multicultural, small city searching for its new identity. Architects, including Friedrich Weinwurm (1885–1942), created its contemporary, modern shape. The article focuses on the main Weinwurm's socially engaged projects (Unitas and Nová doba) in the context of the local urban development and progressive architectural trends in interwar Czechoslovakia.
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This article presents the figure of the well-known Polish architect, Władysław Horodecki. He was primarily active in the lands of today's Ukraine, in Kiev, but also in other cities of Russia, and after Poland regained its independence his career dimmed. His biography is placed in the context of the non-obvious social space of the Russian Empire, which was perceived by the architect as a space of his own. The urban culture of Russia at the time exposes itself as a place of divisions distinct from contemporary national perspectives, revealing its integrative potential. Horodecki was also characterised by a high degree of mobility, accompanied by the crossing of both physical and social boundaries. His professional biography fits into the discussion of imperial biography as a relevant analytical model.
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Belarusians were one of the largest ethnic groups in Latvia in the interwar period. The main clusters of the Belarusian population were located in the south-eastern part of the country – in Latgale (former Polish Livonia). In the summer of 1941, Latvia was seized by the Wehrmacht and the occupation regime was established. The German occupying authorities, using the principle of “divide et impera”, were willing to give the Belarusians a certain degree of cultural and educational autonomy. In 1941 the Belarusian National Committee (since the spring of 1942: the Belarusian Association) was established in Riga and Dyneburg. The organization of Belarusian education under the German occupation was its priority. In the school years 1941/42 and 1942/43 thirty-five primary schools, two high schools and one agricultural secondary school were opened. Moreover, attempts were made to stimulate artistic and publishing activities. The activities of Belarusians aroused antipathy among local Latvians, who were afraid of an increase in the Belarusian national consciousness in Latgale.
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After the Second World War, emigrants from Belarus who found themselves in the West had very different levels of national self-consciousness. United by a common origin and memory, they never theless faced a real threat of disappearing in the host societies without leaving a trace. However, representatives of the national intellectuals took care of preserving and expanding the Belarusian national identity among Belarusian emigrants. Founded in 1951 in New York, the Belarusian Institute of Arts and Sciences has become a flagship in this field. Over the decades, through its cultural, educational and publishing initiatives, it has been spreading information about Belarus, its history and culture to the masses of emigrants, contributing in many ways to the preservation and expansion of Belarusian identity not only among emigrants, but also in Belarus.
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This article is devoted to the Belarusian immigrants in Argentina and the study of their ethnic and national identification. Until 1991 Belarusians in Argentina were a numerically small ethnic group, which due to the absence of an independent Belarusian state was not noticeable to the Argentinians. The elements of Belarusian culture kept up by immigrants (such as language, traditions, songs, dances, cuisine and folk costumes) are highlighted and described. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the development of the Belarusian language among immigrants and their descendants. The cultural characteristics of immigrants from the Belarusian Polesie (Palesse) are also identified. The article summarizes the practical experience in the development of Belarusian culture in pro-Soviet organizations of immigrants, their use of both folklore and the work of Soviet cultural figures (writers, composers). The influence of the BSSR and its institutions on Belarusians in Argentina is discussed. The educational activities of the members of the Association of Belarusians in Argentina as well as the participation of the immigrants’ descendants in ethnic festivals in the states of Buenos Aires and Misiones are noted. The factors that currently allow for the preserving of Belarusian culture in the former clubs of Soviet citizens are pointed out. The author concludes that culture is an important element of the Belarusian identification of immigrants and their descendants in Argentina.
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The article examines the current state of the Belarusian language and the non-linguistic factors influencing its current situation, e.g. linguistic prestige, linguistic shame, stereotyping of the language. Also highlighted are subjective and emotional factors that influence negative or positive attitudes towards the Belarusian language depending on current social events.
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Mass protests after the August 2020 presidential elections in Belarus laid bare all the weaknesses of the official propaganda machine and exposed not only the deficit of truth in relations between the authorities and society: they disavowed and ridiculed both the organizational efforts undertaken by the government and the narrative threads that set the long-term strategy of official propaganda – and in doing so, destroyed its foundations. The music of the protests played a significant role in this process. The article analyzes the texts as well as the visual aspect of the music videos, which, from a social perspective, contributed to the change of the political situation in Belarus. Alaksandr Lukashenka’s policy and himself as a guarantor of social peace and stability are discredited, and the image of a society rebellious against the pretence of values, perpetuated by the system of power built by Lukashenka, is the major theme. The music of the protests shapes the community and modern cultural identity of Belarusians around separate Belarusian cultural codes concerning language, traditions, history and heroes. Songs of resistance, most often written in response to current events, in their verbal layer carry authentic messages, alternative to the official “ideology of truth”. In this way, musical works become a tool for social controversy and fight against the system, i.e. an important part of the process of change and building a new national identity.
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