In Memory of Casimir the Great - Jews-Poles. On the Forgotten Building Project of the Royal Monument in Kazimierz in Kraków

• Authors: Maślak-Maciejewska Alicja

Title variants

PL

Pamie̜ci Kazimierza Wielkiego Żydzi-Polacy - o zapomnianym projekcie budowy pomnika królewskiego na krakowskim Kazimierzu

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

1883 progressive Cracow Jews, guided by patriotic enthusiasm, took the initiative of building a full-figure statuę of Casimir the Great in Kazimierz. Works connected to the erection of the statuę (fund-raising, discussions on the shape of the futurę monument, the organization of subseąuent boards of monument erection) lasted for almost three decades and actively involved the progressive circles. At first it was the youth that were involved in this project. Later the leaders of this circle (e.g. Jonathan Warschauer, Jan Albert Propper) and sińce 1896 also the progressive women joined the project. At the end of the first decade of the 20th century a conception of a full-figure statuę was dismissed, and the funds raised were used to found a relief entitled The Admission ofjews to Poland by Casimir the Great, which was madę by Henryk Hochman and which was hung in 1911 in the old Town Hall in Kazimierz. In the following article the origins and the phases of the initiative of the aforementioned monument were analysed (including the unrealized projects of the monument by Stanisław Lewandowski and Jan and Mieczysław Zawiejski), and a hypothesis was formulated concerning the reasons of the failure to complete the first conception of the statute. An idea of the erection of the monument of Casimir the Great by the Cracow Jews, today completely forgotten, is for yarious reasons worth reminding. Above all, it represents an interesting example of the patriotic activities of the progressive Jews as well as the acculturational processes undergoing in this milieu. It also creates an absorbing context for other initiatives of monument erection of that period (e.g. the monument of Adam Mickiewicz in Kraków). And finally, it allows us to understand the context in which the work by Hochman was created, whose version can be seen in the Town Hall in Kazimierz sińce 1996.

• Publisher: Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Institute of History of Art
• Journal: Modus. Prace z historii sztuki
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 61-74

Contributors

author

Maślak-Maciejewska Alicja

• Instytut Judaistyki UJ