In his narrative, Professor Gunter Scholze talks both about the escape and relocation from the Silesia region to the British Occupation Zone of Occupation in Germany after WWII, and about his family’s difficult beginnings in North Rhine-Westphalia, which after the war became a new Heimat for him and his family. The Scholze family began their exodus in January 1945, when little Gunter was evacuated from Oppeln together with his mother and brother. Till the end of the war the three of them wandered all over Silesia searching for a safe place to stay. When the war ended, they found themselves in Bad Kudova, a place where many Silesian refugees found shelter. This was also the place where they were rejoined with the father. On 9th June, 1945, in accordance with the Potsdam agreement, the whole family were resettled to the British Zone of Occupation in Germany. Professor Scholze often underlines how lucky his family were throughout this time.
This article addresses the issue of the use of oral accounts in research on very recent history. In particular, the topic of interest is the question of whether oral history in its current form (i.e., given its theoretical, practical, and institutional settings) has a realistic chance of playing a significant role in the shaping of the practice of historical research in Poland. The starting point for addressing this problem is the increasing rate of debate in the academic community, in particular in the field of historiography and the perspectives for its development as a component of academic reflexion. This text contains an attempt at both the identification of the key factors hindering the use of oral accounts in historical research and the formulation of a proposal to deal with impasses.
PL
W artykule podęty zostaje problem wykorzystania relacji ustnych w badaniach historii najnowszej. W szczególności przedmiotem zainteresowania jest pytanie o to, czy historia mówiona, w swojej obecnej postaci (tzn. biorąc pod uwagę jej teoretyczne, praktyczne oraz instytucjonalne usytuowanie) ma realną szansę na odegranie znaczącej roli w kształtowaniu praktyki badań historycznych w Polsce. Punkt wyjścia do tak postawionego problemu stanowi nabierająca tempa debata usytuowania w ramach akademii, w szczególności w ramach historiografii i perspektyw jej rozwoju jako składnika naukowej refleksji. W tekście podjęta zostaje próba zidentyfikowania kluczowych elementów utrudniających wykorzystanie relacji ustnych w badaniach historycznych, a także sformułowania propozycji wyjścia z patowej sytuacji.
Leszek Wisłocki is a famous music theorist and composer. For many years he has been a Professor at the Academy of Music in Wrocław. However, before he started working for the Academy, he spent some time living in Jelenia Góra, where for 4 years he attended the Stefan Żeromski Co-educational Gymnasium and Grammar School. These school years are the subject of Wisłocki’s account. It is a detailed description of Professor’s pre-war life, as well as his and his family’s war experience, and in particular of his father’s military service. Wisłocki clearly explains the reasons for his family coming to Lower Silesia and settling in Jelenia Góra. Equally clearly Wisłocki recalls his teachers, school friends and important events which influenced the school life as well as the life of the local society, such as existence of the underground independence movement in 1949. He tells anecdotes about excursions to the mountains or his first performances as a musician staged at school. Wisłocki underlines the importance of this first, post-war period – not only for him, but also for his friends who later, having graduated from grammar school, went on to become professors or achieved other socially significant posts. Finally, Professors pays a lot of attention to returns and school relations – still vivid and close after more than seven decades. Annual school reunions and extensive correspondence exchanged by the ex-pupils serves as a proof that the short period of education, which lasted only 4 years, had a great impact on the life of this generation.
Niniejszy esej stanowi zbiór podstawowych poglądów brytyjskiego filozofa Robina George’a Collingwooda na cele i zadania nauk historycznych. Zawiera krytykę ujmowania historii jako dyscypliny dążącej do ustanowienia ogólnych, rządzących biegiem dziejów, praw oraz jako dyscypliny zmierzającej do odkrycia, realizowanego w dziejach, boskiego planu. Jest on próbą wykazania różnic między historią a filozofią historii, sztuką i nauką. Wyraża pogląd, że nie istnieje coś takiego jak czysty fakt historyczny, że nie jesteśmy w stanie, w sposób absolutny, poznać jakiegokolwiek faktu historycznego, mimo że wiedza o nim zwiększa się, oraz że myślenie historyczne bazuje na percepcji. Konkluzją eseju jest myśl, że każdy historyk patrzy na przeszłość z własnego punktu widzenia, a więc źródła, z jakich korzysta, i wnioski, do jakich dochodzi, będą się znacząco różniły od źródeł i wniosków innych historyków, oraz myśl, że każde wydarzenie historyczne jest niewyczerpalne w tym sensie, że w rękach każdego nowego historyka przybiera inny kształt.
EN
This essay is a set of Robin George Collingwood’s basic reflections on the objectives and tasks of the historical sciences. It contains the critic of history as a discipline that aims at establishing general laws, which rule the course of history, and as a discipline that aims at discovering a divine plan, which is realizing itself in history. It is an attempt to show the differences between history and the philosophy of history, art and science. It expresses the thought that there is no such thing as a pure historical fact, that absolute cognition of any historical fact is impossible, though the knowledge about it increases, and that historical thought is based on perception. The conclusion of this essay is twofold. First, it concludes that the idea that each historian looks at the past from his own point of view, therefore sources used by him, and inferences that he reaches, significantly differ from sources and inferences of other historians. Second, it concludes that the thought that any historical event is unexhausted, in the sense that, it takes another shape in the hands of every new historian.
The article discusses the bases of the contemporary concept of the theory of sources. I have made an attempt at re-interpreting this basic concept of historical methodology based on the semiotic concept of signs and reality.
The first half of twenty years of 17th Century is a period of gradual normalization of Polish and Turkish relations after the Great War of 1620-1621. Challenging the issue of Zaporowscy Cossacks and their looting expeditions in the Black Sea effectively was regarded as the pre-condition of success for this normalization process. The Republic of Poland tried to achieve both targets by means of the mission of Priest Krzysztof Zbaraski to Stambul in the years of 1622-1623, and the commission, as well as the subsequent military encounter with the Cossacks in 1625. Members of political elites were also sometimes directly involved in achieving those targets. This article presents three letters from Cracow Bishop Marcin Szyszkowski to the Governor of Kiev Tomasz Zamoyski. The letters being kept in custody of Zamoyski Archive affiliated to the Central State Historical Archives in Warsaw. Those letters were written in the years of 1623-1626 and referred to political issues. Apart from the factual content, they allow to learn about the attitude of Senator Marcin Szyszkowski, being the clergyman, to the said political and military events. They also expose personal relations between magnates and politicians. Therefore the letters incorporate themselves into the research on military and political history as well as the philosophy of life and the position of people of the Church as far as public life is concerned in the Republic of Poland of 17th Century.
Repeatedly raised demands for the need to draw up the lists of directories (liturgical calendars) and schematisms became an incentive to produce a catalogue of directories and schematisms of male and female religious orders existing in the territory of the Polish Republic. This work is based on part of a collection of these kinds of printed documents stored in the University Library KUL and covering the years 1690-2008. Its size is estimated to be around 600 titles, which places it among the largest collections of this type in academic libraries in Poland. The entire bibliographic material was divided into two parts, the first of which includes male religious orders and congregations and the other female religious orders and congregations. Titles are listed chronologically according to administrative units which were part of various religious orders. A short description of religious orders includes mainly administrative divisions, which facilitates the identification of individual printed documents. The Catalogue ... was preceded by an introduction, in which attempts were made to introduce general characteristics of the presented part of the collection: its internal structure, size, and various elements of bibliographic description.
Przedmiotem badań jest osiem kronik sporządzonych w pięciu grodzieńskich klasztorach w II połowie XVII i w XVIII w. Na podstawie analizy treści kronik i zastosowanego w nich sposobu przedstawiania świata autorka bada tematy i wątki w nich pominięte. Owe opuszczenia charakteryzują kroniki jako typ piśmiennictwa, ujawniają cele przyświecające ich spisywaniu, specyfikę autora-kronikarza, nadają szczególną wartość nietypowym informacjom znajdującym się w tych tekstach. There search is based on eight chronicles written down in five Grodno (Hrodna) monasteries in the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century. The content of the chronicles and the ways of its presentation allow the author to analyse the texts and find out topics and points missed. These omissions indicate chronicles as a literary genre, tell us about the goals of writing them down and about the specifics of the authors, give special value to any information included in the chronicles as an exception.
Artykuł podejmuje zagadnieniem wartości informacyjnej galicyjskich czasopism prawniczych w badaniach nad dziejami notariatu w latach 1871-1914. W tekście zajęto się analizą takich tytułów jak „Kwartalnik Stowarzyszenia Kandydatów Notarialnych w Krakowie”, „Prawnik”, „Przegląd Sądowy i Administracyjny”, „Urzędnik w Połączeniu z Prawnikiem”. Sporą część ich zawartości zajmowały teksty dotyczące notariatu. Na uwagę zasługuje ciągłość, cykliczność oraz jakość publikowanych materiałów, które stwarzają możliwości badań nad grupą zawodową notariuszy zwłaszcza z zastosowaniem perspektywy egodokumentalnej.
EN
The article deals with the issue of the informative value of Galician law journals in research on the history of notaries public in the years 1871–1914. The text presents the analysis of such titles as „Kwartalnik Stowarzyszenia Kandydatów Notarialnych w Krakowie”, „Prawnik”, „Przegląd Sądowy i Administracyjny”, „Urzędnik w Połączeniu z Prawnikiem” [“Quarterly of the Association of Notary Candidates in Krakow”, “Lawyer”, “Judicial and Administrative Review”, “The clerk combined with the lawyer”]. A large part of their content was devoted to texts on the notary public’s services. The continuity, cyclicality and quality of published materials are noteworthy, as they provide opportunities for research on the professional group of notaries, especially with the use of an ego-documentary perspective.
This article discusses the sources useful in the studies on the history of Roman catholic parishes in Galicia in years 1772–1867 stored in the Central State Historic Archive of Ukraine in Lvov. The main focus has been on two sets, that of the Regency and Galician Treasury Procuratoria. Source materials from these sets allow to recall the history of socio-economic church institutions in the Austrian annexed territory. They contain information about their property status, legal rights to tithe and their obligations, descriptions of buildings (temples, living and storage buildings). Lvov materials are partially identical and partially complimentary to church archives in Poland (Diocese Archives in Tarnow). The article is complemented by appendix which contains scans of sample documents.
PL
W artykule omówiono źródła przydatne w badaniach nad historią parafii rzymskokatolickich w Galicji w latach 1772–1867 przechowywane w Centralnym Państwowym Archiwum Historycznym Ukrainy we Lwowie. Skoncentrowano się na dwóch zespołach – Namiestnictwa i Galicyjskiej Prokuratorii Skarbowej. Pochodzące z tych zespołów materiały źródłowe umożliwiają odtworzenie dziejów społeczno-gospodarczych instytucji kościelnych w zaborze austriackim. Przynoszą bowiem informację o ich uposażeniu w nieruchomości, prawach do dziesięciny i przyznanych powinnościach, opisy zabudowań (świątynie, budynki mieszkalne i gospodarcze). Materiały lwowskie częściowo pokrywają się, a częściowo dopełniają z archiwami kościelnymi w Polsce (Archiwum Diecezjalne w Tarnowie). Uzupełnieniem artykułu jest aneks, w którym zamieszczono skany przykładowych dokumentów.
The author discusses an issue of forming questions in oral history. There are two types of them – research questions and interview questions. Instead of analyzing how to ask questions, the interviewer should rather focus on why to ask them. The article proves that asking questions in oral history is less about formal elements such as what language should be used or what matters should be raised, but more about such elements as emotions or the overall atmosphere of an interview. The author gives some clues on how to prepare proper questions, what difficulties may appear and what to avoid in order to carry out a good interview.
The article concerns different kinds of “personal” (in contrast to “official”) sources used by historians dealing with the post-World War II Polish American history. The Author considers advantages and shortcomings of analyzing personal correspondence, personal memos, diaries and memoirs, formal and informal interviews and other oral testimonies, but also difficulties and problems they bring to a researcher. Studying those types of source is however often crucial in the absence of official archival documents reflecting e.g. the ethnic identity of the large group of the Americans of Polish descent, or the backstage of the process of their assimilation and organization in the United States.
This paper describes how Aleksander Gieysztor consciously worked on mastering the research methods of history already during his studies; it presents the diversity of research issues he undertook and shows various types of historical sources (written, archaeological and folklore) that Gieysztor used in his work.
Статья посвящена анализу нового вида источника: интернет-блогов, как источника личного происхождения. В работе дается понятие интернет-блога; описывается специфика различных интернет-платформ; проблемы, встающие перед исследователем, использующим блоги в качестве исторического источника; особенности источниковедческого анализа интернет-блогов. Автором рассматриваются отдельные разновидности личных блогов, например, блоги российских чиновников. Затрагивается роль интернет-блогов в изучении истории России начала XXI в.
PL
Artykuł poświęcony jest analizie nowego rodzaju źródła: blogów internetowych, jako źródła pochodzenia osobistego. Artykuł przedstawia koncepcję blogu internetowego. Opisano: specyfikę różnych platform internetowych; problemu, przed którymi stoi badacz wykorzystujący blogi jako źródło historyczne; cechy analizy źródłowej blogów internetowych. Autor analizuje pewne kategorie blogów osobistych, na przykład blogi rosyjskich urzędników. Zarysowuje znaczenie blogów internetowych w badaniu historii Rosji na początku XXI wieku.
EN
The article is devoted to the analysis of Internet blogs as a source of personal origin. The paper gives the concept of an online blog; describes the specifics of various Internet platforms; problems faced by a researcher using blogs as a historical source; features of source analysis of online blogs. The author examines certain categories of personal blogs, for example, blogs of Russian officials. The role of Internet blogs in studying the history of Russia at the beginning of the XXI century is touched.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.