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1

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100%

Konopka M.

Ochrona Zabytków

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2012

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issue 1-2

9-34

EN

The Centre for Documentation of Monuments (CDM) was created at the end of 1961 and at the beginning of 1962. Currently it functions under the name “National Heritage Board of Poland”. The axis around which the system of protection of historical monuments in the People’s Republic of Poland was built was the register of monuments set up after the regaining of independence in 1918 and continued in the Law on the protection of cultural property and on museums that was passed in 1962. The establishment of CDM is strictly connected with political changes (the “thaw”) that happened after October 1956. The restoration, conservation and organisation of museums was entrusted after the war to the central institution named the General Directorate for Museums and Protection of Monuments, which was headed by Stanisław Lorentz and Prof. Jan Zachwatowicz (General Conservator of Monuments). At the end of the 1950s, museums and protection of monuments were managed centrally by the Ministry of Culture of Art and its subordinated entity – the Administration of Museums and Monument Protection (AMMP) (the counterpart of a department), the head of which was doc. dr Kazimierz Malinowski, an art historian. In years 1958-1960, works were undertaken in AMMP to create a list of monuments of architecture and art on the “green card” form. In 1962, after a new law was passed, the state took over responsibility for the condition of monuments, and the monument was defined as a cultural property entered into the register. The prepared list resulted in the classification of collected materials and the division of monuments into five groups, where the highest classes were subject to protection and the lowest classes were left without care on the state level. K. Malinowski was the originator of the idea to establish a new institution – the Centre for Documentation of Monuments, whose main collection consisted of documentary materials gathered in the Ministry of Culture and, primarily, cards of the list of monuments, which encompassed 35,000 items. Thus, at the beginning CDM became an “external” department of AMMP. The regulations specified the existence of five departments: non-movable monuments, movable monuments, museum exhibits, archives and the library and issuing of AMMP’s publications. This activity began with the Ochrona zabytków quarterly. The department of non-movable monuments dealt with objects of architecture and historic buildings. The idea to prepare a register of movable monuments required the scope of such a project to be determined. The museology department prepared the Muzealnictwo annual. Within 10 years of its existence, CDM gained the status of a central institution collecting documentation concerning the protection of monuments and museology and became an unofficial publishing house. Issued in one volume in 1964, the list of monuments of architecture was published in 17 journals in division into voivodeships existing at that time. In the 1970s, monument protection was becoming an instrument of „historical policy” again. The title of the General Conservator of Monuments was restored. The criteria of “selection of monuments” applied in the list, which completely ignored objects from the 2nd half of the 19th century and the 20th century, traditional wooden buildings – characteristic elements of the cultural landscape of Poland, monuments of industry and technology, historic cemeteries and archaeological sites were questioned during the discussion published in Ochrona zabytków. In 1975 the function of Director of CDM was taken over by Prof. Wojciech Kalinowski, an architect and a town planner, who prepared a new conception of the institution and undertaken the idea of preparation of a full list and record of monuments. From 1975 new models of records and instructions for their implementation began to be developed, resulting in the preparation of the “white card” of monuments of architecture, the address list and the three-level system supplemented with a historical study. The preparation of the register of historic parks, gardens and cemeteries was started, too. The last link of the system became the register of archaeological sites (KESA card). New forms and instructions were published in 1981. Glossaries necessary for the proper description of monuments were being prepared for all specialistic fields. It was also at that time that Spotkania z zabytkami – the first and only magazine about popular science in the Eastern Bloc countries – began to be released. The emphasising of the importance of the monument in the context of cultural landscape became more intense in the 1980s. These discussions made it possible to prepare amendments to the 1962 Law. At the time of political transformations in 1989, the State Monument Protection Service managed by the General Conservator of Monuments was established. On the voivodeship level, SMPSs were formed by offices of voivodeship conservators of monuments. One of the authorities exercising the protection of cultural property was the Director of CDM, who performed the following tasks: support of SMPSs, keeping of the central record of monuments and co-ordination of SMPS units in this respect, development of the rules of documentation of monuments, preparation of the substantive basis for the conservator’s policy of protection of the cultural environment. In the amendment to the law, the care of monuments was entrusted to their users. In 1990 CDM gained a new statute and new role: it was transformed from the institution keeping the register of monuments into the institution supporting the office of the General Conservator of Monuments on the one hand and voivodeship conservators of monuments in historical regions of the country on the other hand. This purpose was to be served by regional centres – divisions of CDM forming interdisciplinary teams of specialists. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Centre and its divisions were computerised. As a result of changes introduced in 1990, the Centre became a content base of state administration in the field of heritage protection (at the time of its establishment, i.e. in 1962, CDM employed 6 persons, and by 1991 this number rose to 160, including 100 persons in 12 regional divisions). However, the new law on the protection and care of monuments adopted in 2003 changed the cultural heritage protection system once again. In 2002, CDM was merged with the Centre for the Protection of Historic Landscape, which had dealt with the subject area of cultural landscape until then, and its name was changed to the National Centre for Research and Documentation of Monuments. In 2011, the National Heritage Board of Poland was established.

2

Dział Architektury i Urbanistyki

72%

Wendlandt J.

Ochrona Zabytków

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2002

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issue 1

14-24

3

REJESTR ZABYTKÓW W PRAKTYCE OCHRONY KONSERWATORSKIEJ

58%

Gawlicki M.

Ochrona Zabytków

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2008

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issue 2

55-82

EN

The intention of this article is to assess the state of the register of historical monuments, the role it plays in the domestic system of the protection of the cultural heritage as well as its character and representative nature. Should it be regarded as an important protection instrument, is it shaped in a planned manner, what sort of forms does it assume, and are they an effective element of the protection system? The present-day condition of the register of monuments is the outcome of a more than 90-years long process that essentially affected its shape. The reasons for the current problems tackled by the national system of the protection of monuments should be sought in the history of the formation of this most important tool applied by conservation protection. The Polish register of historical monuments dates back to a decree issued by the Regency Council in 1918. The necessity of differentiating the collection by means of a scientific assessment of its value and the application of a classification of the monuments was noticed soon afterwards. Although work on a complete inventory of monuments, interrupted by the war cataclysm, was never finished, conservation legislation from the interwar period, especially concerning the creation of a register of monuments, should be regarded as a modern and complex treatment of assorted questions relating to protection. The conservation views that assumed shape the 1930s and the conceptions of the creation and valorisation of an inventory of monuments were never developed during the post-war period. The introduction of a classification of immovable monuments was not finalised until 1964 and the preparation and publication of a complete list of the monuments of architecture and construction, divided into five categories. In the face of numerous later negative experiences and critical opinions stemming from daily praxis and, primarily, the destruction of a significant number of monuments from the lower groups, it would be difficult to find any arguments in favour of the categorisation launched at the time. Let us note, however, that it was carried it in a totally different political system and that the assumed objectives were quite dissimilar from the attained effect. In time, the absence of a firm coordination, including administrative, of the activity pursued by the voivodeship conservators of historical monuments upon a central level, i,e. the General Conservator of Historical Monuments, with the exception of the State Service for the Protection of Historical Monuments in 1991-1996, produced a further discernible erosion of uniform principles for classifying monuments for the register, and furthered the differences and divisions within the range of the already existing resources. Meanwhile, the register of historical monuments is one of the statutory forms of protection, and daily praxis confirms that an unregistered object is deprived of all chances for effective conservation protection or for benefitting from financial aid provided by public funds. In this way, the register plays the role of the most important and, as daily activity demonstrates, in many cases the sole instrument for shaping the conservation policy. Within this context special relevance is assumed by its contents, measured not with the number of the registered objects and regional statistics, or even the correctness of administrative documents, but with the contents and representativeness of a collection assessed from the vantage point of the dimension of the cultural heritage of the whole country. The extensive Polish cultural heritage resource protected by law is composed of several collections of immovable, movable and archaeological monuments. In the presence of an almost universal general definition of historical value, formulated in administrative decisions, effective protection is significantly restricted; this factor too hinders a definition of the range and character of the planned conservation undertakings and the financing of the protection of historical monuments. In practical terms, such a state of things gives rise to a number of potential conflicts between owners and conservation offices, and favours the relativism of the assessments of historical values and the principles of conservation activity, rendered dependent upon current pragmatic needs and investment pressure; it also hampers the propagation of knowledge about the actual resources of the protected heritage. Finally, it limits the possibility of winning allies involved in protection ventures. Despite the ostensibly considerable number of monuments listed in the register of immovable monuments, the content of this collection is far from complete. The elementary criteria of historical, scientific or artistic evaluation, determined by a general statutory definition and not modified for decades, are applied in totally arbitrary manner. As a result, numerous valuable monuments with distinctive historical values still remain outside the range of legal protection, while conservation is encompassing a growing number of examples of contemporary architecture. The great differentiation of the register of monuments can be perceived upon the basis of just several select instances. Its range also contains a number of inner divisions whose justification poses a difficult task. Alongside monuments possessing supreme values that do not require any validation, we come across buildings with highly doubtful features, at times giving rise to warranted reservations concerning the presence of even elementary cultural values. The register, a theoretically uniform collection of administrative decisions devoid of divisions into categories, remained unaltered, thus forcing the conservation services to treat equally all the components of this, after all, by no means uniform collection. The possibilities of an actual impact of the voivodeship conservators of monuments upon the contents of the register, in other words, the establishment of areas and objects to be subjected to legal conservation protection, are becoming more limited. It is also impossible to perceive features indicating an actual and well-conceived influence of the voivodeship conservator of monuments upon the ultimate contents of the register. Owing to a profound crisis of spatial planning and the absence of effective instruments shaping the landscape, the register has become the most prominent form of treating the cultural environment. Its representative nature should correspond to the richness and diversity of the Polish heritage. Imperfections and errors weaken the effectiveness of the whole national system of the protection of monuments. Due to the dynamic development of studies dealing with cultural heritage, the progress of scientific theories, and the almost total disappearance of the time barrier, which used to be one of the most important criteria for delineating historical value, the very concept of the object of the conservation protection is becoming increasingly capacious. True, the number of monuments listed in the register is constantly growing, but the needs are so considerable that the attainment of a state that would fully reflect the historical resources is becoming part of a distant future. Meanwhile, the lack of cohesive criteria for assessing values, whose outcome is the non-existence of a hierarchy of the monuments, makes it difficult to establish protection standards. Different ways of solving this problem should be sought in more profound reflections about the current state, function and directions of indispensable legislation changes concerning the register of monuments, with one of the key issues being a precise and, at the same time, modern definition of the object of protection. The principles and role of the register in the Polish system of the protection of monuments must be perceived in a way different from the applied one. The philosophy of transformations has to be based on a determined conviction that we are dealing with resources differentiated as regards their contents. A suitable solution would be to seek an alternative organisation of conservation administration, together with a conception of an intentional sharing of responsibility for the fate of the recorded monuments by the government administration and local self-governments. The favourable effects of the merely outlined but necessary directions of activity will involve the introduction of order into the register, the amassment of numerous scattered entries into a single cohesive register of information about historical resources, and the creation of a collection of the most valuable national heritage monuments. The ensuing outcome will make it possible to conceive of a uniform state policy in reference to monuments representing assorted values within a wide range of research and documentation, to define forms of protection, and to finance conservation undertaking, promotion and effective administration.

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REJESTR ZABYTKÓW W PRAKTYCE OCHRONY KONSERWATORSKIEJ