Komitet Obywatelski Odbudowy Miasta Stołecznego Warszawy powstał w Londynie pod koniec 1944 r. w celu koordynowania emigracyjnych prac nad odbudową stolicy. Jego działania, uzależnione od rządu na uchodźstwie, choć formalnie niezależne, miały wymiar propagandowy – świadczyły o ciągłym wpływie rządu w Londynie na kraj. Pomimo zaangażowania członków Komitetu (m.in. premiera T. Arciszewskiego) wydano tylko broszurę o mieście oraz opracowano zachowany w rękopisie tzw. plan londyński odbudowy.
EN
The Citizens’ Committee for the Reconstruction of Warsaw was established in London at the end of 1944. It was to coordinate emigration works for the reconstruction of the capital city of Poland. Its operations, closely related to the Polish government in exile, although formally independent, were of propagandist nature – they testified to the continued influence of the emigration government in London upon the country. Despite the commitment of government members (i.a. Prime Minister Tomasz Arciszewskiego), the final result was only a pamphlet about the city and the so-called London plan of reconstruction, preserved in a manuscript.
Przedmiot analizy stanowią projekty i zarazem okoliczności budowy pomnika (pomników) ku czci cesarza rosyjskiego Aleksandra I jako „wskrzesiciela” Polski, które były związane z rządem konstytucyjnego Królestwa Polskiego (1815–1830). Jest to przyczynek do badań nad fenomenem ideologii „wskrzeszenia” Polski pod postacią Królestwa Polskiego, powstałego na mocy decyzji Kongresu Wiedeńskiego, ale z woli Aleksandra I.
The life of Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821), one of the luminaries of the Polish Enlightenment, a long-time politician and public official, as well as a scholar and patron of the arts, has attracted the attention of many scholars. The first biographical essays on Potocki were provided by Stanisław Staszic and Franciszek Maksymilian Sobieszczański still in the nineteenth century, followed by Stanisław Krzemiński in the 1900s. These texts focused especially on Potocki's contribution to the enlightened reform of Polish education during the Duchy of Warsaw and Congress Poland. However, it was only after the Second World War that Potocki's life became the focus of more wide-ranging and intense research, spearheaded by such scholars as Emil Kipa or Juliusz Starzyński and Stanisław Lorentz. Paradoxically, it was the communist fascination with the Enlightenment that fostered the growing academic interest in Potocki's manifold contributions to art, archaeology, literature, as well as the state administration of religion. Nowadays, the bibliography of his life is quite rich and clearly dominated by art-historical and literary studies, in recent years promoted by the Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów. However, there is still no book-size biography presenting an analysis that would go beyond mere biographical entries.
Tematem artykułu jest udział Sebastiana Sierakowskiego (krakowskiego prałata, akademika i polityka) w tworzeniu mitu Krakowa jako miasta pomnika historycznej wielkości dawnej Polski w okresie Księstwa Warszawskiego i Wolnego Miasta Krakowa. Autor omawia w nim różne przedsięwzięcia Sierakowskiego o charakterze komemoracyjnym, wydawniczym bądź architektonicznym i artystycznym. The article deals with the contribution of Sebastian Sierakowski (Cracow prelate, academic, and politician) to the formation of the myth of Cracow as the “city-monument” to the historic glory of Poland in the era of Duchy of Warsaw and Free City of Cracow. The author discusses Sierakowski’s various undertakings of a commemorative, editorial or architectural and artistic character.
“Supreme Office Next to the Throne” – Napoleonic Centralism and the Concept of the Elite in the Duchy of WarsawThe article deals with the conception of political (social) life in the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1813/1815) at a time of revolutionary changes of the heretofore character of public service in the Polish state “resurrected” by Napoleon. The titular problem is illustrated by an unrealised attempt at establishing a precedence of offices, unknown in pre-partition tradition and referring to analogous French solutions. This venture was to encompass all public offices (administrative, military, court, parliamentary and self-government functions), with only a few referring (mainly via their names) to posts from the period of the Commonwealth of Two Nations. The prime object of the analysis is a collection of projects preserved at the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw. The fundamental difference comes down to establishing priority in the hierarchy of offices – the senators and chairman of the Senate or the ministers and chairman of the Council of State and Council of Ministers. Their ability to make an unambiguous decision stemmed from the different character of the offices of ministers directly dependent on the absolute monarch and representing modern centralised bureaucracy, and the independent senators closer to Old Polish anti-monarchic traditions. By locating the discussion within a wider context of socio-systemic transformations at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the author demonstrated the way in which the drastically altered political situation (preserving, however, the appearances of a return to the past) influenced the views of men of the period concerning the elite of the “resurrected” Polish state.
Although the period of the constitutional Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland) between 1815 and 1830 was relatively short, it was marked by significant events in the history of the reception of classical antiquity in Polish architectural education. The government of ‘resurrected’ Poland was interested in a wide-ranging reform of the country and society, including the development of the local built environment. Such architectural officials as Chrystian Piotr Aigner, educated and trained at aristocratic courts, proved to be well-prepared for the most prestigious public commissions. However, their specific competencies and experiences made them rather unfit for contemporary university careers since the lecturers were expected to teach not artists but ordinary building engineers. The public demand for architects conversant with classical orders and their exquisite ornamentation was much smaller than for those who specialised in plain but technically correct constructions. It was the development and wide dissemination of ordinary building which was of prime importance to the Kingdom’s government. Consequently, the classical architectural heritage was rather disregarded in contemporary academic curricula. Nevertheless, the growing number of affluent landowners after 1825 contributed to the rising interest in the classical heritage in the academic discourse already before the dissolution of the constitutional Kingdom. Initially, it was an academic manual by Henryk Marconi, published in 1828, which promoted the idea of classical orders as the pillar of good architecture. The book was followed by a treatise by Adam Idźkowski, originally announced in 1830, but eventually published only after the November Uprising, in 1832. The book also underscored the validity of the classical heritage, simultaneously presenting a more pluralistic idea of beauty in architecture by treating classicism on equal terms with the medieval tradition.
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