Countess Karolina Lanckorońska is best known for her memoirs titled Those Who Trespass Against Us: One Woman’s War Against the Nazis (‘War Memoirs’ in Polish). In the memory of Polish historians, whom she often generously supported, she went down in history as a scholar and patron of science. She was the first woman in Poland…
While writing biographies of great writers, we, often unconsciously, look for something unique, or characteristic about the individual path they pursued in their lives. This is probably due to a legacy of romanticism that we are not aware of. Thus we are facing some troubles looking at Jan Kochanowski in a different way. by Wojciech…
The end of World War I was greeted with relief throughout Europe, but in most countries this was accompanied by profound disillusionment with the political and social establishment which had brought it about. Such feelings led to revolution in Russia, Germany and Austria, and violent unrest in France, Great Britain, Italy and elsewhere as many…
When it comes to the relationship between the Bolsheviks and monarchs, the arrest and subsequent murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family quickly come to mind. However, in other communist-occupied countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, monarchs were allowed to abdicate and secretly go abroad. What was it like in Poland? by Wojciech Stanisławski…
Until recently, it was believed that Mieszko I, Poland’s first ruler, had minted the kingdom’s first coin, however, this claim has since been refuted. Mieszko’s denarius was indeed minted by a Mieszko, although in fact it was Mieszko II, the grandson of the founder of the Polish state. by Wojciech Kalwat If we are…
Politics and culture go their own ways. Fragmented Italy, plunged into feuds, gave the world the Renaissance. Spain suffered defeat after defeat in the 17th century, but was in its golden age in the field of literature and art. At the end of the reign of Jan III Sobieski, the Polish-Lithuanian state fell into utter…
