Category Archives: Poland

by | 26 October 2026 · 5:32 am

The Poles Who Built Harbin

This week’s newsletter from Culture.pl contains several articles about Poland’s connections with Asia. Here are some excerpts (minus photos) from Harbin: A Polish City in China by Anna Cymer (2021), which utilises material from Edward Kajdański’s article ‘The Role of Poles in the Construction and Organisation of the East China Railway: The Memoirs of Engineer Stefan Offenberg’ published in Gdańsk East Asian Studies in 2016. 

In the 1890s, Russia committed itself to a major investment: the construction of a rail link between the south Siberian town of Chita and the important Russian port on the Sea of Japan, Vladivostok. The shortest possible route was mapped out through Manchuria, a region that belonged to China. The two countries came to an agreement – in exchange for Russia’s military assistance, the Chinese agreed to the building of the nearly 1500-kilometre railway line through its territory.

The initiator and manager of this enormous project was the then-finance minister of Russia (soon to become premier) Sergei Witte. It is he who hired Polish engineers to design and build the East China Railway. Although the late 19th century was not a time of good relations between Russia and partitioned Poland, Witte nonetheless recognised the talents of Polish specialists in the field of construction; he appointed Polish engineer Stanisław Kierbedź as the de facto manager of this vital project (he was the nephew of another Stanisław Kierbedź, the famed designer of then-innovative iron truss bridges – notably the bridge over the Wisła River in Warsaw which opened in 1864 and was popularly known as the Kierbedź Bridge).

The precise laying out of the route of the railway was undertaken by railroad engineer Stefan Offenberg, who had earlier managed the construction of one of the key stretches of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Offenberg described his experiences in Manchuria in his book The Role of Poles in the Construction and Organisation of the East China Railway. Thanks to his memoirs, we know, for example, about the harsh weather and challenging landscape conditions the Polish engineers had to endure as they fought their way across the taiga laying out the railway’s route.

Construction of the East China Railway commenced in 1897. Selected as the base of the project was a small fishing village called Harbin (also known as Charbin). That is where the officials overseeing the project were to live, along with the planning engineers. Engineer Adam Szydłowski undertook the planning of the new city that was to arise and the organisation of the massive project’s entire support infrastructure.

Some sources indicate that it was Szydłowski himself who selected Harbin as the central location for the enterprise. Its convenient location on the Sungari River not only lent itself to effectively oversee the construction work, but Harbin also connected with a new branch of the southern bound railway which led to Russian bases in the Yellow Sea port of Dalian.

In the spring of 1898, Szydłowski purchased the building of the former brewery in Harbin and made it the cornerstone of his new city. Other than Szydłowski, early residents of the new settlement included his technicians Raweński, Wysocki and Pawlewski, whose given names have been lost over time. It was not long before the first new homes for construction workers were built in the fishing village. The rail line was divided into a number of segments of which Poles were responsible for roughly half, but the work was not done only by Russians and Poles. From the very start, the city of Harbin was a melting pot of nationalities: Germans, Belgians, Austrians and Englishmen lived there as well, representatives of various firms that supplied the railroad with machinery and other necessities. Even more nationalities were to be found amongst the railroad construction workers: while Poles played a significant role in the actual physical construction work (among them Polish revolutionaries who had been exiled to Siberia), the East China Railway was also built by Georgians, Armenians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Greeks, Turks, and Mongolians.

The first cars of the East China Railway rolled out in 1903. That is when the growth of the city of Harbin began in earnest – thanks to the opening of the vital rail link, it became a fast growing metropolitan area with a steadily growing population (amongst whom was a large cohort of businessmen and traders).

Not insignificant, too, was the city’s special renown as a welcoming international city. Thanks to this reputation, the city attracted political activists who had been forced to flee their own countries (such as opponents of the Soviet October Revolution). In 1917, Harbin was already a city of over 100,000 residents, including members of some 33 nationalities. The most numerous of these groups for many years were the Poles, who, at their height, numbered ten thousand. From the beginning of the 20th century, Polish schools were open in Harbin (e.g. the Henryk Sienkiewicz High School, among whose alumni was the future author Teodor Parnicki), a Polish press flourished and a neo-Gothic Polish church stood on a parcel of land acquired by Offenberg.

One of the builders of the railroad, engineer Karol Weber, established the ‘Gospoda Polska’ (Polish Inn) Association in 1907 for which he built a lavish headquarters in the city. Harbin hosted a Polish scout chapter and a chapter of the Polish Youth Union. For many years, the director of the Russo-Chinese Bank was neither Russian nor Chinese, but rather a Pole, Stanisław Gabriel; for a year, a Pole was the city’s mayor; and a number of Poles sat on the board of the East China Railway. Among the many enterprises established in Harbin by Poles was the local brewery established in 1900 by Jan Wróblewski. The brewery remains active to this day and it is probably China’s oldest beer brewery.

In 1937, Russia and China signed an agreement according to which only members of those two nations could work on the railway. This agreement forced many Poles to leave Harbin; the Polish diaspora was also shaken by the arrival of the Red Army in 1945. Harbin’s last Polish newspaper ceased to appear in 1940. In 1947, the authorities decided to deport the Poles who remained in the city; the repatriated Poles were resettled in Elbląg, Olsztyn, Opole, Wałbrzych, Szczecin and elsewhere. A Harbiners’ Club is still active in Szczecin and it lobbied successfully for a traffic circle to be named for ‘Polish Manchuria’. The Pomeranian Library in Szczecin holds a collection of archives and memorabilia recalling the Polish presence in Harbin.

Today, Harbin has a population of five milllion and is the second largest and second most important city in north-eastern China. Few traces remain of the Polish presence in Harbin’s early years: the neo-Gothic church (formerly St Stanislaus Church; since 2004, the Church of the Most Holy Heart of Jesus) still stands in the city centre; the brewery mentioned above continues to operate; and the bridge over the Sungari River was long referred to as the Kierbedź Bridge. For over a dozen years, there has been a Polish-language program offered at the Harbin Normal University (HNU).

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Filed under China, education, industry, language, migration, Poland, Russia, USSR

by | 25 October 2026 · 6:41 am

Polish Dancing in Japan

This week’s newsletter from Culture.pl contains several articles about Poland’s connections with Asia. I know that Japan has many Hawaiian hālau hula, but I never knew that it also has a group so focused on Polish folklore. Here are some excerpts (minus photos) from Sylwia Niemczyk’s (2025) article (translated by Adam Zulawski) on Dancing the Kujawiak in Fukuyama: The Japanese School of Polish Folklore:

In the 1980s, Yoshiaki Oka came to a Polish village and recorded a performance by a Polish folk song-and-dance ensemble on a home video camcorder. What unexpectedly blossomed from this experience is the subject of Dagmara Furgał’s documentary ‘Japanese Kujawiak’.

‘Ko-le-ba-ny, ko-le-ba-ny. Step, step, step. Pa-ram-pam-pam, stop! The gentlemen should look over the ladies’ shoulders!’ Women in embroidered bodices, floral skirts and blouses with puffed sleeves split into two groups, some taking on the role of the men for today’s rehearsal. All of them concentrate on the instructor’s legs, silently mouthing the words, counting along with him: ‘Step, step, step, stamp, stamp.’

It is a striking scene in the film, notable not just for its uniqueness – elderly Japanese women, dressed in Polish folk costumes, dancing the kujawiak – but also for the beauty of the dance itself. Rising and falling. A vigorous sweep of the arm, a gentle lift of the chin. A stomp! The Japanese dance teacher reads the title off a record sleeve: Kujawiaczek Nieboraczek.

From bon odori to kujawiak

In the 1960s, a fashion for reviving national traditions swept through Japan, including popular interest in folk dances. Young people once again learned bon odori, a ritual ‘dance for the dead’ performed in circles or lines during Obon, Japan’s annual three-day festival commemorating the dead. Yoshiaki Oka, then in his twenties, danced in a local troupe much like his friends. For him, it was part hobby, part relief from everyday duties – after high school, he had begun working as a plumber for the waterworks in Fukuyama.

When he came to Europe for a world folk dance competition, he encountered something completely different from what he practised with his troupe – traditional dances from Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. ‘I didn’t know dances like that even existed. It was like being hit over the head with a club!’ he recalls in Furgał’s film. On a later trip, he filmed performances in a Polish village. Back in Japan, he used that amateur cassette to learn his first steps of the polonaise and kujawiak.

Soon after, in the town of Tomonoura near Fukuyama, he founded his own Folk Dance Association.

The school in Fukuyama

Dagmara Furgał’s excellent documentary weaves together archival clips from Japanese TV programmes with contemporary footage from rehearsals at Oka’s school. ‘In Polish dance, the most important thing is to look at your partner. Even if at home you don’t look at your spouse, here you have to!’ jokes the instructor with his students. Though a few men are present, the majority of the school’s 350 students are women, usually middle-aged or older. Their short haircuts, especially the lack of braids, give the performance a very different look from a kujawiak in Poland. Yet perhaps it is precisely this meeting of two entirely different worlds that makes the dance so captivating.

The kujawiak – along with the polonaise, mazur, krakowiak and oberek – belongs to the ‘big five’ of Polish folk dances. What sets it apart is its lyrical quality: partners facing each other, swaying and gliding, a little like in the Viennese waltz. It has been called the ‘dance of love’. But the closeness it requires can be a hurdle for Japanese dancers, and the same goes for the shouted ‘U-ha!’ that punctuates the stomp. It demands openness, a shedding of reserve – no easy task in a culture that values distance and restraint. But it’s worth persevering with.

‘I feel rejuvenated, younger by about 15 years. I’m almost 60, but now I feel like I’m 40 or 45,’ declares one workshop participant. The rejuvenating power of the kujawiak touches the schools owners too: despite being in their 80s, the Okas still teach, host workshops and even invite guest instructors from Poland.

Polish instructors began visiting the school in the mid-1980s, and these links tightened further after the fall of communism. The Okas befriended distinguished choreographers and dancers, such as Jerzy Wójcik, artistic director of the Silesian Song and Dance Ensemble Śląsk and later a teacher with the Mazowsze ensemble, and his wife Ewa Wójcik, a Mazowsze dancer. The Wójciks led workshops at Oka’s school, and Japanese TV broadcasts showed them demonstrating steps and gestures while a voice-over explained that romantic dances like this were common in Poland. In one 1993 programme, the kujawiak was even described by the Japanese narrator as ‘the most romantic dance in the world’.

In the 2000s, a younger generation of choreographers, Zofia and Jan Czechlewski – also associated with Mazowsze and Śląsk – started visiting Fukuyama to teach too. In April 2024, the Czechlewskis returned to lead workshops marking the 40th anniversary of Polish-Japanese dance exchange, their visit captured by Furgał’s camera for her documentary.

Exchange in both directions

The travels have gone both ways. In 2003, Yoshiaki and his wife Yumiko danced a mazur during the 50th anniversary celebrations of Śląsk in Poland, earning enthusiastic applause. They were also the first foreigners to receive Śląsk’s honorary diploma for promoting Polish folk dance.

That same visit for the 50th anniversary of Śląsk had another outcome: the Okas got married during their stay and held a traditional Łowicz wedding. They arrived by horse and cart to a thatched-roof cottage, and did the traditional kissing of bread. In their wedding video, we see them alongside Polish folk dancers, all of them dressed in Łowicz costumes, playing a game of chusteczka haftowana (a traditional circle dance game in which a handkerchief is used to choose partners).

‘These aren’t our dances, but we dance them now too. And then this place becomes Warsaw, and we imagine ourselves in the Royal Castle,’ says Oka. During his classes, participants also learn about Polish history and culture, as well as customs – when Zofia Czechlewska tells them that in Poland ‘ladies go first’, they all giggle. They also laugh when they hear the translated words of a song that goes: ‘I don’t want you, I don’t want you, I don’t want to know you / come to me, come to me, give me your hand.’ The Polish teacher explains that the kujawiak is about mutual teasing and flirting: ‘I don’t want to dance with you, but I do at the same time.’ This is why the pair embrace each other but also slightly lean apart.

Museum & legacy

After taking early retirement, Yoshiaki Oka fulfilled a dream he had had since the 1980s: he opened a museum of Polish folk dance, the first of its kind in Japan. Inside are photos tracing the history of Śląsk, traditional costumes (‘I bought this dress when I saw it was on sale. See how heavy it is!’ he enthuses to some visitors), and Kraków figurines. His only regret is that the museum was established too late for Jerzy Wójcik to see it. His Polish friend died in 2008.

The kujawiak itself, in the 19th century, crossed over from folk culture into classical music, inspiring composers such as Fryderyk Chopin and Karol Szymanowski. In Japan today, for more than 300 of Oka’s students, many of them retirees, it has become a reason to leave the house, a way to make new friends, and a charming enrichment of their daily life. ‘Japanese Kujawiak is a film about finding love, sustaining friendships, but also about a personal rebellion against old age, frailty and the passing of time,’ says Furgał.

For Polish viewers, the film has yet another quality. Watching this romantic beautiful dance in which lovers sway and spin, draw close and move apart, they can end up realising that there a lot of Japanese dancers in a port city near Fukuyama who know much more about this Polish custom than they do.

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Filed under art, education, Japan, Poland

by | 22 October 2026 · 5:26 am

From Habsburgs to Austria-Hungary

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 65-67:

Two military disasters defined the trajectory of the Habsburg Empire in the last half-century of its existence. At Solferino in 1859, French and Piedmontese forces prevailed over an army of 100,000 Austrian troops, opening the way to the creation of a new Italian nation-state. At Königgrätz in 1866, the Prussians destroyed an Austrian army of 240,000, ejecting the empire from the emergent German nation-state. The cumulative impact of these shocks transformed the inner life of the Austrian lands.

Shaken by military defeat, the neo-absolutist Austrian Empire metamorphosed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Under the Compromise hammered out in 1867, power was shared out between the two dominant nationalities, the Germans in the west and the Hungarians in the east. What emerged was a unique polity, like an egg with two yolks, in which the Kingdom of Hungary and a territory centred on the Austrian lands and often called Cisleithania (meaning ‘the lands on this side of the River Leithe’) lived side by side within the translucent envelope of a Habsburg dual monarchy. Each of the two entities had its own parliament, but there was no common prime minister and no common cabinet. Only foreign affairs, defence and defence-related aspects of finance were handled by ‘joint ministers’ who were answerable directly to the Emperor. Matters of interest to the empire as a whole could not be discussed in common parliamentary session, because to do so would have implied that the Kingdom of Hungary was merely the subordinate part of some larger imperial entity. Instead, an exchange of views had to take place between the ‘delegations’, groups of thirty deputies from each parliament, who met alternately in Vienna and Budapest.

The dualist compromise had many enemies at the time and has had many critics since. In the eyes of hardline Magyar nationalists, it was a sell-out that denied the Hungarians the full national independence that was their due. Some claimed that Austria was still exploiting the Kingdom of Hungary as an agrarian colony. Vienna’s refusal to relinquish control over the armed forces and create a separate and equal Hungarian army was especially contentious – a constitutional crisis over this question paralysed the empire’s political life in 1905. On the other hand, Austrian Germans argued that the Hungarians were freeloading on the more advanced economy of the Austrian lands, and ought to pay a higher share of the empire’s running costs. Conflict was programmed into the system, because the Compromise required that the two imperial ‘halves’ renegotiate every ten years the customs union by which revenues and taxation were shared out between them. The demands of the Hungarians became bolder with every review of the union. And there was little in the Compromise to recommend it to the political elites of the other national minorities, who had in effect been placed under the tutelage of the two ‘master races’. The first post-Compromise Hungarian prime minister, Gyula Andrássy, captured this aspect of the settlement when he commented to his Austrian counterpart: ‘You look after your Slavs and we’ll look after ours.’ The last decades before the outbreak of war were increasingly dominated by the struggle for national rights among the empire’s eleven official nationalities – Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Ruthenians, Poles and Italians.

How these challenges were met varied between the two imperial halves. The Hungarians dealt with the nationalities problem mainly by behaving as if it didn’t exist. The kingdom’s electoral franchise extended to only 6 per cent of the population because it was pegged to a property qualification that favoured the Magyars, who made up the bulk of the wealthier strata of the population. The result was that Magyar deputies, though they represented only 48.1 per cent of the population, controlled over 90 per cent of the parliamentary seats. The 3 million Romanians of Transylvania, the largest of the kingdom’s national minorities, comprised 15.4 per cent of the population, but held only five of the Hungarian parliament’s 400-odd seats. From the late 1870s, moreover, the Hungarian government pursued a campaign of aggressive ‘Magyarization’. Education laws imposed the use of the Magyar language on all state and faith schools, even those catering to children of kindergarten age. Teachers were required to be fluent in Magyar and could be dismissed if they were found to be ‘hostile to the [Hungarian] state’. This degradation of language rights was underwritten by harsh measures against ethnic minority activists. Serbs from the Vojvodina in the south of the kingdom, Slovaks from the northern counties and Romanians from the Grand Duchy of Transylvania did occasionally collaborate in pursuit of minority objectives, but with little effect, since they could muster only a small number of mandates.

In Cisleithania, by contrast, successive administrations tampered endlessly with the system in order to accommodate minority demands. Franchise reforms in 1882 and 1907 (when virtually universal male suffrage was introduced) went some way towards levelling the political playing field. But these democratizing measures merely heightened the potential for national conflict, especially over the sensitive question of language use in public institutions such as schools, courts and administrative bodies.

Nowhere were the frictions generated by nationalist politics more in evidence than in the Cisleithanian parliament, which met from 1883 in a handsome neo-classical building on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. In this 516-seat legislature, the largest in Europe, the familiar spectrum of party-political ideological diversity was cross-cut by national affiliations producing a panoply of splinter groups and grouplets. Among the thirty-odd parties that held mandates after the 1907 elections, for example, were twenty-eight Czech Agrarians, eighteen Young Czechs (Radical nationalists), seventeen Czech Conservatives, seven Old Czechs (moderate nationalists), two Czech-Progressives (Realist tendency), one ‘wild’ (independent) Czech and nine Czech National Socialists. The Poles, the Germans, the Italians and even the Slovenes and the Ruthenes were similarly divided along ideological lines.

Since there was no official language in Cisleithania (by contrast with the Kingdom of Hungary), there was no single official language of parliamentary procedure. German, Czech, Polish, Ruthenian, Croat, Serbian, Slovenian, Italian, Romanian and Russian were all permitted. But no interpreters were provided, and there was no facility for recording or monitoring the content of speeches that were not in German, unless the deputy in question himself chose to supply the house with a translated text of his speech. Deputies from even the most insignificant factions could thus block unwelcome initiatives by delivering long speeches in a language that only a handful of their colleagues understood. Whether they were actually addressing the issues raised by the current motion, or simply reciting long poems in their own national idiom, was difficult to ascertain. The Czechs in particular were renowned for the baroque extravagance of their filibustering. The Cisleithanian parliament became a celebrated tourist attraction, especially in winter, when Viennese pleasure-seekers crowded into the heated visitors’ galleries. By contrast with the city’s theatres and opera houses, a Berlin journalist wrily observed, entry to parliamentary sessions was free.*

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Filed under Romania, military, language, France, democracy, nationalism, Germany, Poland, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Balkans, Austria, Czechia

by | 18 October 2026 · 5:20 am

Polish Punctuation Peculiarities

As a former copyeditor and proofreader, I found one article of particular interest in this week’s newsletter from Culture.pl: Alicja Zapalska’s (2021) Pen to Paper: Mastering the Quirks of Polish Writing. Excerpts follow.

Periods in unexpected places, paragraphs full of dashes, and mysterious abbreviations abound in Polish writing. Here are a few tips to make sense of the Polish language’s unique style and punctuation (language proficiency not included).

Reading and writing might be the bane of any intermediate foreign-language speaker – now, not only do words have to be spelled right, there’s also a whole new set of writing rules to contend with. The bad news is, there are just enough differences in writing styles between Polish and English that intelligibility is not always guaranteed. The good news? At least it’s the same alphabet (sort of)!

Where’s the Dialogue?

Glancing at a page of Polish dialogue might feel a bit like looking at Morse code. Instead of using a quotation mark at the beginning of speech, you should instead add an em dash (—) on both sides of the sentence. The dash is known as a pauza (or myślnik when relating to dialogue) and it serves a variety of functions similar to dashes in English. But, it also replaces the apostrophes in written conversations.

— Like this — she said.

You may also notice the lack of a comma before the dash. Although you can add other punctuation as needed (exclamation points, question marks), leave the commas out of it! Not all dialogue ends with he said/she said. In cases when a complete sentence follows the dialogue, use a period.

— Like this. — He left the room.

If there is no verb or description after the dialogue, instead of continuing in a new paragraph, there is no need to add a myślnik to the end. The biggest part of getting used to this style of writing dialogue may be more mental than physical. While reading, it’s easy to be pulled out of the world of the story, as the brain is wired to interpret quotation marks as people speaking. This problem goes both ways, however. Polish speakers learning English tend to forget the quotation marks, so if you’re working with or reading the work of a Polish speaker, don’t be surprised to see a stray myślnik here and there.

Unlike the versatile quotation mark, dashes are used for dialogue and not quotes; if you’re looking to quote someone or something, our next rule can help you out with that.

‘Quote this’

In Polish, quotation marks are referred to as a cudzysłów, literally meaning ‘foreign [= someone else’s] words’. That’s exactly the context they’re used in when marking words that come from somewhere other than the original author. However, instead of the hanging apostrophes English speakers use, Polish quotation marks look like this: „ ”

They can be used for titles of books, quotes or to add an ‘ironic’ glance to a word. Not much changes between English and Polish for this, but remember to never use them for dialogue!

The nature of a cudzysłów changes if you are trying to use a quote within a quote.

In that case, it’s most common to use » «, which is known as cudzysłów niemiecki (literally, [German] quotation marks). For example:

Napisała „nie jestem pewna czy wolę »Pana Tadeusza« Adama Mickiewicza czy raczej Wajdy.“

She wrote, “I’m not sure if I prefer ‘Pan Tadeusz’ by Adam Mickiewicz or by Wajda”.

Although these characters may seem foreign to English speakers, at least Polish has the advantage of not being bogged down by a surplus of quotation marks that sometimes occurs in cases of double-quoting.

Abbreviations

English is no stranger to abbreviations but they are most often reserved for casual writing, proper titles (like Mr, Dr, etc.) or Latin words (exempli gratia would be a common one). Polish texts, on the other hand, tend to make use of abbreviations at every turn, most often of their own language. Here are a few abbreviations that you’re likely to come across:

  • tj., to jest – that is
  • tzw., tak zwane – so-called
  • m.in., między innymi – among others (like e.g. but used at the beginning of a list)
  • np., na przykład – for example

Two abbreviations that may be confusing are:

  • itp., i tym podobne – and similar (much like the English etc.)
  • itd., i tak dalej – and so on (also used like the English etc.)

Their translations are very similar, so how do you know which one to use? The slight differences are mostly intuitive, so some reading and practising is the best advice. But if you’re nervous about getting it wrong, good news: you can just use both! When writing out lists of items, adding both itp. and itd. to the end of the list shows that it’s too long for you to complete. For example:

Cały dzień oglądaliśmy filmy Wajdy, Smoczyńskiej, Pawlikowskiego, Holland, itp., itd.

All day we watched movies by Wajda, Smoczyńska, Pawlikowski, Holland, etc., etc.

Crash course in Latin

So, when you open up a Polish-language newspaper, take a look through the pages and see how many abbreviations you can spot! Although these are some of the most common ones, there are plenty more that might require a Google search. Good news is, there are plenty of online resources dedicated to abbreviations (because there really are just that many).

Polish writers, especially of academic texts, tend to use Latin phrases without translation. The Polish-Latin connection goes deeper than just some phrases, however; much like Latin, most Polish words are accented on the penultimate syllable. And Poland is one of the few languages whose word for ‘tea’ doesn’t come from the Chinese cha or te, instead most likely from the Latin ‘herb’.

Both in everyday conversation and writing, Latin phrases are more likely to crop up. Here are a few to get you started:

  • Notabene (literally ‘note well’, which can also be shortened to nb.) is used before providing tangential but important information.
  • De facto is also common in English, and the meaning remains the same in Polish though it is also used to add a rhetorical flourish to a sentence.
  • Ex aequo (pronounced egzekffo) means to tie or place equally in some kind of ranked contest, like a sports match.
  • Sensu stricto, meaning in a narrow sense – it’s also sometimes shortened to just the word ‘stricte’.
  • Vel, the Polish answer to ‘a.k.a’, used when signifying pseudonyms or in similar situations.
  • Pro forma (literally ‘for the sake of form’) is used to denote that something is happening mostly for appearance’s sake.
  • Na cito is used when asking for something quickly or immediately, Poland’s ASAP.

Dates, numbers and numerals

Much like other European nations, Poles write the date in day/month/year order. Instead of slashes, however, it’s most common to use periods between the numbers. Though Arabic numerals are standard, another acceptable form would be to use a Roman numeral for the month, such as 28 XII 1899. With this form, periods are no longer used.

In Polish, always refer to centuries using Roman numerals. Though you may see the year written out similarly to the English method (i.e. ‘1970’), there is also a wordier style that may crop up: instead of 1970, that number would become ‘lata siedemdziesiąte XX wieku’, which literally translates to ‘the 70s of the 20th century’. When writing out just the decade, use Arabic numerals with a period after the number.

W latach 90. wszyscy uwielbiali disco polo.

In the ‘90s, everyone loved disco polo.

Mastering the titles

Unlike the Germanic roots of English, Polish is a Slavic language. A clear difference between the two languages (other than grammar, spelling and everything else) is the way

s titles are written out. English tends to capitalise every word in a title except for articles, conjunctions and prepositions. The exception to the rule would be ‘artistic’ titles that choose to lowercase each word, but that is a deliberate choice. In Polish, only capitalise the first word in the title. The rest of the words, with the exception of names, are lowercase.

For example, Stanisław Lem’s book The Star Diaries is capitalised throughout, while in Polish it is written as Dzienniki gwiazdowe. A wordier example would be Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which becomes Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych.

Another facet of using titles is the ever-important colon. Quick rule: don’t use it! Although colons are fair game in every other part of writing, titles instead use a period to differentiate between a heading and a subhead. The film The Art of Loving: The Story of Michalina Wisłocka becomes Sztuka Kochania. Historia Michaliny Wisłockiej. The first word after the period is always capitalised as well, and in this case is followed by a name, otherwise the remaining words would be lowercase.

Here on Culture.pl, regular readers may notice that we actually tend to capitalise Polish titles and put colons in them, as if they were English titles. We do this to ensure that our English-language readers actually recognise them as titles, since these two rules are anathema to the non-Polish-reading eye and can interrupt one’s reading flow!

Foreign names

When dealing with foreign names of people or products in Polish, changing the required cases can be a little trickier. If you’re reading this article, hopefully you’ve made some progress in differentiating between genitive, accusative and all the other cases Polish depends on.

Foreign words present a certain difficulty with declension, but spelling-wise the rule is simple. If a foreign word ends in a vowel, add an apostrophe before the ending. If the word ends in a consonant, no apostrophe needed! A few quick examples include Nowy film Marvela (a new Marvel movie) or komputery Apple’a (Apple computers).

Here are two renditions of Willy Brandt’s name in a Polish placename: Skwer Willy Brandta, Willy’ego Brandta.

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Filed under education, language, Poland, publishing

by | 11 October 2026 · 6:44 am

Demise of Polish Social Media

This week’s Culture.pl newsletter offers retrospectives on its 25-year history of reporting on cultural developments in Poland. Here are some excerpts from a 2025 retrospective by Patryk Zakrzewski, translated in 2026 by Agnieszka Mistur, offering A journey to the graveyard of Polish social media – before Meta products took over the world.

Before the word ‘selfie’ became established in the Polish language, the Fotka.pl service was launched (the portal was inaugurated on Valentine’s Day – 14 February 2001). According to the INNPoland portal, the beginnings of the website were entirely analogue – its creator, Rafał Agnieszczak, had to register the domain by sending an appropriate application to the Research and Academic Computer Network by regular mail and paying a 200zł fee. The inspiration was an American website, Am I Hot or Not? We can learn about the beginnings of Fotka from Bartek Świderski’s review of the website, ‘Żylety i pasztety (Bombs and Hags; the website sexy.onet.pl was also rated), which he published in Machina in 2001.

…

The development of these types of portals was coupled with the dynamic development of the digital camera market – in 2005 alone, 900,000 such devices were sold in Poland. Meanwhile, the number of people using the Internet in Poland between 2001 and 2005 doubled thanks, among other things, to the Neostrada service offered by Telekomunikacja Polska.

On the other hand, the massification of the Internet sparked a response from the network elitists (this is when the term ‘Neo kids’ was coined), and photos from Fotka (as well as from NK or Grono, which will be discussed below) became fodder for mocking blogs, such as ‘Białe Kozaczki’ (White Boots) – with women’s outfits considered ‘embarrassing’ or ‘Pobożni Chłopcy’ (Pious Boys), where photos of young men flexing their muscles were displayed against the background of first communion pictures, images of St Mary’s girls and portraits of the Pope.

Incidentally, Fotka – the only dinosaur of Polish social media – is still alive and well (albeit under the more global domain .com). However, it has changed its profile a bit: today, it functions primarily as a dating site.

…

In the article ‘Świat jest mały, czyli Grono.net’ (The World Is Small, or Grono.net) by Agata Krzewińska, published in Życie (Life) in 2004, we read:

The fact that the world is small was proved by an American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, in his experiment. In a simple way, the scientist demonstrated that two random people living in two distant locations are connected by a chain of only about six people. This means that only these six people (and not several hundred, as was initially expected) would have to shake hands for each of us to be able to shake hands with the Pope or the president of the United States. The Milgram experiment from the late 1960s has once again become popular thanks to experimental internet websites, such as ‘Social Networking’ […]. Grono.net is the first website of its kind in Poland.

In line with this assumption, anyone visiting the portal could check how many handshakes away they were from another Grono (Group) user. The creators of the website – Piotr Bronowicz (Bronek), Tomasz Lis (Czarodzic) and Wojciech Sobczuk (Sopel) – came from the community centred around the Radiostacja (Radiostation) discussion forum. The people who gathered on Grono were initially ‘alternative warsawites [warszawka]’. That’s what they were called by Piotr Cichocki’s interlocutor in his book Sieć przyjaciół. Serwis społecznościowy oczami etnografa (Network of Friends: A Social Networking Site Through the Eyes of an Ethnographer), which was the result of several years of research into the portal’s community. At that time, the website was semi-closed (only people who received an invitation from someone they knew could join), which fuelled interest – at one point, invitations to join Grono even became the subject of auctions on Allegro. In an article in Przekrój (Cross-Section) from 2004, Izabela Szymańska explained:

The fact that only ‘friends of our friends’ become part of Grono makes you feel that no one unwanted will get in, that you’re among your own. […] Grono’s popularity is based on being part of something which cannot be joined by everyone. As a chosen one, you can show your graciousness to those who are not in Grono but would like to be.

Over time, the elitism of the portal began to decline (and invitations were no longer required). At the end of its life, when the ‘the young and the creative from big centres’ had already moved on to Facebook, it was considered a totally uncool service for gimbusy – unsavvy young teens.

Let us return, however, to the time of its prosperity. Discussions took place in a grono (group) – a thematic forum (to create and moderate your own grono, you had to buy the status of a grono–master via text message). Membership in a grono was displayed on the user’s profile, so the right choice of groups was an important element of self-creation. When creating a profile, the user had to answer the question ‘What am I looking for?’ – they could select: a partner, friends, an adventure or nothing (in which case the profile was not visible in the search engine). Compared to today’s social media, the service was characterised by greater transparency of activities; for example, you received a notification informing you who viewed your profile or removed you from their friends list.

Over time, new functionalities were added: the option to add an mp3 to your profile or change its background; a git button, which is the equivalent of the Facebook ‘like’ button (the most popular photos were added to the Grono greatest hits list, i.e. the ‘top gits’ category visible on the homepage); and, after some time, a kit button to express disapproval.

In 2006, Grono won the Nocne Marki (Night Owl) award from the magazine Aktivist in the category ‘Zajawka 2006: Najlepszy serwis Web 2.0’ (Clip 2006: Best Web 2.0 Service). Other nominees were Moblog (a service for blogging from mobile devices, sponsored by Nokia), Smog (a website for presenting ‘funny stuff’) and Wrzuta.pl (a service for sharing mp3 files).

As recently as 2008, Grono.net was the most popular social media platform in Poland. At that time, all of Central and Eastern Europe was a colourful mosaic of local social media: in the Czech Republic, the most popular service of this type was Lide.cz; in Lithuania, One.lt; in Latvia, Draugiem.lv; in Hungary, Wiw.hu (which, as the founders of Grono said in interviews, was an inspiration for them when creating the website). Parenthetically, Grono made an attempt at foreign expansion – English and Spanish language portals Grapeo.co.uk and Bago.es were created – but failed.

As early as 2009, the website began to lose the competition for the hearts and minds of users to Facebook, which was also due to changes made to the website, such as the introduction of a new layout and additional paid services. The popularity of the thematic group called ŻĄDAMY STAREGO GRONA!!! (WE DEMAND THE OLD GRONO!!!) was skyrocketing, and the profile pictures showed graphics made by the users in Paint with slogans such as ‘Grono has sold itself’ or ‘The new Grono is shitty’ (see illustrations from the abovementioned book by Piotr Cichocki). The portal was closed in 2012.

According to the Megapanel/PBI Gemius study Dzieci aktywne online 2007 (Children Active Online 2007), young people in the 15-24 age group constituted the largest group among Internet users (33.76%). Of these, 85% were active users of social media. At that time, 42% of Poles had access to the Internet.

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People with similar interests joined so-called clubs – the equivalent of discussion forums, which also had their own galleries and guestbooks. The online newsletter Pulsik was an original idea – an information portal created by Epuls users for Epuls users. There was also a scoring system for active users of the platform. A feature that originated from Fotka was the ‘Epuls mascots’ tab, which displays users whose profile pictures received the highest ratings from other users.

The platform’s internal currency were called pulsars. They could be used to buy additional emoticons, virtual gifts for friends, features such as quizzes for friends or access to a premium account, a so-called Divine Puls. Another lesson in capitalism was the internal sales platform, where the more entrepreneurial and talented Epuls users, in exchange for pulsars, sold their graphics, which were used as profile photos. The website also collaborated with mBank; Epuls was connected to the electronic banking service called izzyBank – ‘the first virtual bank for young people ages 13 to 18’.

Predatory monetisation, user dissatisfaction with the new website layout and changes to the portal, and of course the expansion of Facebook contributed to a slump in Epuls’s popularity – the portal lost more than 700,000 users within a few months in 2010. A slow decline then began, and the site was finally shut down in 2017.

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We have already mentioned portals with a distinctly youthful profile, so it’s time for an intergenerational service, which for many older users was something like a ‘gateway to the Internet’ – a place where they gained their digital skills and took their first steps in building online relationships.

It was founded in 2006 by Maciej Popowicz, then an IT student at the University of Wrocław, together with Michał Bartoszkiewicz, Paweł Olchawa and Łukasz Adziński. Nasza Klasa (Our Class), because that is what we are talking about, was modelled on the American website Classmates.com, and the name of the portal was taken from a song by Jacek Kaczmarski. The idea was simple – to create a platform that would enable people to find their school friends after many years, and it hit the spot. You could escape from school memories to an imagery faraway space, Neverland, where fictional schools could be created. Hogwarts, of course, attracted the largest group of people.

Over time, the original function of the portal began to be expanded with other services and tools. Nasza Klasa offered a whole range of browser games, including something for those seeking something bucolic (‘Wiejskie życie’ [Rural Life] or ‘PGR’ [Agro-Commune]) or thrills (‘Miejskie gangi’ [Urban Gangs]), and fishing fanatics (‘Na ryby’ [Gone Fishin’]) were not forgotten. In 2009, the website introduced its own internal currency – the euro-sponge. You could use it to buy new emoticons (referred to as ‘super faces’), virtual gifts for your friends, an extra transfer for photos in your gallery or – just after the Smolensk disaster – a black ribbon for your profile photo. The currency was named after the website’s mascot – Pan Gąbka (Mr Sponge).

Since there were also many young users on the portal, Nasza Klasa initiated an educational campaign for children that taught the rules of online safety. Its faces were a pair of superheroes – Sekurion and Protekta.

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In 2010, over 11 million people had accounts on this website – more than half of all internet users in Poland at that time. Soon after, however, the portal underwent rebranding and began to lose its character in competing with foreign social-media giants. Many of the new changes were met with resistance from users – this was the case, for example, with the introduction of śledzik, i.e. the equivalent of Facebook’s newsfeed. People unfamiliar with internet slang – much to the amusement of jokesters – spread a chain letter saying that, to get rid of the hated function, you should enter the code 5P13RD4L4J 5L3D21U (can be read as ‘f**k off śledzik, ed.). However, the real outcry was caused by the new website regulations (operating under the abbreviated name nk.pl since 2010). The main issue was that all content added by users was the property of the portal and could be used, for example, for marketing purposes. Ironically, users generally moved to Facebook, a service that, as we know, does not care much about user privacy and has similar provisions in its terms and conditions. The website only had about one million users in 2020, and it was closed on 27 July 2021 at 11:59pm.

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The Polish response to Twitter was BLIP – the name of the service is an acronym of the slogan ‘Bardzo Lubię Informować Przyjaciół’ (I so like keeping my friends informed). Its launch caused controversy in the Polish blogosphere, although it was not actually to blame. The problem was that shortly before this, Grono had started promoting its service with an almost identical name (Blimp) and functionality (although the launch of Blip had been announced earlier), preceded by an aggressive marketing campaign which involved spamming the most popular Polish blogs with comments …

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Blip users could share short messages of up to 160 characters and attach photos, links or voice messages. ‘Blip weighs nothing, Blip is everywhere’ – a woman’s voice assured us in an advertising spot. On 22 October 2009, the website proudly announced on its blog that 10 million messages had already been sent via Blip. Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych (the Social Insurance Institution, ZUS) had a Blip account, as did the editorial offices of national media (Radio Zet, TVN24, Przekrój), football clubs (Legia Warszawa, Widzew Łódź) and city offices (Radom, Kraków). All the same, it remained a niche service, as the number of Blip users that year was just over 300,000. In 2013, the service was closed, and users were encouraged to migrate to Wykop.pl, which is still in existence today. Other platforms, such as Flaker.pl, Pinger.pl and Spinacz.pl also tried their hand in the microblogging market.

The most popular Polish messenger of the time, Gadu-Gadu (Chit-Chat) (which became the owner of Blip at one point), also tried to promote its social-media platform. The MojaGeneracja.pl portal, which was launched in February 2007, offered the possibility of creating a profile, rating other profiles or running a blog. An original feature was the option to leave voice comments. In addition to the typical set of tools, other branches of MojaGeneracja (MyGeneration) were developed over time, such as the educational portal EduNacja or Muzango, where artists could create their profiles and share mp3 files. The latter was probably an attempt to respond to MySpace.

Official blogs on the portal were also kept by public figures: the band Łzy, Tede, Gosia Andrzejewicz, Doda, Joanna Senyszyn and Lech Wałęsa (at mojageneracja.pl/1980; the former president also received a special number in the Gadu-Gadu messenger – 1980)….

Moja Generacja is a prime example of rapid growth and equally abrupt decline in user numbers. In 2008, there were 5 million registered accounts on the platform, but by 2012, this number had dropped to less than half a million. Despite protests from people attached to the portal, the decision to shut it down was made in November 2012….

In the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, domestic social media were already basically an endangered species – and those that survived were a mere shadow of their former popularity.

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by | 10 October 2026 · 9:32 am

25 years of Culture.pl

This week’s Culture.pl newsletter offers retrospectives on its 25-year history of reporting on cultural developments in Poland. Here’s a brief excerpt from one of its many articles.

Join me in travelling back in time. It’s Poland, 2001, the first year of Culture.pl’s existence. These were the days of Poland’s first ever reality show, the Polish edition of Big Brother and the popularity of the cult TV series The Lousy World (Świat według Kiepskich), which followed the lives of a dysfunctional family from Wrocław. It was also the beginning of ‘Małyszomania’ (the collective obsession with award-winning ski jumper Adam Małysz and, what followed, the sport itself) and ‘Pottermania’ (the brilliant translation of the first Harry Potter book only came out in 2000, three years after its debut in the UK). It was also the year in which the horrific attacks on the World Trade Centre took place and the ‘war on terror’ began. 2001 also saw Steve Jobs unveil the iPod (yes, dear children, iPod, not iPhone), which set off a domino effect, ultimately leading to the shift away from physical media and the emergence of a model of cultural participation based on subscriptions and streaming, in which we own nothing, but have access to (practically) everything.

Let’s begin with a closer look at the very reason our website could be created in the first place. In 2001, less than 20% of Poles are said to have had access to the internet. On 15th January 2001, the Polish Telecommunications company (Telekomunikacja Polska, TP for short) launched their newest service, Neostrada. Neostrada broadband internet quickly became a symbol of the emergence of the internet in Poland (the young users flooding onto the web, unfamiliar with – brace yourselves – ‘netiquette’, were dubbed ‘neo kids’). The cheapest subscription cost 300 PLN a month (which in 2001 amounted to almost 15% of the average salary); initially, the service was also available only in Warsaw. In September 2001, the Polish-language Wikipedia was launched, and by the end of the year it already had over 500 pages (today it has over 1.7 million). Although the popular Polish instant messaging service Gadu-Gadu had been in existence since 2000 (with 250,000 users by 2001), the social media revolution hadn’t even begun yet. Even MySpace, which seems prehistoric from today’s perspective, would not launch for another two years. In a 2001 article in Machina magazine, you could read about this internet novelty: ‘A new literary genre has emerged. It’s called a blog.’

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Filed under democracy, economics, education, language, Poland, publishing

by | 29 September 2026 · 5:53 am

Some Polish Nobles on the Grand Tour

This week’s edition of Culture.pl has an interesting historical article by Jakub Zarzycki, titled The Grand Tour, or the ‘Great Journey’ Through Europe, first published in 2023 and translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar. Here are some more excerpts.

Grand Tour of a Polish Nobleman

Such a trip was in Polish sometimes referred to as a peregrination (peregrynacja) or a voyage (wojaż), and its participants were called peregrines or voyagers (peregrynanci and wojażerowie, respectively). German terms were also used, such as Kavalierstour (for ‘bachelor tour’) or Kavaliersreise.

It is worth noting geographic and social differences between nations. The English, being mostly Protestants, came to the continent, which involved a physical crossing of the English Channel and a stay in countries with a different – that is, Roman Catholic – religion (such as France and particularly Italy). Meanwhile, for Poles, among whom Catholics predominated, it was a trip to lands not so religiously different from theirs.

Such a trip was to happen only once, because later the young nobleman entered adult life. Initially, the peregrines were therefore between the ages of 16 and 20; later, from the 18th century, older people went. It happened that brothers of similar age traveled together. Jan (later king) and Marek Sobieski, departing in 1646, were 17 and 18, respectively. Janusz Antoni and Michał Serwacy Wiśniowiecki, starting their journey in 1695, were 17 and 15 years old. Later, they held high offices, as Janusz became the castellan of Kraków, while Michał became the voivode of Vilnius and the great hetman of Lithuania.

The journey (sometimes combined with study) could last from one to four years, sometimes longer. Both the young Sobieskis and the Wiśniowieckis left Poland for a total of two years. The grand tour of the brothers Jan Stanisław and Aleksander Jan Jabłonowski, sons of Stanisław Jan, the grand crown hetman and the commander of the Polish hussars during the Battle of Vienna, lasted longer – they stayed abroad for over five years – from September 1682 to January 1688.

As a side note, it can be remarked that their father also spent part of his youth abroad – the period of his studies in Prague and the Grand Tour, spent primarily in France, were in the years 1648 to 1650.

The time spent in each city was not divided equally. It was assumed that one could spend up to a year in Paris (combining this stay with studies), and only a few weeks would be left for Madrid. This is what the Jabłonowskis, for example, did. The Sobieskis also spent most of their trip in the French capital, while the Wiśniowieckis lived there for almost a year.

The trips were, of course, carefully planned, and the most important element of preparation was the choice of a guardian. Young people did not leave alone but under the supervision of a preceptor, also called a mentor, governor or tutor. As Antonii Mączak, the precursor of research on travel in modern times, wrote in the book Everyday Life in Traveling Around Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Życie Codzienne w Podróżach po Europie w XVI i XVII Wieku) that this guardian had to be

a thoroughly competent person who knows the countries he visits, speaks languages and treats the care provided during a foreign trip as a profession. Such a tutor was valuable, as he ensured the young man used his experience and made it possible to trust that he would avoid unnecessary risks. Such specialists were passed on by fathers through letters of recommendation. They would often become authors of widely read and useful guides.

One such professional preceptor was Lassels, the author of the term Grand Tour, who traveled in this manner five times in total. The young Jabłonowskis had two tutors – Jan Michał Kossowicz and Szymon Ignacy Gutowski. The Wiśniowieckis were looked after by Jan Kamocki, and the Sobieskis by Sebastian Gawarecki. During such trips, preceptors could complete their own studies and, of course, visit previously unknown places with the young peregrines.

The task of the preceptor was primarily to make sure that the whole trip proceeded in accordance with the parents’ instructions, i.e. that the young men learned, made appropriate contacts, and also engaged in sightseeing. It was the preceptor who had the money allocated for the trip and regularly informed the parents in letters about what was happening to their sons. Mentors would also write diaries if the peregrines were too young. Gawarecki wrote one for the Sobieskis, and Kossowicz for the Jabłonowskis.

In addition to the guardians, servants were also taken along, which was so obvious that they were not even mentioned in the travel accounts unless they became the protagonists of some particular story.

Itineraries, Diaries & Manuals

Our knowledge about Polish voyagers and their experiences comes from the few remaining travelers’ records  of a specific type. Most of them were not published (their authors did not intend to do so), and they circulated among the relatives and friends of the diarist only in the form of manuscripts, helping in the preparation of subsequent trips.

The first type of such a document was the itinerary. As Adam Kucharski noted:

[it was] simply a list of visited cities, arranged in the chronological order of their visit. Thence originated  the specific type of itineraries, such as the Old Polish ones, that constituted a kind of guide for travelers. They provided an outline of the road separating the destination points, specifying the distance between the start and the finish of the peregrination. The distance was given in various units of length (usually miles as measured in a given country). Possible obstacles on the way, such as rivers or mountains, were also specified.

The second type was a diary, i.e. an account of the expedition; their authors were referred to as diarists. It was a travel journal in chronological order, with the author’s opinions and impressions about the places he visited. It contained comments on history, geography, politics but also descriptions of the sights and observations on the customs prevailing in each given country. It also included practical information. Diaries are the most valuable documents for us today, because on their basis not only can we reconstruct the routes of the journeys but we can also get to know the impressions and opinions of the peregrines. Particularly interesting are those fragments in which the authors describe not so much something typical but rather something that deviated from the norm they were accustomed to.

Yet another document was parental instructions – guidelines in which fathers (more often) and mothers (less often) wrote down their instructions: what and how peregrines were to study, how to behave, what to avoid. These were often based on the earlier experiences of fathers-voyagers. Moral admonitions and practical advice also appeared in the texts themselves. Such an instruction was written, for example, by Jakub Sobieski for his sons, Jan and Marek.

Places Visited

France – including Paris and Versailles – was undoubtedly a special place for the participants of the Grand Tour, often being its main destination. As we read in Stanisław Wierzbowski, who took his ‘bachelor tour’ in the 1680s:

I do not describe Paris, because there are so many volumes written about it. I only add that the city is full of all delicacies. Want to be a saint? You can, because you will find so many opportunities and people whose example of holiness you can follow. There are so many temples of the Lord, pious monasteries, school libraries. The Sorbonne itself gives you a doctorate. Want to be bad? There also you will more likely find the type of company to corrupt your soul and body. Do you want to delight your eyes? You have beautiful people, palaces, gardens, haberdashery, exquisite paintings, splendid and delicate works, and a subtlety of comedies and operas – especially operas and the Versailles garden – these two seduce a man’s memory.

As was already mentioned, Italy was also a permanent destination for the expeditions. Italy aroused interest due to the accumulation of works of art and the role of Rome as the capital of the Christian world. In addition, the universities in Bologna and Padua were highly esteemed. Venice was visited especially keenly during Carnival. The Apennine Peninsula was often the last stage of the Grand Tour – after that, one headed north towards the borders of the Republic of Poland.

The countries of the Reich (particularly Vienna) were also visited for political reasons – after all, a pro- or anti-Habsburg orientation was one of the vectors of Polish foreign policy at that time. Prague, then part of the Reich, was a popular choice as a place of study. Other countries were also traveled to, such as England, the Netherlands and Spain, but their importance or the time devoted to visiting them could not compare to France or Italy.

Typical Activities of a Polish Peregrine

What the young man was supposed to do during the Grand Tour was already planned by his parents in the aforementioned instructions. Peregrines combined sightseeing with studies – for example, the Jabłonowskis studied in Prague and Paris, in the latter city the subject being philosophy at the Jesuit college.

The Sobieskis, while in Paris, even had their typical days planned by their father (Jakub Sobieski). As Joanna Orzeł writes in the text The Grand Tour of Marek and Jan Sobieski (Grand Tour Marka i Jana Sobieskich), it was:

five hours of study a day: an hour in the morning, stylistic exercises in Latin; the next half hour, their correction under the supervision of a professor; an hour-long lecture by the professor, reading with a commentary on Roman history; half an hour, individual reading (a total of three hours in the morning); in the afternoon, two hours of learning French combined with French history. Paris was also where they studied fencing. Their father additionally recommended riding lessons and playing ball (on their days off). In addition, young men could decide on their own to learn to dance and play instruments.

It is worth noting that studies were perceived slightly differently than today – they did not have to be complete, regular semesters spent in one place and ending with exams, but rather listening to lectures by the most eminent professors and participating in disputes. Students often studied for several months, moving between specific academic centers.

Practical studies related to the military were an important element, which was particularly essential for the subsequent career of a young nobleman in the First Polish Republic. Anna Markiewicz, in the text Hercules Gallicus: The Educational Journey of Jerzy Stanisław Dzieduszycki (Hercules Gallicus: Podróż Edukacyjna Jerzego Stanisława Dzieduszyckiego), explained why the young man, who was traveling in the early 1790s, left Paris for the Netherlands:

The attractiveness of the country was usually associated with the possibility of convenient observation of many fortifications and territorial reinforcements located in this area, making it easier for the young nobility to acquire practical skills in the field of military art. The convenience of observing military maneuvers during numerous clashes that took place there was a practical supplement to reading and theoretical classes held at prestigious Parisian academies.

Military interests weren’t exceptional – for example, the already mentioned Wiśniowieckis pursued them. Learning foreign languages ​​was also indispensable. For example, Jabłonowski, the father, put emphasis on this, so his sons wrote letters to him from Paris in Latin and French, which was supposed to showcase their progress in mastering these languages.

Of value apart from studying was establishing contacts, i.e. audiences at royal courts and getting to know other young people from noble and aristocratic families. In May 1685, the Jabłonowskis were introduced to Louis XIV in Versailles. They also observed the audience granted by the King of France to the Doge of Genoa, or the solemn entry of the Muscovite envoy.

On the other hand, liaising with other Polish noblemen in the specific conditions provided by staying abroad and the young age of the people getting to know each other created bonds between them, which were maintained and paid off later in life. The common experience of youth, e.g. studying in the same place, often brought strangers closer together.

These trips were also connected with … shopping. In addition to souvenirs, the newest books were purchased but also works by classical authors, which later enriched magnate libraries. In Italy, especially in the 18th century, works of art were bought, both antique and contemporary. Cityscapes depicting Italian cities, so-called vedutas, are worth mentioning here. The popularity of this genre developed especially in Venice, where these were eagerly bought by English visitors to the city. They treated them as a special souvenir – these works, after returning to London, for example, were to be a reminder of the Grand Tour taken to Italy back in their day.

Grand Tour – What For?

Preceptors’ letters to parents often contained polite requests to send money; fathers, writing to their children’s guardians, in turn pointed out that the costs of the expedition were constantly rising. We may wonder – why send young people on such expensive expeditions? The educational aspect was undoubtedly important, but the peregrine was supposed to watch, experience and gain an understanding of something – and these are very intangible experiences.

As the popularity of the Grand Tour phenomenon among the Polish elites of the 17th and 18th centuries shows, this journey was indispensable and considered worth its price. Its main assumptions have survived, in changed forms of course, to this day.

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Filed under Austria, Czechia, education, France, Italy, language, Poland, religion, travel

by | 28 September 2026 · 5:58 am

Polish Nobles on the ‘Grand Tour’: Intro

This week’s edition of Culture.pl has an interesting historical article by Jakub Zarzycki, titled The Grand Tour, or the ‘Great Journey’ Through Europe, first published in 2023 and translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar. Here are some excerpts from the introduction.

The concept of a Grand Tour was introduced in the 1770s by an Englishman, Richard Lassels, to describe a journey serving to supplement education, develop aesthetic taste, acquire practical skills, broaden the knowledge of foreign languages ​​and acquire general refinement by young noblemen – this was one of the most important social and cultural phenomena in the 17th and 18th centuries. Young Polish nobles also made such journeys.

As noted by Anna Markiewicz in the book Educational Journeys in the Times of Jan III Sobieski: Peregrinationes Jablonovianae (Podróże Edukacyjne w Czasach Jana III Sobieskiego: Peregrinationes Jablonovianae), Richard Lassels ‘included in this term the meaning of the journey – it was grand because of the duration and length of the route, but it was also supposed to be a grand event, a journey of a lifetime’. In the 17th and 18th centuries, such journeys were very popular, if not common, among the richest stratum of the European and Polish nobility. From this designation, other terms were also coined, which still function today – the English ‘tourist’ being someone taking part in a Grand Tour.

The very premise of the Grand Tour was very simple. As Markiewicz wrote, the following were visited:

France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and England. A great foreign trip was then the last stage of education of European elites, undertaken in order to gain knowledge, skills, to get to know the world, foreign countries, their cultures, customs and language. Young people visited foreign universities, courts, academies and military camps.

In the 1730s, Stanisław Lubomirski explained the goals of such an expedition to his sons Aleksander and Jerzy: ‘One should [become familiar with] anything about [the functioning of] a good institution, polish wit and good spirit, and comprehend all wisdom and decorum.’

The point was therefore to see what principles of a foreign system (political or social) could be useful in Poland, to acquire knowledge and skills indispensable in public life, and also to acquire refinement and a certain ability to ‘be in the world’.

Trips in the 17th century – which needs to be emphasized – were, for social, moral and financial reasons, reserved only for young men from wealthy noble families.

However, in the 18th century, the Grand Tour underwent changes – the educational aspect (i.e. gaining specific knowledge) becomes less important, and what matters most is developing the right taste, which is why Italy becomes the most important destination. As Marek Bratuń notes in the article Grand Tour: Birth – Development – Dusk (Grand Tour: Narodziny – Rozwój – Zmierzch): ‘The main purpose of the Grand Tour in the 18th century are the broadly understood arts that contribute to the development of good taste, the most perfect forms of which were preserved under the Italian sky.’ It is also connected with the archaeological excavations of the times, in Pompeii (1738) and Herculaneum (1748), bringing a new wave of interest in the art of antiquity.

The activity of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his work devoted to the history of ancient art, published in 1755, was also significant. The proof of this influence is the work published in 1815, titled On the Art of the Ancients, or Polish Winckelmann (O Sztuce u Dawnych czyli Winkelman Polski) by Stanisław Kostka Potocki, one of the pioneers of Polish archeology and aficionado of ancient art.

Marek Bratuń also adds that ‘it is the primacy of aesthetics in the Italian Grand Tour of the second half of the 18th century […] that will effectively transform the original educational journey into an aesthetic and tourist journey, without a preceptor; in the footsteps of the departing gentlemen, the braver ladies would also follow.’

This tendency is also noticed by Agata Roćko in the article Polish Grand Tour of ‘Fashionable Ladies’ (Polski Grand Tour ‘Dam Modnych’), writing that ‘Polish ladies have already followed on the beaten track of the Grand Tour, just like the ladies in Europe, even though their journeys were not educational and cognitive, but rather aesthetic and touristic.’ Among Polish travelers, one can mention, for example, Izabela Lubomirska née Czartoryska (she went to Italy with Kostka Potocki in the years 1785 to 1786) or Teofilia Konstancja Morawska née Radziwiłł (author of Diary of a European Journey in the Years 1773-1774 [Diariusz Podróży Europejskiej w Latach 1773-1774]).

The trips themselves over the course of time ceased to be reserved only for the aristocracy, becoming in the 19th century also available to the moderately wealthy nobility and the wealthier bourgeoisie. Thanks to this, the phenomenon has been permanently recorded in the history of the Old Continent, because it is then that modern travel around Europe begins to take shape as a typical activity consisting in going to a foreign place and visiting it, completely unrelated to a specific reason (e.g. pilgrimage, a diplomatic deployment or commercial mission). In a way, the idea of ​​such an ‘uninvested’ trip (because its purpose was to see art and visit interesting places) continues to this day – this type of tourism is a typical cultural activity of the European middle class, and a trip to Italy remains its quintessence.

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by | 23 September 2026 · 4:32 am

Poland’s Oddities Under Communism

Last week’s edition of Culture.pl has an article by Wojciech Oleksiak, first published in 10 March 2015, titled 10 Mind-Boggling Oddities of Poland Under the Communist Regime. Here are some excerpts without his illustrative images.

We are all taught at school about communism as a social system, but do we really understand what it meant for those who had a chance to experience it firsthand? Empty stores, propaganda, and censorship, but also a plethora of funny details, born of attempts to make the best out of life.

1. You could hire someone to stand in line for you.

The shortage of most common products could make everyday life a nightmare. During many of the frequent economic crises, store shelves would literally be empty. Memories of huge shops supplied with only vinegar and Georgian tea are one of the most commonly recalled flashbacks to the communist period.

Furthermore, most products were subject to a rationing system which made some products available only to the bearers of special cards. All these inconveniences resulted in what is called a ‘queue culture’. People would queue for hours and days to get a washing machine, a pram or a pound of meat. Spontaneous queueing committees watched the order of queues, and retirees would make additional money by being a ‘stander’ (stacz in Polish) – a person who stands in a queue for somebody else.

2. There was 0% unemployment, but a lot of workers with nothing to do

We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour.  – Vladimir Lenin

The right to work is a foundation of the communist socio-political system, thus the Polish United Workers’ Party put enormous effort into maintaining 100% employment, even if it was completely inefficient. This is why workers would have nothing to do at work for weeks, and would instead just pretend they were working. Danuta Nowak, a lathe operator at the Żerań Factory, says:

I worked on the morning shift. I would come to work at 6AM, punch in, get a coffee, chat with people for hours and have nothing to do until 1PM or so… People were so bored that they often did terribly stupid pranks that not once or twice had serious consequences.

3. Attending parades was mandatory

May 1st, International Workers’ Day, was celebrated more uproariously than any other occasion. The most important part of the yearly celebrations was the huge parade that aimed at presenting support for the Polish United Workers’ Party and for communism, as well as the overall happiness and motivation to work.

The celebration was to be joyful, spontaneous and reminiscent of a hoedown. Yet, it was far from spontaneity – the plan was carefully laid out, roles cast and the marching crowd thoroughly controlled by the organisers. – Tomasz Leszkowicz, histmag.org.

Because spontaneous participation in the parade was mandatory and absence could bring on unpleasant consequences, people used to sign the attendance list and then use every opportunity to escape. Nevertheless, the May 1st parade was critical for propaganda reasons, and, regardless of its real result, was always proclaimed to be a huge success and proof of the nation’s love for the Polish United Workers’ Party.

4. There were inferior quality substitute goods for everything

Petrol was not the only imported good that was missing on the market. Chocolate, good cigarettes, acceptable-quality cars as well as all kinds of innovative products were an unaffordable rarity. Without appropriate resources, domestic producers came up with ‘something-like’ products. Chocolate-like products used vegetable oil instead of cocoa, while God knows what the substitute of quality tobacco was in cigarettes like Giewonty [named for a mountain peak in the Tatras] or Sporty. The most popular car of the period, the toy-sized Maluch, could, with no offence to its quality, be classified as a car-like product.

5. Dachshunds were crazily popular

This noble breed of dog, the creation of which dates back to the times of ancient Egypt (at least, according to its fans), was by far the most popular of 1980s communist Poland. Ladies walking with two or more dachshunds on a leash was a very common sight, and the breed somehow fitted the mundane reality of the Polish People’s Republic: not too big, not too small, cheap in upkeep and (what is always important in a police state) highly unobtrusive.

Surprisingly, dachshunds are almost absent on the streets of present-day Poland. According to a recent ranking of the popularity of dog breeds, they have dropped out of the top 10 in terms of ownership. Where are you, sausage dogs? That being said, they do reappear once a year in a special parade in Kraków dedicated purely to these particular canines.

6. There was normal petrol and ‘commercial’ petrol

In 1988, the communist economic system of everything being state-owned and state-controlled started to seriously waver. It forced the Polish United Workers’ Party to introduce signs of liberalisation; one of those was ‘commercial petrol’. How could petrol, one of the most popular commercial goods, not have been commercial before?

Up till then, every driver had a yearly allocation of several litres that they were entitled to buy. After running out of this limit, their cars would become useless for the rest of the year unless they bought some petrol on the black market (which was severely penalised). From July 1988, every Polish citizen could buy some ‘komercyjna’ (the Polish adjective for ‘commercial’) petrol, which was much more expensive than normal even though it was exactly the same type and quality of petrol. It was sold in only 64 stations in all of Poland, but free of the rationing system.

7. There was hardly anything to watch on the telly

Television in the Polish People’s Republic was state-owned and carefully controlled by the censorship office. Despite several educational and cultural programmes (some still loved, such as The Old Timer’s Cabaret or Four Tank-Men and a Dog), the communist powers used TV as their main means of distributing propaganda. Programmes like Film Chronicles of the Polish People’s Republic or Daily News conveyed messages ordered by the Communist Party and often blatantly blurred the truth. In response, Polish citizens organised massive acts of civil disobedience, such as turning their TV screens to the windows or gathering on casual walks during these news shows in the times of Martial Law.

8. There were vending machines with glasses attached

This was surely one of the grossest inventions communist-era engineers created. The machine in this photo was used to serve carbonated water with or without raspberry juice. The ugly part is that it didn’t dispense disposable plastic cups but had glass cups attached by string. After each use, they were merely rinsed with water and assumed ready for the next person to use. No wonder it made it into history with the nickname gruźliczanka, which can be translated as ‘tuberculosis-lady’.

9. You needed to wait 20 years to have a phone installed

To have a phone line allocated and installed, one could wait as long as 20 years. The deficit of private phones was not only a result of poor infrastructure, it was also very lowly prioritised by the communist powers. Fewer phones meant fewer conversations to control, and less conspiracy and trouble.

In the village Sierpowo, from 7:45AM till 3PM the school phone was used in the office, but during afternoons it became a public device […] numerous visitors who had urgent calls to make would come to use it. People would call ambulances or the police or to inform their family about a new child or a death. It was the only phone in a radius of several miles. – Radek, bufetprl.com

10. There was only one shop selling foreign goods, and it did not accept local currency

Pewex [Przedsiębiorstwo Eksportu Wewnętrznego] is short for Internal Export Company, and that should already give you an idea of how crazy it was, because:

The term export means shipping the goods and services out of a country.

Pewex was introduced in 1970s to help the country’s foreign currency deficit and offered most goods unavailable elsewhere (such as toilet paper, jeans and electronics), but it only accepted foreign currencies The exchange ratio was outrageous and possession of foreign currency in cash was forbidden (it had to be exchanged for bank cheques), but Pewex had no competition and so became one of Poland’s most beloved shops until the fall of communism.

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by | 22 September 2026 · 5:44 am

German ‘Workforce Turnover’, 1942

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 155-57, 181, 191:

If things were bad in Berlin, they were far worse on the eastern front, where many soldiers were freezing to death. The people back home caught glimpses of the Russian campaign on the Wochenschau [weekly newsreels]: horse-drawn carriages and tanks bogged down in knee-high snow; soldiers in white camouflage outfits, rather like hooded bathrobes, skiing or plowing their way through the ruins of Russian villages that were “utterly destroyed by the mighty arms of our heroic shock troops”; German planes dropping food parcels for the soldiers marching in the glacial steppes. Letters home spoke of frostbite and amputated limbs. There were images of “Bolshevik corpses” littered around the icy Russian plains, but never of German soldiers, for that would be too upsetting.

One of the main items on the Wochenschau in January celebrated a domestic campaign that had been ordered by the Führer in December 1941: to donate socks, pullovers, scarves, ski boots, furs, fleeces, blankets, or anything else to keep the troops warm on the front lines….

What was not reported on the Wochenschau, or anywhere else, was an event that occurred at much the same time, on the western shore of the Wannsee, in a grand Italianate villa that once belonged to a rich industrialist and now served as a guesthouse and conference center for SS officers. Houses around the lovely Wannsee were sought after by the wealthiest Berliners. Before 1933, Jews lived in some of the finest homes. After the Nazis came to power, these were confiscated by senior figures in the regime. Goebbels owned a house on the lake, at Schwanenwerder. Walther Funk, the minister of economics, resided in a grand house that had once belonged to a Jewish family, now decorated with swastika tiles. Albert Speer lived nearby, as did Heinz Rühmann, the movie star.

…

Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), invited fourteen senior figures in the Nazi regime to a secret meeting followed by breakfast on January 20 at the SS guest house on the Wannsee. They included top bureaucrats from various ministries, as well as Roland Freisler, the notorious judge on the People’s Court who sentenced more than five thousand people to death between 1942 and 1945. Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for managing Jewish deportations, was asked to take the minutes. What needed to be discussed on that chilly morning, alleviated by a steady supply of fine brandy, were some practical aspects of the extermination of the Jews.

That the Jews were to be eradicated was no longer a matter of dispute. Just one week before the Wannsee Conference, Goebbels wrote in his diary, “The Führer once more expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no sentimental squeamishness about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them.” Mass killings had already been taking place in Poland since 1939. Jews who were not murdered on the spot were to be worked to death. But two questions still needed to be cleared up. How to administer the genocide in an orderly and efficient manner? And how to define who was Jewish? Should Mischlinge be included in the killing program? Heydrich believed that they should. Others wanted to postpone the decision until after the war. After some to-ing and fro-ing, Heydrich settled for that. The logistical issues were cleared up pretty quickly to everyone’s satisfaction, so the gentlemen could enjoy a leisurely glass of cognac in front of the fireplace.

…

The first sign that deportations were imminent was a questionnaire sent through the mail to be filled out meticulously: financial assets, family history, personal details, and so forth. After some days, or sometimes weeks, the Gestapo would come beating on the door. There was no way back after that. In 1942, sixteen transports, each with loads of roughly one thousand people, left the Berlin railway stations. The trains carrying their human freight were mostly bound for the ghettos of Warsaw or Riga, or the death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor, where those not deemed fit to be worked to death were immediately gassed. In the summer of 1942, the killing of Jews had reached a bloody peak. Millions had already been shot or murdered by other means before the gas chambers of Auschwitz were employed day and night. The General Gouvernment had become a giant killing field, presided over by Governor General Hans Frank.

…

There were now more than three million foreign workers in Germany. Many were French POWs. A number of men from occupied countries in Western Europe, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Scandinavian countries, had volunteered for work. Then there were male and female workers from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and other parts of the Soviet Union. Some had come willingly, many had not. The Russians and Eastern Europeans, called Ostarbeiter, often mere teenagers, were treated appallingly. Cooped up in dismal work camps, they were so underfed that many died, or had to be shipped home in horrible conditions. One description of these transports: “There were dead passengers on the returning train. Women on that train gave birth to children that were tossed from the open window during the journey, while people sick from tuberculosis and venereal disease rode in the same coach. The dying lay in freight cars without straw, and one of the dead was thrown onto the embankment.” Treatment of Jewish slave workers in concentration camps, such as Sachsenhausen, was of course even worse.

And yet, a semblance of normalcy for most Berliners continued despite the griping, the bad news from different battlefronts, the horrors endemic in a murderous police state, and “Berlin pessimism.” The soccer competition carried on as always. BSB from Berlin Mitte beat Minerva from Schmargendorf. Tasmania was too strong for Tennis Borussia. And FC Wacker from Reinickendorf lost to Blau-Weiss 90.

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