DOI issue:
Nr. 4
DOI article:Artykuły
DOI article:Piątkowska, Renata: Studenci wyznania mojżeszowego w warszawskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych (1923-1939): Studia - debiuty - kariery
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71007#0735
Studenci wyznania mojżeszowego w warszawskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych (1923-1939) 721
Jewish Students at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts
(1923-1939). Study - Debuts - Careers
The School of Fine Arts, opened in 1904 in Warsaw,
was a modern institution, unencumbered by
traditional hierarchies both in its programme and in
access to it for all those who wished to attend. The
success of the school was dependent upon the
personalities of its professors, eminent artists such
as: Kazimierz Stabrowski, Konrad Krzyżanowski,
Ferdynand Ruszczyć, Ksawery Dunikowski, Woj-
ciech Jastrzębowski, Władysław Skoczylas, Tadeusz
Pruszkowski, or Tadeusz Breyer.
Copious, though incomplete archives for the
years 1923-1939 have been preserved. In this article
only those students who indicated Judaism as their
religion on their admission applications are taken
into account. Additional declarations concerning
their ethnicity and native language show how
differentiated the spectrum of their own identities
was. We find many personal thoughts in these
official documents, thanks to which we can discover
their aspirations, plans, and hopes for the future, but
also encounter their difficult, impoverished every-
day existence.
Up to 1939, 118 Jewish students (both men and
women) passed through the institution. They
constituted around 10% of all students. Most ofthem
studied during the 1923-1939 period, after the
school was reopened, this time as a state institution.
They differed in wealth, education and also in their
sense of ethnic consciousness and personal identity.
The Warsaw Academy appears to have been an
exceptional place, both from the information
contained in the documents that have been preserved
and the souvenirs of its students, where open conflicts
of a political or ethnic nature never appeared. Also in
the 1930s, when the political and economic situation
of Jews - citizens of the Second Republic - worsened,
when anti-Semitism ensconced itself at other
institutions (not excluding the Academy in Kraków),
Warsaw's Academy remained friendly and guaran-
teed security. Students and professors jointly
opposed attempts to introduce the numerus clausus
or the "bench Ghetto". A question therefore arises:
is writing about the Jewish students ofthis institution
as a separate group at all justified? I believe it is
worth looking at this group of young people, who
saw no danger (through "assimilation") in Polish
educational institutions, but instead perceived them
as a possibility for self-development, including on
the level of national aspirations. Owing to the
experiences gained at the Warsaw institution, which
through the voices and activities of its professors
introduced the concept of the "artist-artisan" serving
the national cause, these young Jewish creators like
Fiszel Zylberberg, Jehuda Wermus, Ilya Schorr, and
Natan Rapoport, entering into their artistic maturity
in the 1930s, were prepared to introduce and
implement a modern form of Jewish culture in
Poland.
It is through Abraham Frydman, one of the most
promising talents at the Warsaw Academy, that we
can observe how in the 1930s, when racism and anti-
Semitism started to define Polish culture ever more
strongly, there occurred a gradual "drifting apart" of
Jewish artists and "Polish" cultural institutions, as
well as perceive the deepening dissonance between
an ever fuller integration with Polish culture and the
strengthening of Jewish national identity. The open
reluctance and discrimination towards Jews in
public life, overshadowing mutual relations, resulted
in artistic communities closing themselves off within
their own ethnic worlds.
Jewish students graduating from the Academy
left a common, fondly remembered place in Powiśle
to enter the Polish-Jewish frontier, which as Silber
notes, is not a privileged "space of openness and
dialogue", but a "space of ambivalence, contact and
conflict, co-operation and rivalry, negotiation and
isolation."
Jewish Students at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts
(1923-1939). Study - Debuts - Careers
The School of Fine Arts, opened in 1904 in Warsaw,
was a modern institution, unencumbered by
traditional hierarchies both in its programme and in
access to it for all those who wished to attend. The
success of the school was dependent upon the
personalities of its professors, eminent artists such
as: Kazimierz Stabrowski, Konrad Krzyżanowski,
Ferdynand Ruszczyć, Ksawery Dunikowski, Woj-
ciech Jastrzębowski, Władysław Skoczylas, Tadeusz
Pruszkowski, or Tadeusz Breyer.
Copious, though incomplete archives for the
years 1923-1939 have been preserved. In this article
only those students who indicated Judaism as their
religion on their admission applications are taken
into account. Additional declarations concerning
their ethnicity and native language show how
differentiated the spectrum of their own identities
was. We find many personal thoughts in these
official documents, thanks to which we can discover
their aspirations, plans, and hopes for the future, but
also encounter their difficult, impoverished every-
day existence.
Up to 1939, 118 Jewish students (both men and
women) passed through the institution. They
constituted around 10% of all students. Most ofthem
studied during the 1923-1939 period, after the
school was reopened, this time as a state institution.
They differed in wealth, education and also in their
sense of ethnic consciousness and personal identity.
The Warsaw Academy appears to have been an
exceptional place, both from the information
contained in the documents that have been preserved
and the souvenirs of its students, where open conflicts
of a political or ethnic nature never appeared. Also in
the 1930s, when the political and economic situation
of Jews - citizens of the Second Republic - worsened,
when anti-Semitism ensconced itself at other
institutions (not excluding the Academy in Kraków),
Warsaw's Academy remained friendly and guaran-
teed security. Students and professors jointly
opposed attempts to introduce the numerus clausus
or the "bench Ghetto". A question therefore arises:
is writing about the Jewish students ofthis institution
as a separate group at all justified? I believe it is
worth looking at this group of young people, who
saw no danger (through "assimilation") in Polish
educational institutions, but instead perceived them
as a possibility for self-development, including on
the level of national aspirations. Owing to the
experiences gained at the Warsaw institution, which
through the voices and activities of its professors
introduced the concept of the "artist-artisan" serving
the national cause, these young Jewish creators like
Fiszel Zylberberg, Jehuda Wermus, Ilya Schorr, and
Natan Rapoport, entering into their artistic maturity
in the 1930s, were prepared to introduce and
implement a modern form of Jewish culture in
Poland.
It is through Abraham Frydman, one of the most
promising talents at the Warsaw Academy, that we
can observe how in the 1930s, when racism and anti-
Semitism started to define Polish culture ever more
strongly, there occurred a gradual "drifting apart" of
Jewish artists and "Polish" cultural institutions, as
well as perceive the deepening dissonance between
an ever fuller integration with Polish culture and the
strengthening of Jewish national identity. The open
reluctance and discrimination towards Jews in
public life, overshadowing mutual relations, resulted
in artistic communities closing themselves off within
their own ethnic worlds.
Jewish students graduating from the Academy
left a common, fondly remembered place in Powiśle
to enter the Polish-Jewish frontier, which as Silber
notes, is not a privileged "space of openness and
dialogue", but a "space of ambivalence, contact and
conflict, co-operation and rivalry, negotiation and
isolation."