DOI Artikel:
Lipińska, Jadwiga: Kazimierz Michałowski: 14.12.1901-01.01.1981
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18950#0010
Italian cultural centres, and after his return was offered a position as assistant
at the university. However, he worked there only for three years, and after
receiving a not-so-generous grant from the Ministry, Michałowski left the
country to take up post-graduate studies at the universities and archaeological
institutes in Berlin, Heidelberg, Munster, Paris, Romę and Athens. The names
of his tutors read like a list of the most prominent European scholars of that
time, and he gained from them an in-depth knowledge of classical archaeology,
further Consolidated during his field practice excavating for the French Institute
in Athens on the Greek islands of Delos, Tasos and Crete.
His habilitation thesis on the Graeco-Roman portraits from Delos was
considered a major contribution to the study of ancient portraiture, and was
awarded the prestigious George Parrot price of the Academie des Inscriptions
et Belles Lettres.
After receiving his veniam legendi in 1929, Michałowski was nominated an
assistant professor at Warsaw University (1930), and there he founded the first
Chair of Classical Archaeology in Poland, becoming its head. Regardless of the
grand sounding title, the “chair” was allocated just one smali room in the so-
called “post-museum building” at the university, where a collection of plaster
copies of antiąue sculptures were also kept for students. He became ordinarius
in 1939.
Michałowski considered it his purpose and duty to firmly establish in Poland
a branch of learning concerned with Mediterranean archaeology in its broad
sense - incorporating all the countries of that vast region, as well as all
chronological periods. This difficult task, carried out remarkably steadfastly
and step by step, took him a lifetime to fulfil. In his Memories (Wspomnienia)
he relates not only the facts, but also his impressions, and analyses of the
methods of study and fieldwork in different countries with a view to his futurę
assignments. He was learning to become not only a scholar competent in many
diverse aspects of art history and archaeology, but also a brilliant teacher,
drawing toward himself many followers, and a scrupulous excavator, in each
field taking advantage of his deep knowledge of human behaviour and
resources. After organising a Chair of Classical Archaeology at Warsaw
University, he began to assemble a group of enthusiastic specialists and students,
all prepared to concentrate on the aims he specified.
Of those aims, the first and the most important was to start archaeological
excavations at ancient sites, bringing at least part of the finds back to Poland to
enrich the meagre collection of ancient art in Polish museums. Michałowski
understood that without genuine relics available for study, interest in ancient
cultures will not be aroused. Before he started his program of building up the
gallery, only some private collections existed, all hardly available to the generał
public, and dispersed. This was the result of the political situation in the 19th
and early 20th centuries: until 1918 Poland did not exist as an independent
country. There were few Polish collectors, among them Michał Tyszkiewicz,
who amassed wonderful and valuable monuments, but preferred to sell or
8
at the university. However, he worked there only for three years, and after
receiving a not-so-generous grant from the Ministry, Michałowski left the
country to take up post-graduate studies at the universities and archaeological
institutes in Berlin, Heidelberg, Munster, Paris, Romę and Athens. The names
of his tutors read like a list of the most prominent European scholars of that
time, and he gained from them an in-depth knowledge of classical archaeology,
further Consolidated during his field practice excavating for the French Institute
in Athens on the Greek islands of Delos, Tasos and Crete.
His habilitation thesis on the Graeco-Roman portraits from Delos was
considered a major contribution to the study of ancient portraiture, and was
awarded the prestigious George Parrot price of the Academie des Inscriptions
et Belles Lettres.
After receiving his veniam legendi in 1929, Michałowski was nominated an
assistant professor at Warsaw University (1930), and there he founded the first
Chair of Classical Archaeology in Poland, becoming its head. Regardless of the
grand sounding title, the “chair” was allocated just one smali room in the so-
called “post-museum building” at the university, where a collection of plaster
copies of antiąue sculptures were also kept for students. He became ordinarius
in 1939.
Michałowski considered it his purpose and duty to firmly establish in Poland
a branch of learning concerned with Mediterranean archaeology in its broad
sense - incorporating all the countries of that vast region, as well as all
chronological periods. This difficult task, carried out remarkably steadfastly
and step by step, took him a lifetime to fulfil. In his Memories (Wspomnienia)
he relates not only the facts, but also his impressions, and analyses of the
methods of study and fieldwork in different countries with a view to his futurę
assignments. He was learning to become not only a scholar competent in many
diverse aspects of art history and archaeology, but also a brilliant teacher,
drawing toward himself many followers, and a scrupulous excavator, in each
field taking advantage of his deep knowledge of human behaviour and
resources. After organising a Chair of Classical Archaeology at Warsaw
University, he began to assemble a group of enthusiastic specialists and students,
all prepared to concentrate on the aims he specified.
Of those aims, the first and the most important was to start archaeological
excavations at ancient sites, bringing at least part of the finds back to Poland to
enrich the meagre collection of ancient art in Polish museums. Michałowski
understood that without genuine relics available for study, interest in ancient
cultures will not be aroused. Before he started his program of building up the
gallery, only some private collections existed, all hardly available to the generał
public, and dispersed. This was the result of the political situation in the 19th
and early 20th centuries: until 1918 Poland did not exist as an independent
country. There were few Polish collectors, among them Michał Tyszkiewicz,
who amassed wonderful and valuable monuments, but preferred to sell or
8