DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25820#0015
History of Art at the Jagiellonian University 1882-2007
Sztuki [Review of Art History], established in 1929, was
to serve as a medium facilitating quick exchange of
academic information, hence besides the rather brief
articles, it contained an extended reviews section as well
as the current bibliography of the Polish art history;
unfortunately, in the year 1933, there appeared the last,
third volume of this journal.
In the twenty-year period between wars, the image of
the Cracow art history was far from homogenous. What
predominated was Sokolowski’s tradition of examining
the local art in the vast European context and of using
the philological-historical method; yet, thanks to
Pagaczewski, these studies were now more oriented
towards the history of style, and it was Wólfflin who
became the chief academic authority, besides the
successive generation of Viennese scholars. The trend
which harked back to the achievements of the last
generation of scholars representing the “older Vienna
school”, namely: Dvorak, Strzygowski and Schlosser,
represented here mainly by Mole, and combining art
history with the history of ideas as well as examining
relations between the art of the centre and the periphe-
ries, was definitely less pronounced. Out of the above, it
was only Strzygowski who continued to arouse lively
discussions in Poland. An interesting phenomenon were
the links between Ameisenowa and the circle of scholars
grouped in the Warburg Institute which anticipated the
Polish fashion for iconology in the 1950s.
The years of the Second World War constituted a tragic
caesura in the history of Polish art history. Under the
German occupation, the higher and secondary education
was liquidated; officially, it was only the elementary and
vocational schools that were allowed to operate, whereas
organizing clandestine teaching was threatened with
deportation to a concentration camp. Academic libraries,
likewise art collections, were for the most part destroyed
(particularly in Warsaw), or plundered (see e.g. the
catalogue to the exhibition Sichergestellte Kunstwerke in
Cracow). Symbolically, the attitude of the German occupa-
tional authorities to Polish science is rendered by the arrest
and transportation to concentration camps of a group
of 183 professors and assistants of Cracow universities on
the 6th November 1939 (Sonderaktion Krakau), or the
execution by the firing squad of 24 professors of Lvov
university on the 4th July 1941. In turn, under the Soviet
occupation, the Polish universities of Vilnius and Lvov
- with a few hundred-year-long tradition - had been
transformed respectively into a Lithuanian and Ukrainian
institution, whereas the Polish intelligentsia were subjected
to persecutions.
After the war, the scholars from the territories
incorporated into the Soviet Union, moved to other
Polish cities, or else to cities which had then been
incorporated into Poland. The academic and didactic
traditions of the Lvov milieu of art history, were
continued in Wroclaw, whereas that of the Vilnius milieu
in Toruń, where museology and monument preservation
studies had been placed within the faculty of art. The
arrivals from Vilnius also played an important role in the
creation of the chair of art history at the Catholic
University of Lublin, whereas the Lvov scholars
strengthened the academic circles in Cracow and
Warsaw. Chairs of art history, which for the most part
limited their activity only to offering courses for students
of other departments of the university, though at times
were allowed to realize episodic specialist didactic
programmes, were also arising in other universities. The
above process has intensified in the course of the last few
years, in connection with the creation of numerous new
state and private higher schools of learning.
The transformations of Polish art history which
occurred in the post-war decades, took place not only as
a natural result of transition of successive generations of
scholars, but also under the influence of political events
which either limited or widened the scope of university
autonomy. In the country in which the ideology imposed
from outside was implemented also by imposed authori-
ties, the successive caesuras were marked by the removal
from power of extreme Stalinists in October 1956, by the
commencement of nationalist smear campaign directed
against the intelligentsia in March 1968, by the beginning
of the carnival of Solidarity in August 1980 which was
interrupted by the introduction of martial law in
December 1981, and finally by the rejection of communist
domination in the elections in June 1989.
What changed was not only the geography of the Polish
milieus of art history, but also their mutual relations. The
striving of the authoritarian government to wield complete
control over intellectual life, which was particularly strong
around the year 1950, was also realized through the
centralization of research institutions in the capital at the
expense of other centres. The latter tendency affected
especially strongly the Cracow centre which was regarded
as politically unsound (indeed, up until the year 1969,
among the art historians employed at the university there
was not a single party member; in this respect the Jagiello-
nian University was quite exceptional - the only other
university which was similar in this respect was the Catholic
University of Lublin). The privileged position of Warsaw
revealed itself, among others, in such initiatives as the
creation of a research institution known as the State
Institute of Art within the Ministry of Culture and Art
(1949), attempts at transforming the National Museum in
Warsaw into a central museum (“the Polish Louvre”)
taking over the most valuable collections of other museums
(e.g. borrowing Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an
Eimine from the Czartoryski Museum for an exhibition of
Renaissance art in 1952, “marking” it with the inventory
sign of the National Museum in Warsaw and failing to
return it on time), concentrating here nearly all publishing
institutions, and finally almost complete monopoly of
Warsaw art historians on foreign contacts. An especially
painful blow which affected the position of the Cracow
milieu was the liquidation in 1952 of the Polish Academy of
Arts and Sciences that had its base here and the taking over
of its assets and institutions by the Soviet-style Polish
Academy of Sciences, created in Warsaw, whose goal was
13
Sztuki [Review of Art History], established in 1929, was
to serve as a medium facilitating quick exchange of
academic information, hence besides the rather brief
articles, it contained an extended reviews section as well
as the current bibliography of the Polish art history;
unfortunately, in the year 1933, there appeared the last,
third volume of this journal.
In the twenty-year period between wars, the image of
the Cracow art history was far from homogenous. What
predominated was Sokolowski’s tradition of examining
the local art in the vast European context and of using
the philological-historical method; yet, thanks to
Pagaczewski, these studies were now more oriented
towards the history of style, and it was Wólfflin who
became the chief academic authority, besides the
successive generation of Viennese scholars. The trend
which harked back to the achievements of the last
generation of scholars representing the “older Vienna
school”, namely: Dvorak, Strzygowski and Schlosser,
represented here mainly by Mole, and combining art
history with the history of ideas as well as examining
relations between the art of the centre and the periphe-
ries, was definitely less pronounced. Out of the above, it
was only Strzygowski who continued to arouse lively
discussions in Poland. An interesting phenomenon were
the links between Ameisenowa and the circle of scholars
grouped in the Warburg Institute which anticipated the
Polish fashion for iconology in the 1950s.
The years of the Second World War constituted a tragic
caesura in the history of Polish art history. Under the
German occupation, the higher and secondary education
was liquidated; officially, it was only the elementary and
vocational schools that were allowed to operate, whereas
organizing clandestine teaching was threatened with
deportation to a concentration camp. Academic libraries,
likewise art collections, were for the most part destroyed
(particularly in Warsaw), or plundered (see e.g. the
catalogue to the exhibition Sichergestellte Kunstwerke in
Cracow). Symbolically, the attitude of the German occupa-
tional authorities to Polish science is rendered by the arrest
and transportation to concentration camps of a group
of 183 professors and assistants of Cracow universities on
the 6th November 1939 (Sonderaktion Krakau), or the
execution by the firing squad of 24 professors of Lvov
university on the 4th July 1941. In turn, under the Soviet
occupation, the Polish universities of Vilnius and Lvov
- with a few hundred-year-long tradition - had been
transformed respectively into a Lithuanian and Ukrainian
institution, whereas the Polish intelligentsia were subjected
to persecutions.
After the war, the scholars from the territories
incorporated into the Soviet Union, moved to other
Polish cities, or else to cities which had then been
incorporated into Poland. The academic and didactic
traditions of the Lvov milieu of art history, were
continued in Wroclaw, whereas that of the Vilnius milieu
in Toruń, where museology and monument preservation
studies had been placed within the faculty of art. The
arrivals from Vilnius also played an important role in the
creation of the chair of art history at the Catholic
University of Lublin, whereas the Lvov scholars
strengthened the academic circles in Cracow and
Warsaw. Chairs of art history, which for the most part
limited their activity only to offering courses for students
of other departments of the university, though at times
were allowed to realize episodic specialist didactic
programmes, were also arising in other universities. The
above process has intensified in the course of the last few
years, in connection with the creation of numerous new
state and private higher schools of learning.
The transformations of Polish art history which
occurred in the post-war decades, took place not only as
a natural result of transition of successive generations of
scholars, but also under the influence of political events
which either limited or widened the scope of university
autonomy. In the country in which the ideology imposed
from outside was implemented also by imposed authori-
ties, the successive caesuras were marked by the removal
from power of extreme Stalinists in October 1956, by the
commencement of nationalist smear campaign directed
against the intelligentsia in March 1968, by the beginning
of the carnival of Solidarity in August 1980 which was
interrupted by the introduction of martial law in
December 1981, and finally by the rejection of communist
domination in the elections in June 1989.
What changed was not only the geography of the Polish
milieus of art history, but also their mutual relations. The
striving of the authoritarian government to wield complete
control over intellectual life, which was particularly strong
around the year 1950, was also realized through the
centralization of research institutions in the capital at the
expense of other centres. The latter tendency affected
especially strongly the Cracow centre which was regarded
as politically unsound (indeed, up until the year 1969,
among the art historians employed at the university there
was not a single party member; in this respect the Jagiello-
nian University was quite exceptional - the only other
university which was similar in this respect was the Catholic
University of Lublin). The privileged position of Warsaw
revealed itself, among others, in such initiatives as the
creation of a research institution known as the State
Institute of Art within the Ministry of Culture and Art
(1949), attempts at transforming the National Museum in
Warsaw into a central museum (“the Polish Louvre”)
taking over the most valuable collections of other museums
(e.g. borrowing Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an
Eimine from the Czartoryski Museum for an exhibition of
Renaissance art in 1952, “marking” it with the inventory
sign of the National Museum in Warsaw and failing to
return it on time), concentrating here nearly all publishing
institutions, and finally almost complete monopoly of
Warsaw art historians on foreign contacts. An especially
painful blow which affected the position of the Cracow
milieu was the liquidation in 1952 of the Polish Academy of
Arts and Sciences that had its base here and the taking over
of its assets and institutions by the Soviet-style Polish
Academy of Sciences, created in Warsaw, whose goal was
13