The Academic Reading Room (pol. Czytelnia Akademicka) was an academic
cultural and scientific organization, which functioned from the 1860s until the
outburst of the Second World War. The organization was approved on 1 April 1867
as the first Polish student scientific and academic community. The main task of
the Reading Room was uniting the students of the higher educational
institutions in Lviv in order to foster the sense of civil and social duties in
them. The purpose of the organization was associated with the formation of a
center for social and research work amid students. Among other statutory goals,
there were: upbringing of youth, keeping a library, making students'collective
movement more vivid through the organization of joint meetings, playing chess
or billiards. The Academic Reading Room also engaged in the lease of its halls
for different university associations for the purpose of organizing
entertainment, meetings, and gatherings. In 1896 the Academic Reading Room
founded its own periodical Czasopismo
Akademickie; from 1899 it was issued under the name Teka (some writings of Leopold Staff, a famous poet, were published
there). The society members were also involved in the organization of
celebrations and religious holidays (for example, they were responsible for the
student community's participation in the procession on the Corpus Christi feast).
In June 1925, the Academic Reading Room organized celebrations dedicated to the
900th anniversary of the coronation of Boleslaw the Brave, in which professors
Stanisław Grabski and Wilhelm Bruchnalski participated. On 2 February 1928 the
society widely celebrated the 60th anniversary of its activities.
According to the statute, only students of
Polish nationality could be members of the Academic Reading Room. The first
leader of the society was Albin Rajski. Among other well-known leaders of the
society, there were Stanisław Starzyński (1875-1876), Leon Piniński
(1876-1877), Jan Paygert (1884), Edward Dubanowicz (1902-1903). The society
included a lot of future politicians and scholars. Among the members and
supporters of the society, there were also professors of Lviv University, for
example, Oswald Balzer and Władysław Abraham. Despite the fact that the
Academic Reading Room was an organization uniting all the academic environment
of Lviv, in the interwar period most of its members were students of the Jan
Kazimierz University.
At the initial stage of the organization's
activities, the life of youth, united by the Academic Reading Room,
concentrated in a few modest rooms on Chorąszczyzny (now Dudayeva) street. In the interwar period, the main
seat of the organization was the building on Łozińskiego (now Hertsena)
street 7. It was there that young people could read various newspapers,
magazines, and books collected in the organization's library. The students involved
in the work of the Reading Room were united in smaller scientific circles, each
with its own administration and leader.
Initially, the Academic Reading Room was an
organization uniting students with different political views, but at the turn
of the 20th c. it became dominated by the national democrats who
occupied the most important positions in the administration. Over time, the
organization's activities were politicized. It became a bastion of young
radicals who identified themselves with the nationalist ideology and
strengthened ties with members of the "All-Polish Youth" (pol. Młodzież Wszechpolska). In the interwar
period, many activists of the Reading Room belonged simultaneously to both
organizations. Among the people linked with the national camp, there were
students Czesław Rojek, Jerzy Meinhardt, Jan Kornas, Adam Macieliński, Adam
Treszka, Adam Toruń. The organization began to engage in anti-Semitic
campaigns, encouraging the participation in demonstrations, which appealed for
excluding students of Jewish origin from the academic community.
