Wincenty Pol

This popular Polish poet of the Romantic era was also one of the first geographers in the world and a versatile scholar. Wincenty Pol travelled a lot and was familiar with the nature and antiquities of Galicia. In 1866-1867, he collaborated with conservator Mieczysław Potocki as a correspondent of the Central Commission for the Protection of Monuments. During this time, he became a vocal critic of the institution.

This biogram is part of a publication about the beginnings of monument conservation in Eastern Galicia and focuses on Wincenty Pol's activity as a monument conservator, which was not central in his life. Above all, these texts consider the following questions: who were the first to join the official conservation of monuments in Lviv? How did they arrive at this decision and under what conditions? What was the ethnic and national, professional and institutional background of these persons and what impact did it have on their monument conservation activities?

Six correspondents of the Central Commission for Research and Protection of Architectural Monuments in the 1860s and 1870s — Ivan Stupnytskyi, Wincenty Pol, Józef Sermak, Leonard Horodyski, Kazimierz Stadnicki, Antoni Schneider — were appointed through Mieczysław Potocki, a conservator of monuments whom they assisted. The seventh biogram, that of Stanisław Kunasiewicz, concerns a person who, despite the efforts made for his official appointment, never received it.

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Wincenty Pol (originally Pohl, 1807-1872) was born into a German family living in Lublin and studied at the Lviv University. A poet and geographer, he was considered the Polish national prophetic poet, the successor of Adam Mickiewicz, and, on the other hand, the father of Polish geography. He became the first professor of this discipline at the Jagiełłonian University in Krakow. Wincenty Pol was an opponent of scientific specialization that was rapidly taking place during his lifetime in the mid-19th century. Inspired by the example of the famous scientist and traveller Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), who left his native Prussia to explore nature in South America, Wincenty Pol decided, instead of travelling overseas, to concentrate on the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Like Humboldt, he focused on empirical research and sought to comprehend the "organic wholeness" of the people and nature, language, climate, and history, which was characteristic of the romantic worldview prevalent in the early 19th century. Wincenty Pol is considered the first to use the term "kresy" to denote the territories in the east of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, i.e. Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands.

Wincenty Pol was already in his fifties when, in the 1860s, he stayed for several years in Lviv, the city where he grew up and studied. In 1864, he prepared the opening of a museum within the Ossoliński National Institute (in collaboration with Ivan Stupnytskyi). In his report, prepared on the occasion of this opening, which he delivered at the Institute's annual meeting on October 12, Pol listed the main, in his opinion, ancient monuments in Lviv and the eastern part of Galicia, among which were architectural and sculptural monuments, archaeological finds etc. Due to the fact that he had travelled extensively in the 1840s, he was one of the few people in Lviv at that time who was familiar with the historical and architectural monuments of the province.

The list of Lviv's monuments in his report was partially based on the "archaeological" description of the city, compiled earlier by Maurycy Dzieduszycki, the vice-curator of the Ossolineum. However, there was a significant difference between the two texts. Dzieduszycki described the appearance of Lviv in the second half of the 18th century in order to better explain to readers the background of the events described in his book about the Latin archbishop Wacław Hieronim Sierakowski. Pol instead clearly emphasized the need for a monument conservator in Lviv and a monument preservation institution, highlighting the uniqueness of some objects, primarily sculptures, icons and frescoes, but also several buildings.

Monument conservator Mieczysław Potocki, who was present at the Ossolineum's annual meeting, did not possess such knowledge. He took the list of objects from Pol's report as the basis of his activity, and also invited Pol to cooperate. Taking into account the fact that Pol's eyesight was deteriorating sharply and he could not travel so much as in his younger years, Potocki proposed his candidacy to the Central Commission as a correspondent only for the city of Lviv.

"Doctor of philosophy, former professor of the Jagiełłonian Higher School, widely known in the province as a poet, naturalist and archaeologist, he is endowed with a keen sense, fascinating dexterity and wide knowledge. He once travelled the province in all directions, but he knows his parental city of Lviv best, to its remotest nooks and crannies. He also still retains a talent for exploring buried antiquities, judging them with the right eye and presenting them in beautiful poetic form to an enchanted public; in short, he possesses the art of infusing cold and musty archaeological objects with animating spirit. However, most unfortunately, due to his age and fragility, he is firmly attached to Lviv and is no longer able to make most trips." (from the letter of Mieczysław Potocki to the Central Commission dated November 18, 1864, CDIAL 616/1/2:90-91).

The first objects in Lviv, chosen by the conservator Mieczysław Potocki for restoration, were the bronze statue of St. Michael from the portal of the Royal Arsenal, tombstones of archbishops in the Latin Cathedral and knights in the crypt of the Dominican church, coats of arms at the City Arsenal and portraits of the Boim family on their tomb chapel façades. Potocki further engaged Pol and Stupnytskyi to organize their restorations. Things progressed slowly, the process was fraught with problems, and the Central Commission refused to co-finance these projects. Likewise, it did not support the publication of the first album of Lviv's sights, the creation of which was proposed by Wincenty Pol. Ivan Stupnytskyi reported about Pol's disappointment in a letter to the conservator in late 1865 (CDIAL 616/1/4:3). As soon as 1867, Mieczysław Potocki sent to the Central Commission a request to release Pol from the duties of a correspondent, citing the poet's complete loss of sight; to replace the latter, he proposed Kazimierz Stadnicki, a historian, who lived and worked in Lviv (CDIAL 616/1/5: 138).

Wincenty Pol was extremely dissatisfied with the refusals of the Central Commission and its detachment from the protection of monuments in Galicia. He criticized the institution’s work and the fact that only two conservators were appointed for the vast territory of Galicia. In 1868, he delivered a report dedicated to this issue at the Scientific Society in Krakow. In this report, he insisted that the institution of monument protection should be not state-run but provincial, and called on Paweł Popiel, as the oldest and most respected person in the field of monument protection, to convene a special congress and propose an alternative (Pol, 1868). Taking into account the acquisition by Galicia of political-administrative autonomy, a provincial institution became potentially possible, and the Scientific Society was involved in the development of the project of a regional institution for the protection of monuments. Mieczysław Potocki, although he was no less disappointed with the activities of the Central Commission, remained an opponent of such an idea and defended the position that unity with the Central Commission should be preserved (AGAD 1/388/0/-/177). Finally, the project of the provincial institution collapsed when the Commission announced its reorganization and carried it out in 1873. However, this reorganization did not bring any decentralization of powers.

Nevertheless, the idea was not completely abandoned: it returned in the 1880s, when two autonomous Circles of Conservators were formed in Lviv and Krakow. This decision was taken against the will of the Central Commission. So Wincenty Pol, despite his brief involvement in the official protection of monuments, had a visionary influence on it.