Księstwo ziębickie w sztuce ostatnich stuleci

Organisty, Adam

Abstract

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The history of Münsterberg and the history of Ziębice – are they a single, coherent narrative-based story, or rather the history of two complete separate capitals of the same duchy? The conference title would suggest that the Duchy of Ziębice is still in existence today… yet is that the truth? This paper attempts to respond to the question of “images” impacting the perception of the duchy’s history. Consequently, analyses referenced herein focus on assorted phantasms and models of sacralising and mythologising the past, one frequently invented to benefit our contemporaries. The review begins with personifications of the Duchy of Ziębice. On the threshold of the mythical eighth hundredth anniversary of Ziębice’s existence, Felix Anton Scheffler depicted a personification of solid governance on a plafond (1735) at the University of Wrocław, the rendering accompanied by a description of the duchy’s imagery in the context of a classical topos of a land of plenty. In the 19th century, such imagery was associated with regional identity themes, opulently depicted in Franz Hartmann’s book Geschichte der Stadt Münsterberg in Schlesien (1907), illustrated by Ziębice-born artist Joseph Langer. This was also when ducal iconography was expanded to include something akin to an “ancestral cult”, i.e. a canon of imagined portraits of well-known residents of Ziębice. While Langer’s illustrations serve as mere allegories, paintings from the inter-war period – mainly by Alfred Gottwald – are extensive narratives, mythologising selected moments in the duchy’s history. They reflect the German society’s deprivation in the wake of World War I – and the groundswell of tendencies of spinning historical narratives out in the spirit of nationalism. Once Ziębice’s circumstances had changed after World War II, the need to transform historical narratives arose. Attempts were made to blot out the region’s history of “German” provenance, its underlying records designed in line with Nazi ideology – yet these post-war efforts were actually based on a similar method, the Piast (and therefore: proto-Polishness) history of lands incorporated into the Polish state continuously emphasised. Ziębice is thus most frequently associated with the Book of Henryków, the passage contained therein (“Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai”) considered the first known record in the Polish language. Thus arose the underpinning of the founding myth, proof of the land of Ziębice having been the cradle of our mother tongue. Post-war art remained under the forceful influence of “socialist realism”, its postulates realised in paintings by Wacław Brejter, the first post-war manager of the museum in Ziębice, and – primarily – in the gargantuan ceramic Piast Eagle Monument (1971) by Tadeusz Teller, the statue commemorating the Polish state’s millennium, and the “recovery of Western Borderlands by Poland”. During the post-1989 transformation of socialism into democracy, symptoms of embarrassment – if not idiosyncrasy – began surfacing on the one hand, accompanied on the other by emotions bordering on adoration of the region’s past. Change was exemplified in the translation into Polish, and publication of two editions of an abridged version of Franz Hartmann’s book (1992, 2023), and in converting the exhibit (1996) of the Museum of Household Appliances in Ziębice into a facility presenting Joseph Langer and Maxa Dürschke’s paintings alongside the ethnographic collection. These days, the past is most frequently revived in mediaeval attire, as proven by the success of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novel. He created a fantasy world of the duchy with a touch of humour, in response to demand for heart-pleasing compensation myths. Contemporary artistic realisations are mere attempts at creating a “mosaic” of historical quotations, a harmonious combination of isolated and occasionally tragic motifs, imprinted with German, Polish, Czech, Roma, and Jewish presence.