International Journal of Heritage Studies

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Constructing a ‘monument of national history and culture' in Poland: the case of the Royal Castle in Warsaw

Ewa Klekot

To cite this article: Ewa Klekot (2012) Constructing a ‘monument of national history and culture' in Poland: the case of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 18:5, 459-478, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2011.637944

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2011.637944

Published online: 01 Mar 2012.

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Download by: [University of Gothenburg] Date: 25 April 2016, At: 02:14 International Journal of Heritage Studies Vol. 18, No. 5, September 2012, 459–478

Constructing a ‘monument of national history and culture’ in Poland: the case of the Royal Castle in Warsaw Ewa Klekot*

Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Warsaw University, Żurawia 4, Warsaw, 00-503, Poland (Received 23 February 2011; final version received 1 November 2011)

The substantial destruction of Warsaw during World War II led to important reconstruction works, which from the beginning were involved in an interplay of various political agendas and various conservation ideologies. The architec- tonic shape of the reconstructed Royal Castle, as well as the design of its interi- ors, were shaped through power struggles that were informed by two main sets of values: one referred to the legitimising (or questioning) of the present politi- cal order by the reconstructed monument of the past; the other to the legitimis- ing of the monument in question as a ‘monument of national history and culture’ by creating its historic and artistic value. The present article takes the Royal Castle in Warsaw as an example of the way in which a heritage monu- ment is involved in politics at two levels: a ‘macro-scale’ and a ‘micro-scale’. The attitudes of subsequent governments and states that decided the fate of the castle, and the institutional and material solutions resulting from these attitudes, are its macro-scale political involvement. The micro-scale political involvement of a heritage monument results from expert discourse and practices; it could be grasped by an analysis of conservators’ discourse and practices in the particular context of the castle’s reconstruction. Keywords: conservation discourse; heritage value; conservation politics; recon- struction; Warsaw

Introduction The substantial destruction of the city of Warsaw, Poland, and its historic monuments during World War II led to important reconstruction works, or ‘restitu- Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 tion’ (to use the word preferred by conservators engaged in the work), of entire buildings and even entire blocks in Warsaw’s Old Town and Royal Route. From its beginning, this reconstruction had been the result of an interplay of various political agendas and conservation ideologies (Martyn 2001). The main works took place between 1945 and 1956; however, for complex political reasons reconstruction of the Royal Castle (Figure 1) did not begin until 1971 (Majewski 2003a,b, Pleskaczyńska 2003a). Upon completion of the works, the Royal Castle was declared a ‘Monument of National History and Culture’–a political decision that converted it into a flagship of national heritage (along with Wawel Castle in Cracow, which had not suffered substantial damage in World War II and which

*Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1352-7258 print/ISSN 1470-3610 online Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2011.637944 http://www.tandfonline.com 460 E. Klekot

Figure 1. Royal Castle in Warsaw, 2010.

seems to embody ‘the original’ of national heritage for a contemporary Polish audience) (Klekot 2007, 2010). However, the construction of a monument does not end with the completion of its material form, nor with the furnishing of its interiors. The construction of a monument is a continuous process carried out via: (1) its access policy, which comprises visiting practices and other activities hosted by the place; (2) the uses of its visual (and other) representations; and (3) its maintenance. The institution in charge of this access policy – in the case of the Royal Castle in Warsaw this is a museum – becomes an authorised and institutionalised guardian of heritage value. The process of acknowledgement of the value of particular material objects-as-heritage (heritagisation) can be very informative for a student of heritage- Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 embedded power relations.

Reconstruction as conservation practice If history, as Brett (1996, p. 4) notes, is ‘not a fixed entity but an activity’,1 then conservation can be understood to be the politics of history: it organises the past around ‘its material vestiges’ deemed important for their ‘historical value’.To undergo conservation or restoration, an ancient vestige has to be acknowledged as ‘historically, or artistically valuable’; that is, it must get heritagised. Conservation as a field of expertise has its own complicated history that has already been told many times in different places and languages, and following those narratives can be a fas- cinating exercise in understanding different modes of localised modernity and their discontents. However, it also inevitably leads to the conclusion that heritage International Journal of Heritage Studies 461

conservation is ‘a selective process by which places which represent the nation are collected and displayed for education and integration of citizens into a particular notion of society and national identity’ (Harrison 2008, p. 180). Ever since historic monuments were invented, their preservation has been under- taken and reflected upon; gradually, conservation practices developed so as to become evaluated and widely discussed, while conservation itself emerged as an independent field of academic expertise (Choay 2001). Reconstruction as conserva- tion practice, widely applied in the nineteenth century, was criticised both by John Ruskin, on philosophical grounds, and by Camillo Boito, on grounds arising from his expertise as a conservation practitioner. Ruskin claimed that the value of an his- toric monument resides precisely in the visible marks of its past, meaning the pas- sage of time which has worn it out, as well as traces left by its constructors’ hands. Boito, on the other hand, seeing the main value of historic monuments as residing in their condition of bearing witness to the past, argued that interventions should be restricted to only the most necessary conservation works, with additions always clearly distinguishable from the original; what counted for him was the present state of a monument, and for him there was no particular ‘when’ to which the monument should be restored or reconstructed. Critics of reconstruction included the most prominent conservation experts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – among them Alois Riegl and Georg Dehio. Following the Athens Charter of 1931, conservation experts have pronounced themselves against reconstruction in toto, and in spite of the destruction caused by World War II the Venice Charter of 1964 was also clear about what could be acknowledged as legitimate conservation practices, stating in Article 9 that restoration:

...is based on respect for original material and authentic documents. It must stop at the point where conjecture begins, and in this case moreover any extra work which is indispensable must be distinct from the architectural composition and must bear a con- temporary stamp. http://www.international.icomos.org/venicecharter2004/index.html

However, conservation practice, even that of Charter signatories, has not always respected the Charter’s tenants.2 Only in 1982 did the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) issue the Dresden Declaration on Reconstruction of Monuments Destroyed by War, a document legitimising the large post-World War II reconstructions in toto.3 What all this clearly shows is the ambiguous place of reconstruction within conservation practice itself: it becomes a solution to which Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 the conservators resort when the collection of ‘places which represent the nation’ cannot be displayed anymore. There has been significant variation in the ‘notions of society’ (Harrison 2008, p. 180) transmitted by different conservation practices since their beginning in the nineteenth century. This is particularly obvious if we consider the practice of recon- struction. When reconstructing material vestiges of historic monuments, restorers invariably adjusted them to their own concepts of history and their own values, utopias and tastes, trying to have the latter legitimised by the past itself. When constructing the past they actually made statements about the present. Because conservators select which notion of society a place under heritagisation should bear witness to, the preservation of heritage is a selective process that can be legitimised within very different ideological and political agendas (Samuel 2008). For example, the reconstructed Notre-Dame gargoyles, restored in the nineteenth century, were 462 E. Klekot

supposed to introduce the modern visitor into the world of fears and fascinations of ‘medieval people’, but actually, as shown by recent research, they correspond instead with the myths and fears of the modern restorers of the Paris cathedral (Camille 2009). Another example is Sir Arthur Evans’s reconstruction of palaces and temples in Knossos; this was based on a modern socio-political utopia of matri- archal, pagan and life-affirming society, which was actually more closely related to Western society of the early twentieth century than to any society that used the actual constructions excavated by Evans (Gere 2009). The struggle over the reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw shows the political dimension of conservation practices. In twentieth-century Europe, because of the academic status of the discipline of conservation and the way in which it legit- imises its claims to truth by scientific procedures and state institutions, only a building constructed under the supervision of experts in conservation could immedi- ately gain the status of ‘national heritage’, becoming a powerful source of ‘meanings which give the abstract idea of nation its lived “content”’ (Hall 2008, p. 220). As it becomes clear from the turbulent history of its reconstruction explained later, had the Royal Castle been rebuilt without the conservators’ imprimatur it would not have had the same symbolic potential. Therefore, it was crucial for the post-World War II regime in Poland to gain control over the process of reconstruction. The political dimension of the decision to rebuild the castle seems evident; like- wise, the ideological struggle for its institutional format is obvious. However, the architectural shape of the building, as well as the design of its interiors, was shaped through power struggles. These fights over the material form of the past-in- construction – namely the Royal Castle in the process of reconstruction – were informed by two main sets of values: one referred to the legitimising (or questioning) of the present political order by the reconstructed monument of the past; the other to the legitimising of the monument in question as a ‘monument of national history and culture’ by creating its historic and artistic value. The latter is a meta-legitimisation of the enterprise provided by experts. Therefore, a heritage monument is involved in pol- itics at two levels: on a ‘macro-scale’ and a ‘micro-scale’. The attitudes of subsequent governments and states that decided the fate of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and the institutional and material solutions resulting from these attitudes, are its macro-scale political involvement. The micro-scale political involvement of a heritage monument results from expert discourse and practices; it could be grasped by an analysis of cons- ervators’ discourse and practices in the particular context of the Royal Castle’s

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 ‘restitution’. It is the ‘micro-level’ heritage politics that actually empower the building with its monumental and historic value. With its main narrative based on one of the foundation myths of Polish national identity (Domańska 2000), the Royal Castle is clearly an affirmative, national museum. However, being a museum, it is also part of the field of cultural production in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1993) sense, which means that it is producing not only a national but also a social difference.

Institutionalised power of the modern state and the Royal Castle in Warsaw: heritage and power relations at the ‘macro-scale’ The status of a national heritage monument, as well as the related set of values and practices, could not, for obvious reasons, have been bestowed on the Royal Castle until late 1918, when Poland became an independent state. However, various conservation works had already taken place in the castle under the supervision of International Journal of Heritage Studies 463

the architect Kazimierz Skórewicz during the German presence in Warsaw in the course of World War I.4 In December 1918, the castle was handed over to the Ministry of Military Affairs in the new Polish government, and regular restoration started in 1920, when the State Direction of Representative Buildings at the Ministry of Public Works took responsibility for its management, with Skórewicz appointed director (Król 1971, pp. 181–190). In the years 1918–1926 the monu- ment, being government property, was a stately venue where numerous prestigious cultural activities took place and the most celebrated ‘men of letters’ resided (Lileyko 1980, pp. 73–75),5 at the same time the historic interiors were recovering their sumptuous appearance. The castle’s situation changed when it became the offi- cial residence of the President Ignacy Mościcki, since the new power established after Pilsudski’s coup d’état in May 1926 sought its legitimacy in the castle’s his- toric location. Until 1939, the castle was both a historic museum and the President’s headquarters, hosting official ceremonies of state. This led to Kazimierz Skórewicz’s replacement by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz as the head of the castle restoration. Skórewicz had been following a strictly conservationist agenda, which proved less suitable for the President’s residence than the approach used by Szyszko-Bohusz (Majewski 2003b, p. 27), who since 1916 had been in charge of restoration works at Wawel Castle in Cracow, which he planned to convert into a national pantheon. Szyszko-Bohusz’s most important input to the Royal Castle consisted of rebuilding the only remaining Gothic tower in a pseudo-Renaissance style with a vista terrace6 where the pole for the presidential flag was located. According to Stanisław Lorentz, the main ‘architect’ behind the restoration of the castle after its destruction, the museum in the Royal Castle in Warsaw had been open ‘until the next to last day before the war, in order to prevent panic and a depressed mood among the people’ (Lorentz 1986, p. 5).7 The President’soffice was evacuated on 5 September 1939 (the President himself was not present in Warsaw on the day the war began and he never returned to the city).8 Only the museum curator Tadeusz Brokl and several other employees were left to face the situation; Brokl himself died in the castle on 17 September 1939, a victim of shrap- nel from one of the incendiary bombs that provoked fire in the castle. On the same day, Warsaw’s Mayor Stefan Starzyński, in a personal letter sent by a special messenger, asked Lorentz, then-director of the National Museum in Warsaw, to organise a rescue operation.9 The evacuation of the castle collections to the museum premises lasted until the surrender of the city (Lorentz 1986, 5–13).

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 German sappers started preparing the castle to be blown up in October 1939, almost immediately after the take-over of the city by German authorities. In a 1942 project by a German architect, Friederich Pabst, a glass-covered dome Patreihalle was to replace the castle (Majewski 2003b, p. 29); this project was never realised. The final annihilation of the building took place only in September 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising. The relatively late destruction of the castle may have been caused by German fears that such a big explosion might have a fatal impact on the nearby viaduct and bridge over the Vistula. These were strategically important as a con- necting route to the eastern front; in September 1944, the Red Army was already occupying the east (right-side) bank of the Vistula (Walkowski 1998). In the autumn of 1939, with German demolition companies operating in the castle, Lorentz managed to organise a team, including a photographer, to document the his- toric interiors. Nevertheless, after a few days the team was arrested. In January 1940, convinced that the castle would be blown up very shortly, Lorentz managed to get a 464 E. Klekot

certificate, allegedly for Governor Frank himself, authorising him to take out of the castle all decorative elements, sculptures and paintings (Lorentz 1986, pp. 20–21). The saved pieces ended up in Warsaw’s National Museum, hidden in storage. In January 1945, the State National Council restored Warsaw to its function as the Nation’s capital, and the Red Army, together with the People’s Army of Poland, crossed the Vistula and entered left-bank Warsaw. The civilian population, who had been forced to leave the city after the collapse of the Uprising, started to come back. The decision to re-establish the Polish capital in a city that had been reduced to ruins was intended to give the new power the legitimacy it needed and had been suggested by Stalin himself (Majewski 2003b, p. 29; Martyn 2001, pp. 198–200). In addition, this decision led to the beginning of the city’s rebuilding process, or rather, as architecture historian Peter Martyn points out, its ‘reconstitution’ (Martyn 2001, p. 195). This enterprise included the reconstruction of all historic areas of the city, such as the Old Town and the Royal Route, as well as the building of completely new urban landscapes. The works were carried out within the so-called ‘Six-Year Reconstruction Plan for Warsaw’ of 1949–1955, the objectives of which were defined as:

We are building a new, socialist Warsaw, the capital of the State, in which the working masses rule. We are not raising her anew, but we are in the course of redeveloping the existing city, to which several centuries have contributed (translated and quoted in Martyn 2001, p. 196)

This ‘redeveloping’ actually meant a huge modernisation project for the city, as well as a redefinition of its past in the form of ‘historic monuments’ built anew. Warsaw was supposed to leave behind its dark past of late-nineteenth-century bour- geois capitalism with its urban architecture of gilded eclectic palaces for the rich and dark tenement houses with narrow courtyards for the poor. The modernisers had longed for ‘a glittering, antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white con- crete’ (Orwell 2003, p. 193). However, they had to face demands not to use the functional, bare style of modernism in their designs but rather the ‘socialist-realist’ dictates of an architecture ‘national in form’ but ‘socialist in content’ (Martyn 2001, pp. 195, 201–202). The conservators also had to obey similarly politicised rules, as seen in the directive to rebuild only historic buildings constructed no later than the mid-nineteenth century (Martyn 2001, pp. 198, 217). The choice of a pseudo- neo-Classical style for the reconstruction of the Royal Route was also a result of Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 the political content of certain formal solutions in architecture.10 The latter, according to Martyn, was a result of conservators ‘bowing down to the so-called “social-realistic” doctrine [that] can be clearly seen in the architectural profile of modern central Warsaw’ (Martyn 2001, p. 224), while the former led to ‘extensive demolition of left-bank central Warsaw’s burnt-out and in numerous cases structur- ally sound pre-war housing stock’ that was ‘carried out under the auspices of BOS [Bureau for Reconstruction of the Capital, the main conservation body established for the purpose of reconstruction of Warsaw]’ (Martyn 2001, p. 203). In other words, the choice of the neo-Classical early nineteenth century as the ‘when’ for the reconstruction of the Royal Route was meant to harmonise with the dominating architectural doctrine of the time, as well as with the then-current concept of the national past that meant a radical negation of the heritage of pre-World War II bour- geois Poland. International Journal of Heritage Studies 465

Such was the background to the reconstruction of the castle, which proved to be even more sensitive than that of the Old Town or the Royal Route. Already in June 1945, a special unit in charge of the reconstruction of the castle was established within BOS (Lorentz 1986, p. 33). The southern castle gate was reconstructed with those stone elements that had been saved by the National Museum staff ‘as a symbolic beginning of the reconstruction of the Royal Castle, and a real proof that rebuilding the whole castle body from the surviving fragments was possible’ (Lorentz 1986, p. 34). It did not mean the beginning of the reconstruction works, though. Even in September 1947 ‘there were no “approved projects” nor “projects in progress” in the Castle Unit [of BOS]’ (Majewski 2003b, p. 40). On 2 July 1949, the parliament unani- mously approved the law on the reconstruction of the ‘Castle of Warsaw’11 with the intention of its conversion into ‘the seat of the highest authorities of People’s Poland and the centre for cultural life of the popular masses’ (Majewski 2003a, p. 25). Never- theless, it soon became clear that there were substantial disagreements between the conservators and a group of influential architects, who claimed that the form of the reconstructed castle should be decided not by the ‘actions of the conservators but by the creative work of the builders’ team supervised by the architects’ (Majewski 2003a, p. 25). The disagreements between the conservators and the proponents of a castle ‘national in form’ and ‘socialist in content’ led to an impasse that the authorities tried to alleviate by announcing an open competition for the reconstruction. The conflict over the project guidelines, as well as the intensive ongoing reconstruction works within the Old Town, led to the postponement of the start of the castle’s reconstruction (Majewski 2003b, pp. 68–79). The competition that finally took place in 1954 was, according to Lorentz (1986, p. 50): ‘unnecessary and harm- ful, provoked a delay in reconstruction and stirred up feelings’.Nofirst prize was awarded; the project selected for completion was authored by Jan Bogusławski of a ‘conservators’ orientation who was one of two second prize winners. In August 1955 the Secretariat of the Central Committee approved the ‘designing of the reconstruc- tion of the Castle of Warsaw, intended generally for museum and reception purposes’ (Pleskaczyńska 2003a, p. 37). Nevertheless, the political situation in the country, already on the verge of the 1956 crisis and subsequent changes within the highest United Wokers Party authorities, resulted in the postponement of the reconstruction. The political upheaval of 1956 elevated Władysław Gomułka to the office of First Secretary, and his rule, deemed the ‘little stabilisation’, meant a time of ‘big stagna- tion’ for the ‘Castle of Warsaw’, according to Royal Castle historian Małgorzata Ples-

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 kaczyńska (2003a). The reconstruction had been officially dismissed and the issue disappeared from the media, possibly on the orders of First Secretary Gomułka him- self (Pleskaczyńska 2003a, p. 39).12 Since it became clear after the competition that the castle would not be restored as the seat of state authority in accordance with the 1949 law (and in any case, there had been no president in the People’s Republic since 1952), together with Gomułka’s hostile approach, the Party did not see any ideologi- cal potential in the reconstruction of the castle and the whole project was halted. In 1963–1964 the site was leveled, the remaining fragment of the eighteenth-century wing was demolished, and the former castle courtyard was paved with stone slabs and decorated with benches and flower beds (Pleskaczyńska 2003a, p. 48). It was another political crisis that ended the ‘small stabilisation’ and interrupted the stagnation at the Royal Castle. In December 1970, workers’ protests in Gdansk led to changes in the Party Central Committee, with Edward Gierek assuming the 466 E. Klekot

office of First Secretary. ‘After the December 1970 incidents in the Coast’, Pleskaczyńska (2003a, p. 52) writes:

...the party was looking for a popular slogan that would be generally accepted, would be able to convince the society about the shift of political course, and would demon- strate that the new leadership of the Polish United Workers Party cared about culture and national tradition. It was to glamorise the new team in power against the plainness of Gomułka’s party... Reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw could be per- fectly such a slogan. It was suggested to Gierek by the First Secretary of the Regional Committee in Warsaw, Józef Kępa [whose] position could possibly have been influ- enced by Professor Lorentz.

In January 1971, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee approved the recon- struction, and there subsequently took place the first session of OKOZK (Civic Committee for the Reconstruction of the Royal Castle), whose membership consisted of prominent figures of Polish cultural life, including Stanisław Lorentz and Jan Zachwatowicz (a famous conservator, one of the most important authors of the reconstruction of the Warsaw’s Old Town and an active advocate of the castle’s reconstruction since 1945), with Józef Kępa as the Committee’s Chair (Majewski 2003a, pp. 29–30). On 27 January, the press published the appeal of OKOZK (a leaflet published in three languages, distributed with the second edition of the monograph of the Warsaw Royal Castle [Król 1971]), which was directed to ‘Fellow countrymen, Poles at home and abroad’, and which called for ‘the common national effort’ to raise the castle from its ruins. ‘No one feeling and thinking Polish can shun this great cause’, stated the appeal. ‘Here deliberated the Polish Seyms. Here was born the idea of the National Education Commission – the first ministry of general education in Europe. The mem- orable 3rd of May Constitution was born here and here was the seat of the highest authorities of the Polish State...The Castle shared the destiny of the nation for better or for worse’ (quote from the appeal leaflet distributed with the monograph Król [1971]). This rhetorical personification of the castle, giving it membership of the nation and at the same time allowing it to embody the nation’s most illustrious deeds, was meant to encourage patriotic zeal and its expression in form of a material contri- bution. ‘Let everyone contribute a brick and together we shall create from the recon- structed Castle a new great symbol of national unity. May every zloty become a symbol of faithfulness to national traditions and of the national bonds uniting all

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 Poles’ (quote from appeal leaflet distributed with the monograph Król [1971]). Following this ‘participatory rhetoric’, in March 1971 OKOZK decided to lead a public consultation about future functions of the castle; this was announced in the press (OKOZK minutes, 5 March 1971).13 In June of the same year the results of the consultation were presented to OKOZK; they were to help formulate the guide- lines for architects, builders and designers involved in the technical part of the pro- ject. To Kępa, the number of voluntary participants in the consultation (318 letters had been received) seemed too low to make public; in fact, they do not seem to have influenced the final decision of the Committee (OKOZK minutes, 11 June 1971), which was formulated during its meeting on 30 June 1971. It stated that:

1) The full name of the site is ‘Royal Castle in Warsaw – Monument of National History and Culture’. 2) In the historic and representative apartments of the castle celebrations of state and national occasions should take place, as well as academic, International Journal of Heritage Studies 467

cultural and social gatherings of special importance. 3) The Royal Castle should create conditions for presenting to society the outstanding achievements of Polish culture, science and history, as well as national mementoes. 4) The former Room of Deputies and the adjacent apartment should be destined for solemn gatherings of Polish Dias- pora (Polonia), and meetings of high rank cultural, scientific and social institutions. 5) The youth should be given an adequate role and participation in the life of the castle. (Lorentz 1987, p. 99)

There were both political and economic reasons for stressing the presence of the Polish Diaspora in the life of the future castle. Already in the appeal OKOZK called all ‘fellow countrymen’, regardless of their place of residence, to participate in ‘the implementation of this great task’. This was meant to mobilise their economic resources, as well as to get them to acknowledge, to some extent, the legitimacy of the regime that had provoked the exile of so many of them. Already in 1957 Lorentz, far from being an enthusiastic supporter of the People’s Republic, had consulted leading figures of Polish emigration in France on the possible economic support for the reconstruction.14 Since the beginning of 1971 he had started a real ‘castle crusade’ among the Polonia in Europe and the USA. As a result, almost 80 institutions and committees organised by Diaspora members around the world collected funds and other donations for the Royal Castle in Warsaw (Pleskaczyńska 2003b, pp. 124–127). A special commission of OKOZK for ‘Polonia affairs’ was created in April 1971, and its head, General Skibiński, remarked: ‘Any Committee member who goes abroad is obliged to spread the pro- paganda, especially if he is a presidium member’ (OKOZK minutes, 2 April 1971). The start of reconstruction works was planned as a solemn act of laying the first brick on the anniversary of the castle’s ‘Black Sunday’–17 September 1939 – when incendiary bombs had set the castle on fire. Unfortunately, the date coincided with the Soviet invasion of Poland and had, therefore, been excluded from the version of Polish history acknowledged by the authorities of the People’s Republic, as indeed was anything related to Soviet persecutions of Poles during World War II or to Polish territorial losses. Thus, Kępa ‘informed that no celebrations nor publications related to the start of reconstruction works in the castle on September 17 are expected. The Press has been notified’ (OKOZK minutes, 10 September 1971). However, at 11:15 (the hour at which the main castle tower had been set on fire in 1939) on 17 Septem- ber 1971, with the participation of a film crew and an audience of at least several hundred people, the first brick was ceremonially laid. No one from OKOZK was pres-

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 ent. The brick was put in place by a carpenter assisted by a lower-ranking conservator, Aleksandra Świechowska. Nobody from the highest ranks in the reconstruction was found responsible for ‘the incident’, and comrade Kępa himself seemed willing to make light of it (OKOZK minutes, 1 October 1971). What clearly surfaced in the ‘brick incident’, however, was the struggle both for the power to declare the right ver- sion of Polish history, and for the credit for the reconstruction of the castle; obviously, the People’s Republic authorities were eager to appropriate all the credit, and had no doubt about their right to rewrite the nation’s history. The same attitude from the authorities was apparent in the inauguration ceremony of the roofed shell of the castle building on 19 July 1974. In a report from the cere- mony published by Trybuna Ludu (one of the largest national newspapers, published by the Central Committee of the Party) many people, for whom that day was ‘a tri- umph of their lives, and the crowning achievement of their heroic efforts since 1939’, were not even mentioned by their names. ‘In the Kępa’s speech the names of 468 E. Klekot

Stanisław Lorentz and Jan Zachwatowicz were not even mentioned. There was no mention of architects... No one had been given any distinction’ (Majewski 2003a, p. 31). ‘We are supposed to believe’–commented Radio Free Europe –‘that the Royal Castle owes its reconstruction solely to Józef Kępa and the Party’ (Majewski, 2003a). With the reconstruction approaching its end, a new institution managed by the Ministry of Culture and Arts was created under the name ‘The Royal Castle of Warsaw – Monument of National History and Culture’;15 In a letter to the minister Lorentz recommended Aleksander Gieysztor (historian and a member of OKOZK directly engaged in the reconstruction) as its director.16 A handwritten note by Lorentz states:

I consider November 5, 1979 to be an extremely important date in the history of the castle’s reconstruction. For several years the idea of converting the castle into a stately building under the URM [Council of Ministers Office] has been promoted. The project has been pushed for by the director of the Bureau of OKOZK, Wojciech Lipiński, who was preparing himself to be director of the castle. Since spring I have been putt- ing the Chairman [of OKOZK] Kępa under pressure to create The Royal Castle of Warsaw – Monument of National History and Culture.17

Nevertheless, it was only on 14 July 1980, with workers’ protests all over Poland get- ting out of control, that the Prime Minister finally issued the official appointment (Lorentz 1987, p. 160). The first exhibition in the castle, entitled ‘History and Recon- struction of the Royal Castle’, opened in October 1981. However, with the repressions following the martial law of 13 December 1981, Stanisław Lorentz lost his position as director of the National Museum, and the two deputy directors engaged in the recon- struction of the Royal Castle also lost their positions (Rottermund 2003, p. 12). The last meeting of OKOZK took place on 30 August 1984 when the Committee, having accomplished its aims, decided to end its activity. The next day, in an official cere- mony, the reconstructed Royal Castle was handed over to the Minister of Culture and Arts and the Director of the Castle (Majewski 2003c, p. 106).

Restitution in action: heritage and power relations at a ‘micro-level’ Having discussed the ‘macro-scale’ political involvement in the reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, I now focus on what I have called the ‘micro-level’ of heritage politics, meaning the meta-level legitimising processes within conservators’

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 discourse and practices in the particular context of the castle’s restitution. The guide- lines for the project approved by OKOZK on 30 July 1971 had been prepared by its Commission for Architecture and Conservation, and discussed by the Historic Commission. The new building was intended to reflect different stages of its history and development and in some important details it differed from its pre-World War II state. The main differences concern the Gothic tower that was supposed to regain its Gothic shape even though there were no sources available to describe its roofing. The tower had been converted by Szyszko-Bohusz into a pseudo-Renaissance terrace. In addition, the reconstruction of the oldest, Gothic part of the building was meant to make it visible from the courtyard, which, as a result, would lose its stylistic coher- ence (currently each of the wings that can be seen from the courtyard represents a different style and a different epoch in the castle’s history). The main façade overlook- ing the Castle Square was to be fitted with small corner towers resembling those of the seventeenth-century building and that were lost probably in the early eighteenth International Journal of Heritage Studies 469

century during the Great Northern War (OKOZK minutes, 5 March 1971; Lileyko 1980, p. 53). Clearly, the decisions made aimed at re-establishing the castle as an ancient building (with the ‘oldest parts’ visible); its main façade was to look as it pre- sumably did in the seventeenth century (the epoch of glorious battles of the Winged Hussars of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) and not as it was in the eighteenth century (deemed the epoch of decline). The façade in a seventeenth-century style har- monised also with the most characteristic of Warsaw monuments – the column of King Sigismund in the Castle Square, erected in the same century. The construction methods originally proposed for the project were strongly opposed by Zachwatowicz and Lorentz, who protested against the application of modern technologies such as reinforced concrete in the vaults: ‘modern builders don’t trust brick vaults. According to contemporary calculations they cannot sur- vive’ (OKOZK minutes, 7 January 1972). The old technologies and materials had to be used, Lorentz claimed, as ‘society wants a castle made of bricks, as it was, not any other’ (OKOZK minutes, 7 January 1972). Finally, about 6300 m2 of brick vaults were constructed and the existing fragments were incorporated into the new structure (Pulikowski 2003, p. 73), while modern technologies were used for ground reinforcement in order to fit the old, surviving walls and foundations in the new castle (Pulikowski 2003, pp. 72–73). The approach towards the surviving remnants was defined by Lorentz shortly after the preparatory works for the site had started:

In the name of the Commission for Architecture and Conservation [of OKOZK] I declare that what has been left is ‘sacred’. These tiny bits that have been left are authentic. They can be reinforced, underpinned, as needed. We don’t remove old foun- dations but if necessary we fix them on new slabs. (OKOZK minutes, 20 July 1971)

And summed up by Kępa: ‘The relics [of the past] are “sacred” to the nation and must be respected’ (OKOZK minutes, 20 July 1971). The differently placed stress on the ‘sacred’ value of the remnants reflects the focus on ‘authenticity’ expressed by the expert, and on ‘the nation’ by the politi- cian. Obviously it does not mean that the expert (Lorentz) was not following any political agenda – he was, and it was ideologically different from Kępa’s – but all his actions were aimed at providing expert legitimisation for the historic value of the monument in question, since only a castle endorsed with historic value would be useful for further legitimisation of the national community. However, the expert legitimisation of the monument was not the only way that Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 would give the castle its historic value. There was also a plan to inscribe in it the names of donors, which would confirm its symbolic value to a nation united in its restitution. The idea was not new: plates with donors’ names (‘bricks’) forming a kind of gallery had been displayed along the wall at the entrance to Wawel Castle in Cracow – it was Szyszko-Bohusz’s idea, since his conservation works had been partially financed with donations as well. In the case of the Royal Castle in Warsaw it would be even more justified, as until 1981 it had been entirely funded with donations (Majewski 2003c, p. 105). It was the main conservation authority, Jan Zachwatowicz, who opposed wholeheartedly the idea of placing ‘bricks’ in the reconstructed castle (OKOZK minutes, 12 February 1971); the donors were to receive printed certificates. The particular role the reconstruction has played in establishing the value of the site is also reflected in the conservators’ approach to objects in the castle’s collections. 470 E. Klekot

The interiors of the castle were partially refurbished with what Lorentz’s team had managed to save, and with items that had been bought from different collectors from all over the world. Nevertheless, numerous reconstructions of furniture had to be carried out. These works took several years, with approval by the Commission for Interiors of the form, materials and executed decorations being required at each stage. The objects thus produced entered the castle inventory books along with the original pieces. When, in 2000, the rules for evidencing museum collections changed, the Commission for Interiors decided to keep the reconstructions in the old inventories, as the responsibility for them was understood to be the same as for the original pieces because both categories were integral to the castle expositions. A separate inventory for reconstructions was established in 2000 for new acquisitions.18

Museum narrative and the policy of access According to Polish historian Ewa Domańska: ‘there are two epochs in Poland’s past during which the “essence” of Polishness is supposed to have been manifested’ (Domańska 2000, p. 253). The first was the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, con- sidered the Golden Age of Polish culture, with a strong Polish–Lithuanian state ruling over vast territories of eastern Europe and democratic, parliamentary governments with the elected kings. The second was the period of Romanticism in the nineteenth century. With Poland politically annihilated, it was a period of humiliation, rebellion and uprising, conspiracy and dreams of independence and of the resurrection of the Polish state. These two epochs are embodied in the two most important heritage sites in Poland: Wawel Castle in Cracow and the Royal Castle in Warsaw (Klekot 2010). While Wawel Castle stands for the Golden Age, the Royal Castle narrative stresses the pain and humiliation that ended in the annihilation of the building but that even- tually led to its resurrection thanks to the unity of the nation. In the case of historic monuments the narrative – understood after Hayden White (1980) to be a meaningful way of organising the past, always expressing a certain moral standpoint – is transmitted in the actual place in guided tours and via the organisation of the exhibition space. However, in the case of such emblematic monuments of national heritage, as both castles are, it also reaches the public via other media of popular culture, such as children’s books, comic books, historic novels, school textbooks, tourist brochures and guidebooks, films, and the like. All these take part in the process of constructing the historic monument, and each visit

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 becomes more a re-enactment of what the visitor already knows about its narrated history and the (mythologised) history of the nation, and less a search for new inter- pretations of the past. Observing the way the narrative is being constructed can be very informative about yet another level of power relations embedded in a historic monument (Klekot 2010). The narrative explained to the visitors to the Royal Castle in Warsaw usually stresses the salvaging of the castle treasures, the effort of reconstruction and the exactitude of the reconstruction. The visit usually starts with large-format photographs on the ground floor that show the castle before World War II, then in different stages of destruction, and finally after reconstruction. Then the attention of the visitors is diverted towards the testimonies of the destruction in the form of holes drilled by Nazi sappers for dynamite to be inserted. In the guiding repertoire there is also a comparison of original fragments of decoration with reconstructions to prove their exactitude; there are stories dealing with the safekeeping of original International Journal of Heritage Studies 471

elements; attention is also given to the unfinished plafond painting in the Old Throne Hall – the author of the reconstruction, who knew the piece from before World War II since he had worked on the conservation of the original, died during the reconstruction process. A crimson drapery behind the throne in the Throne Hall, decorated with silver and gold embroidered appliqués of crowned eagles, attracts the visitors’ attention. There are four throne chairs exhibited simultaneously in four different rooms of the castle; this is clearly intended to stress the presence of royal authority, and not to recreate any particular ‘when’ of the castle’s interior. In front of the throne of the last Polish king a guide tells the following story of an embroidered eagle: before World War II an embroidered cloth used to hang behind the throne in the Throne Hall, decorated in appliqué technique with a series of white-silver eagles executed in metal and silk threads. When the Nazis conquered the city, Governor Frank ordered the eagles detached from the cloth and distributed among the bravest soldiers as a prize for their outstanding performance in the battle for Warsaw.19 When, in 1971, the decision to reconstruct the castle was finally taken, a world- wide search for castle mementos was started. The specialists said that reconstruction of the Throne Hall cloth was impossible without at least one original appliqué to copy. All the eagles seemed to be lost. It was the former Newsweek correspondent in Warsaw, Andrew Nagorsky, who located a silver eagle in the home of elderly Polish immigrants in the USA. Their story was that after the war they happened to end up in the American-occupied part of Germany. As they had recently been freed from a concentration camp they decided to emigrate to the USA. Some days before their departure they saw a German soldier selling off his modest property in order to survive. Among the things he was offering they saw a white eagle embroidered in silk and silver threads; at the back of the appliqué there was an inscription in pen saying: ‘Warschauer Schloss, Oktober 1939’. They bought it as a remembrance of their lost homeland. Having heard from Nagorsky the rest of the story, they returned the appliqué as a gift to the castle. So much for the oral history passed to the visitors attending a guided tour. The story itself contains many emotionally charged elements, and the fate of the eagle could be understood as a parable of the fate of the castle itself, and more of the whole Polish nation in the popular version of Polish post-World War II history: destroyed in a barbarian way by the Nazis, hidden or exiled under communism, saved by the Poles abroad and brought back by a Western ally.

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 However, the oral history version is not the only narrative about the eagle existing in the Royal Castle. The minutes of the meetings of the Commission for Interiors prove the long and unsuccessful efforts of reconstructing the appliqué from pre-war photographs; then in November 1991 the original eagle appeared and was subjected to various studies. In 1994, the shape of the eagle’s crown was questioned by experts, and the Commission decided to change it in the embroidering project. One of the castle curators explained that he had taken part in the studies of the original eagle. According to his opinion the form of the appliqué was not in accor- dance with Polish heraldic rules, and he told me he had suggested changes in the design of the model for reconstruction. In his opinion, the cloth with appliqués hanging behind the throne before World War II was not the one used during the time of the last Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, to whom the throne belonged. Considering ‘the clumsy way’ the crown had been executed ‘without good understanding of Western heraldic rules’, he suggested that the drapery had 472 E. Klekot

been done in Russia, possibly in the first half of the nineteenth century, and had been used in the coronation of the Russian czar as the Polish King,20 the title reserved for him after the Vienna Congress. He also remembered that Professor Gieysztor had become very excited by information about the original eagle found in the USA. However, according to the curator, the appliqué had been bought from a descendant of one of the Nazi officials rather than from any Polish immigrants. The story of the eagle shows how the narrative is an expression of different symbolic power struggles and value legitimisations. The guide’s narrative recreates the national history myth about suffering and the resurrection of the Polish nation; this is the official narrative of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. In this particular case the material embodiment of the narrative is the appliqué and its lot. The materiality of the object is crucial to the story: only the original can be used for the reconstruc- tion. Apart from that, some elements in the guide’s narrative make the eagle appliqué into a relic: the inscription confirming its authenticity, and its having been taken into exile as a material and symbolic embodiment of the lost homeland. The narrative of the curator questions the suitability of the appliqué for the role of all these symbolic meanings without questioning its material authenticity and thus it challenges the core symbolic value of it – national identity. An eagle embroidered in Russia is obviously unsuitable for the role of a material embodiment of national myth. Here the difference between the narrative told by a guide to the visitors, and the one told by an expert (the curator) to an expert (the anthropologist conducting her research) is a consequence of a difference in access to information and in the licence for skepticism each narrative uses in its own way to achieve the same objective – making the eagle of the throne drapery a more evocative symbol of the Polish nation. Both narratives are concerned with an object representing the nation which returned to its place in the collection ‘displayed for education and integration of citizens into a particular... national identity’ (Harrison 2008, p. 180). However, the differences between the narratives show the way the process of conservation, selective as it is, is informed by the Polish national ideology. What makes the eagle represent the nation for the broader audience is its war and post-war ‘biography’, symbolising the fate of the Polish nation; for an expert, however, in order to repre- sent the nation the eagle had to change its ‘clumsy’, ‘Russian-style look’, and thus the reconstruction did not follow exactly the original with the selection of features made according to the best expert knowledge about ‘Polish’ and ‘Western-style’

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 heraldry.

Conclusion Establishing an historic monument is a selective practice, and similarly selective is its conservation, as well as the access to places, buildings, objects and information. As shown by the (re)construction of the Royal Castle, a monument of national history and culture, the policy of selection in all the stages of the process is a result of the interplay of power relations and politics carried out on two different levels: the macro-level of administrative structures of the nation-state and the micro-level of expert practices. Both levels are informed by various political ideologies: in this case the most prominent ideological components on the macro-level were the local, Polish version of Marxist–Leninist ideology followed by the Polish United Workers Party, as well as the Polish national ideology; on the micro-level what can clearly International Journal of Heritage Studies 473

Figure 2. Information board outside the Royal Castle: photograph of the ruins. Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016

Figure 3. Royal Castle western façade: information board and commemorative plaque. 474 E. Klekot

Figure 4. Royal Castle western façade: commemorative plaque.

be seen as prevailing is the Polish national ideology. Some protagonists of the story – Stanisław Lorenz and Jan Zachwatowicz – acted on both levels, and on both they were strong exponents of this ideology: from the original decision to reconstruct (which in terms of the standards promoted by international expert circles was not the most obvious choice), to the fights over the use of the reconstructed building and the institutional framework within which it was to fulfill its destiny as a monu- ment of national history and culture. In front of the main entrance to the Royal Castle in Warsaw there is an informa- Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 tion board where a large photograph of the ruins of the annihilated building is displayed (Figure 2). The information is provided in both Polish and English. On the wall of the same, western façade, left of the main entrance, and 3 m away from the board, there is a commemorative plaque dedicated to the 3 May Constitution (Figures 3 and 4).21 The inscription, in Polish, starts: ‘In this building on 3 May of 1791...’. Both of them are part of the process of constructing the ‘Monument of National History and Culture’.

Acknowledgements The Author would like to thank to the Editors of the present issue of International Journal of Heritage Studies (IJHS), Laurajane Smith of IJHS, and the anonymous reviewers for all their valuable comments that helped to improve the structure and content of this article. Special thanks are also due to Lorne Whiteway, who was of enormous help in polishing the article’s language and expression. International Journal of Heritage Studies 475

Notes on contributor Ewa Klekot is assistant professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Warsaw University, Poland. Her main research interests include anthropology of art, especially visual arts, as well as vernacular forms of artistic expression and heritage studies.

Notes 1. The entire quotation is as follows: History, like art and sport, is not a fixed entity but an activity. History is the story we are constantly telling ourselves to explain to ourselves just how we come to be where we think we are. History, truly considered, is a verb, not an abstract noun. We history. From which it follows that history is not given, but made. The story that we tell ourselves is a form of self-definition and is, therefore, and unavoidably, an ethical enter- prise. (Brett 1996, p. 4) 2. By 1964 Jan Zachwatowicz, the Polish signatory of the Venice Charter, had already car- ried out several reconstruction works in Warsaw’s Old Town and Royal Route that included a reconstruction in toto of Warsaw Cathedral and a complete redesign of its façade in the so-called ‘Mazovian Gothic’ style. He also was to become, in 1971, the Chief Conservator for the in toto reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw; more about his activities follows, but see also Martyn (2001). 3. The most recent large post-World War II reconstruction in toto was the Dresden Frauen- kirche, consecrated in 2005. 4. The offensive of spring/summer 1915 on the eastern front switched Polish territories from Russian rule to German and Austro-Hungarian rule. The policy of the new occu- pants was more friendly towards the Poles than that of the Russians and an independent Kingdom of Poland was promised. 5. The writers Stefan Żeromski and Stanisław Przybyszewski lived in the castle in 1921–1925 and 1924–1927, respectively. 6. The style of the Renaissance was considered at the time the Golden-Age style, epitomis- ing the greatness of Polish past; the vista terrace in Warsaw seems closely related to the so-called ‘altana’ (a semi-opened terrace, or loggia) constructed by Szyszko-Bohusz in 1922–1924 in Wawel, above another Gothic tower incorporated in the Cracow castle. The post-war reconstruction in Warsaw did not include Szyszko-Bohusz’s developments. 7. All translations from Polish, unless otherwise indicated, are by the author. 8. On 17 September 1939 President Mościcki left the national territory and on 30 Septem- ber he resigned from office. 9. The National Museum, unlike the castle, was a municipal institution, so the city mayor was entitled to delegate its director to do the task (Rottermund 2003, p. 7). 10. I use the name ‘Royal Route’ for the most northern part of an historic route connecting several royal residences in the centre and on the outskirts of the city to the south. It con- Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 sists of two consecutive streets, Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Świat, which were reconstructed within the scope of the Six-Year Plan. Neither of them was rebuilt accord- ing to the pre-war photographs, and in the case of Krakowskie Przedmieście vedutas by Bernardo Belotto were used as inspiration for the reconstruction of a Warsaw that had existed ‘before the city’s disfigurement during large-scale urban growth in the second half of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries’ (Martyn 2001, p. 211). Peter Martyn offers the following comment: ‘In conservationist terms, to recreate entire architectural ensembles on the basis of a set of paintings that were almost two hundred years old, for all its bravura, was not only reckless but unprofessional’ (Martyn 2001, p. 211), especially because ‘painters tend to permit themselves a certain amount of license in what they do, and Bernardo Belotto was absolutely no exception to the rule’ (Martyn 2001, p. 211). The most recent developments in Krakowskie Przedmieście, after the ren- ovation of the street in 2006–2008, include full-sized copies of Belotto’s vedutas sealed in acrylic glass blocks located in the spots from where the painter presumably had cast his eye. The continuity between the past and present established in such a way legitimis- 476 E. Klekot

es the restoration efforts, and at the same time perpetuates the version of the city’s his- tory informed by the post-World War II ideological struggle. 11. The official documents of the Polish People’s Republic tended to avoid the adjective ‘royal’ in the name of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, which made the building ‘the Castle of Warsaw’,or‘Warsaw’s Castle’ (Polish: Zamek Warszawski instead of Zamek Królew- ski w Warszawie). 12. In March 1971, Gomułka, recently removed from power, wrote: I have never been and I will never be an advocate of the castle’s reconstruction, or, putt- ing it more accurately, the construction of a new one, as from the old nothing had been left.... My question is: what traditions are we evoking here? ...After all, this castle is a symbol of anarchy; almost every single parliament session held there had been blocked by the aristocratic ‘liberum veto’; it was there where venal and despicable Polish kings lived; it was there where under the bayonets of foreign powers the partitions were proclaimed. ...The Warsaw Castle is not a symbol of Polish statehood. It is a symbol of doom, both to the state of the Polish aristocracy and nobility, as well as to the state of the Polish bourgeoisie (quoted in Pleskaczyńska 2003a, p. 54). 13. Minutes of meetings of the executive committee of OKOZK are housed in the Archives of the Royal Castle of Warsaw. I would like to thank the Director and staff of the Royal Castle of Warsaw (RCW) for their assistance in my research; I owe special thanks to the Archive Section employees, especially Ms Dominika Sobolewska. 14. From a letter from Jerzy Giedroyć to Stanisław Lorentz, 27 May 1957, in the ‘Lorentz Archives’ in the Archives of the RCW. 15. The reconstruction was supervised by OKOZK and realised by different specialised bodies, among them the ‘Royal Castle’ unit of the National Museum of Warsaw. On 1 October 1980 the unit transferred its duties to the Royal Castle of Warsaw – MNHC (Rottermund 2003, p. 11). 16. Kept in the so-called ‘Lorentz Albums’ (part of the ‘Lorentz Archives’) in the Archives of the RCW. 17. A handwritten note by Lorentz, dated 5 November 1979, in the ‘Lorentz Albums’,in the Archives of the RCW. 18. Minutes of the meeting of Commissions for Interiors 2 March 2000 (Archives of the RCW). 19. Here I quote the oral version I heard from a guide; in his memoirs, Lorentz writes that Governor Hans Frank, during his first visit to Warsaw Castle on 10 October 1939, ‘with his own hands was tearing off the canopy of the royal throne the eagles embroidered in sil- ver, encouraging dignitaries who accompanied him to do the same’ (Lorentz 1986, p. 14). 20. The title was ‘Polish King’ and not ‘King of Poland’; this is clear from the phrase ‘tytuł Króla Polskiego’ [title of Polish King], which was used instead of ‘tytuł Króla Polski’ [title of the King of Poland]. The difference was politically important, as the country had been divided among three parties, and Russia held only a share of the former national territory of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Interestingly, in the nominative case the difference disappears, with both forms becoming Król Polski (here ‘Polski’

Downloaded by [University of Gothenburg] at 02:14 25 April 2016 could be either the adjective ‘Polish’ in the nominative case or the noun ‘Polska’ [Poland] in the genitive case). 21. The first Polish constitution was proclaimed in 1791; currently 3 May is celebrated as Constitution Day.

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