Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland

Introduction

Acrown, a scepter, a pair of spurs, a pile of bones—a treasure, chanced upon on June 14, 1869. The royal remains of Casimir the Great (1333– 70), the only Polish monarch awarded that designation, had been discovered in Wawel Cathedral. At the time, minor repairs were being made to what had long been thought to be only a cenotaph, or monument, to the Polish king. While inspecting the foundation, a workman dislodged a stone, revealing an unexpected interior. Here lay what remained of King Casimir the Great, the last member of the Piast dynasty that had founded the Polish state. Were he alive to meet the generation of Poles that peered into his tomb, King Casimir would have been surprised at the state of his kingdom. Political conditions had changed enormously in the space of five hundred years. The Polish state enlarged and strengthened by Casimir had been expanded further under the Jagiellonian dynasty to embrace the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with its East Slav and Lithuanian populations, resulting in a country that stretched from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Yet, by the mid-nineteenth century, this large East-Central European state—the Polish -Lithuanian Commonwealth—no longer existed, having been partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria nearly a century before the discovery of King Casimir’s final resting place. Still, to say that no Poland existed in 1869 would in a sense be incorrect . References to this entity—to Poland—proliferated among those for whom the name had significance: the Poles themselves. Absent from the political map of Europe, Poland continued to exist in the minds of those who considered themselves Poles. And, although divided among three empires , with brethren in emigration elsewhere in Europe as well as across the Atlantic Ocean, nationally conscious Poles strove to maintain and foster a sense of national identity. Signs of this can be seen in the reaction to the discovery of the royal remains . It was decided that these relics of the past deserved a solemn and public reburial. The ceremony was turned into a national event, as Poles Introduction  from all over came to pay their respects to the renowned king. Following church services in the center of Cracow (Kraków, Krakau), representatives of Poles from local and regional organizations processed in silence to Wawel Cathedral, after which the remains of the Polish king were placed once again in their tomb. Still, the peaceful celebration had its detractors.1 Polish commemorations were a touchy business. The last anniversaries celebrated publicly in the Polish lands, in 1860 and 1861, had emboldened Poles to rise up against Russian rule. The memory of the failed January Insurrection of 1863–64 was fresh enough to cause some Poles to hope in 1869 that no more royal remains would be discovered. Others feared a worsening of conditions for Poles elsewhere. These fears were not without foundation. The Cracow commemoration caused the Russian government to retaliate by announcing an imperial decree that turned the Warsaw university, the socalled Main School (Szko`a G`ówna), into a Russian university—this despite the fact that subjects of the tsar kept their distance from the festivities, so as not to be noted by the army of tsarist informers that did attend.2 Celebrations that reminded the world that a strong and independent Polish state had once existed could prove costly. This encounter of nineteenth-century Poles with a direct, tangible, and glorious past nonetheless proved stimulating. The impact of the reburial extended far beyond the confines of Cracow to those who were unable to attend the event, inspiring a number of publications and leading to the popularization of Wawel Cathedral as a site of a new kind of pilgrimage. It was as though these ancient remnants possessed a magical power to inspire and mobilize the nation. In the words of one writer, “The appearance of the great king among the living . . . had in it something mystical, summoning , as it were, faith in the future by recalling the past. . . .”3 Could public recollections of the nation’s past help Poles to transcend their partitioned present—and perhaps improve their chances for a united future? The spontaneous commemoration of Casimir the Great in 1869 was simply the first of many public festivities in this period prepared by and for the Polish nation. Their Janus-like nature—one face looking toward the past, the other toward the future—made such celebrations quite attractive to a number of activists eager to...