The relatively recent increase in the interest in the arts and architecture of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) invites us to ask questions about its future perspectives. This includes the need to search for new methods to read historical sources and to appreciate the period as a pretext to rewrite the history of modern Polish art. Three research postulates are being proposed here. The first one refers to postcolonial studies and indicates that paradoxically postcolonial categories allow us to question the supposedly imitative nature of Polish modernisation. As a negative example, they let us see its unique and original character and demonstrate that comparisons with the accomplishments of ‘centres’ not always produce a valid academic result. The second postulate refers to the appreciation of a different research geography of the arts of the interwar period, both in terms of Poland and the international context. Research on provincial modernisation projects should be continued, by showing the scale of the program of reforms undertaken, but also by emphasizing the importance of the context of the Central and Eastern Europe, where many countries formed after the First World War, from Estonia to Yugoslavia, were in a similar situation to Poland. Points of reference should be sought in other peripheral locations where similar regional modernisation processes took place. Research should also be continued on the polycentric modernism, in which there is no single centre imitated by the provinces, but where various centres of modernity co-exist, implementing modernisation projects resulting from local conditions. The third of the research postulates stems from the significant expansion of source databases as well as the phenomena observed on the borderline of history of art, cultural studies, and anthropology, which are also becoming subjects of study within our discipline. The synthetic and syncretic approach to the past allows us to perceive the evidence of modernisation processes in the research areas previously unexploited by history of art, such as the activities of educational institutions, social organisations, cooperatives, but also public institutions such as political parties and associations. These examples can be multiplied, and paying attention to them serves to emphasize the universal impact of modernisation slogans and their acceptance by a wide spectrum of recipients. It is important to note that not only the avant-garde artists identified themselves with the project of changes, and one should not see in them the only promoters of change that opened Polish culture to the 20th century. Such a broad field of research shows the complementarity of the artistic phenomena on the scene of the Second Polish Republic and their parallel activities to implement the postulates of the ‘modernist reversal’ after 1918.
The main subject of this article is the concept of national art that was formulated by Jerzy Warchałowski in his texts. In many earlier studies attempts to draw on folk art or to develop a national style or a national formula of modernism were discounted as inferior, provincial or distorted modernism. Meanwhile, the historical interpretation of Warchałowski’s ideas proposed in this paper aims to connect it with the wide stream of post-Enlightenment criticism of modern formation and the multiplicity of initiatives and regenerative programs as well as the multi-faceted and wide-ranging so-called ‘life reform’. Seen from this perspective, the apparent paradoxes of modernism become understandable – the simultaneous presence of elements that are both futuristic and nihilistic, revolutionary and conservative, romantic and classical, the coexistence of an admiration for the technique and also its condemnation, the criticism of historicism and the reaching for tradition, the vision of modern society and the appeal to the primitive way of life. From this point of view, drawing on the resources of the folk culture as the basis of national tradition is situated in the very centre of modernist debates and modern artistic movements. Warchałowski’s concept of decorative art is inscribed in the general modernist vision, defined as a wide-ranging artistic activity aimed at shaping man’s living space, particularly his house or flat. In addition to the aesthetic aspect, the practical (functional) and health-related (hygienic) dimensions of this activity were of key importance to Warchałowski. It was also to have an educational and economic meaning as an important segment of the national economy. The analysis of Warchałowski’s ideas in the text suggests necessary shifts in the genealogy of the Polish modernism. Very important in this regard was the milieu of Kraków’s reformers of art gathered around the Technical-Industrial Museum of Adrian Baraniecki, The Society for Polish Applied Art, and the magazine Architect, influenced by William Morris’s idea of the revival of traditional handicrafts as a tool of the social and national regeneration. The impact of this idea is linked with the direct reception of Hermann Muthesius’s program of renewal of handicrafts and architecture and, more broadly, with Werkbund influencing the artistic, organizational, and publishing practice of that milieu. The latter had its own tradition of reflection on the national culture and folk art and reciprocated the important architectural ideas of Gotfried Semper and the concept of the garden city of Ebenezer Howard, crucial for the members of the Werkbund. The whole of this process was part of the modernist regenerative ideas on the role of art, but also connected art wit various reforming contexts related in a more or less direct way to the ‘reform of life’, characteristic of the entire European modernism, especially in the German-speaking countries. Warchałowski’s regenerative idea of drawing on folk roots and basic principles of art to create modern art, which also meant national art, was in the first decades of the twentieth century not so much a unique or an individual concept, but rather a typical way of thinking about the role of art in the modernist movement in Western Europe, and in the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe created after the end of World War I.
The National Museum in Krakow at the time when Poland regained independence had not yet been an object of academic studies. The author focuses here on the most important events and developments in the institution during that period, and on the professional and moral stance of its director Feliks Kopera. The director’s key mission was the complete protection of the collections and the institution itself. Kopera had no hesitation in criticising negligence and impropriety, which was a brave but often unpopular approach. His ideas were seldom in line with those of the decision makers in Warsaw. A fragment of the museum’s history discussed here reveals one of its most difficult periods.
Polish photography in the first years after Poland regained independence remains a poorly documented area of research. Studies so far had mostly focused on the interpretation of the works of a few key artists from the avant-garde milieu (Witkacy) or photography (Jan Bułhak). It transpires however, that photography – not only as an artistic practice, but as poetic metaphor or an element of a broader aesthetic reflection – has functioned within the circle of the artistic avant-garde. An analysis of the presence of this medium in the consciousness and creativity of Polish artists allows us to see in a new light certain aspects of their technique and intellectual viewpoint. The article focuses on selected characteristics of this assimilation of modern reflection on photography by the Polish avant-garde artists in the first decade after the country regained independence. For the Formists – Tytus Czyżewski and Leon Chwistek – photography was an important point of reference as a metaphor of a new, cognitively uncertain, but also “deeper” way of seeing reality. It was an important help in defining the relationship between reality and its image and subject within a broader theoretical program (the theory of plurality of realities). For the Constructivists in turn – with Władysław Strzemiński and Mieczysław Szczuka at the forefront – photography became the means that enabled them to go beyond the usual schemes of capturing the external world, and as part of the concept of photomontage, it became a new material for creating an artistic reality. The dynamics of the process of assimilation of photography by the avant-garde artists was analysed in the context of the reception of new artistic trends born outside of Poland, primarily Futurism (the theory of photography by Anton Giulio Bragaglia) and Suprematism (reflection by Kazimierz Malewicz).
This article, as part of the “new historiography”, deals with the beginnings of modern research on interwar architecture in Poland. The author considers said starting point to be in the first edition of Adam Miłobędzki’s Outline of the History of Architecture in Poland (1963). Miłobędzki was one of the foremost scholars of architecture in Poland and his book was reprinted three times (1968, 1978, and 1988). Thanks to its modern synthesizing form, it occupied from the start a key position in the Polish literature on the subject, and to this day remains a model academic textbook. A strictly personal work, it used the most up-to-date knowledge of the history of Polish architecture at that time, and underlined Miłobędzki’s individualism and intellectual independence from the authorities. The “outline” was not constructed to be a denotative (unequivocal) collection of objects-facts symbols, but rather a connotative (equivocal/polysemous) text open to interpretations. It had, however, the features of a propaedeutic, using cumulative knowledge in an evolutionist manner and according to a phasic model. The history of architecture is narrated through the description of buildings chosen for their innovative role in history. In the system of historical linearity applied therein, the history of architecture breaks off at the beginning of the First World War, thus excluding the interwar period. Its absence was corrected by the addition of a short appendix to the second edition (1968), entitled “Conclusion. Architecture after the First World War”. According to Leśniakowska, the inclusion of the appendix was the result of influence by the neo-avant-garde movement in art and architecture, activated by a generation of modernist “resistance” to socialist realism (of which Miłobędzki was part), which appeared in the mid-1950s. Leśniakowska acknowledges the added “Conclusion” to be the founding text for the study of interwar architectural culture, and reveals its complex simultaneous synchro-diachronic connections, intersections, contexts and sociocodes. The author analyses the reasons why the Outline initially ended on the caesura of 1914; it was the result of a directive of post-war academic art history which stipulated a one hundred years distance from the subject of research. This ruled out movements from the mid-19th century and excluded contemporary culture from art historical studies as being more suitable for art criticism than history of art. It was not until the last edition (1988) that Miłobędzki shifted this caesura to around 1950, which could be explained by the influence of revisionist tendencies in the humanities after the Second World War. Among others, James S. Ackerman considered the separation of history and criticism as unnatural and harmful, leading to limitations and negative cognitive effects. Looking at this dispute from the perspective of the “new historiography”, so vital for shaping artistic/architectural historiography, Leśniakowska points out that the exclusion of the modern/contemporary art and architecture exposes the mechanism of submitting the studies on art to a system of authority and domination, which teaches the “correct” understanding of the past without the phenomena which could pollute it. The exclusion of the interwar period was therefore a “significant oversight”, a decision rooted in the symbolic order of knowledge-authority, a symptom of the problem of “using” art history by a suitably programmed new memory in accordance with the then doctrine of managing tradition. In the theories of text and of seeing (image as text; text as artefact) and in the system of representation, that which is omitted is part of the message, which, with the help of performative practices, provides knowledge about the author of the information. Hermeneutical reading of the Outline by Miłobędzki, and of his index of architectural values, allows us to see how architecture appears as that which is “visible”, and is filled with (politically desirable) meaning. In the index of values established by Miłobędzki, the work of modernist architects was sanctioned, showing not only (and not as much as) what but why there were various forms of modernism in Poland, and how they shaped the mosaic or patchwork landscape of the interwar architecture. The appendix to the Outline has the characteristics of a subjective “attendance list”, which by questioning the automatism and authoritarianism of the “war” caesuras, points out to a cluster of issues that in the 1960s and the contemporary methodological consciousness outlined the preliminarily image of architecture in Poland. They set out the future direction of research on the arts of the first half of the 20th century, which came to the fore with the “new historiography” and critical history of art/architecture with its inclusive democracy of the gaze.
After regaining its independence in 1918, Poland had to face the task of unifying the vision of its future after 123 years of partitions. Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary, which had occupied the Polish territories during tha t time, had determined or inhibited the evolution of the national culture. Attempts to recreate the common history, with which the national future could be built, proved to bean arduous task. Poland had to redefine its cultural heritage, eliminate its shortcomings, and plan for the future without losing the present. An image of the difficult beginnings of the revived Polishness can be gathered from press articles published between 1918 and 1922. The starting date is obvious; the end of the First World War. The end date was symbolically defined by the assassination of President Gabriel Narutowicz in the Zachęta Gallery, during the opening of an exhibition. The perpetrator of this act was Eligiusz Niewiadomski, art historian, critic, artist and employee of the Ministry of Culture and Art. This, undoubtedly, was the perverse fulfilment of the synthesis of life and art, which was so much discussed and promoted after the war. In addition to seeking common ground, the press tackled key topics on the working strategies for a national culture. The attention of journalists was drawn to traditional symbols of Polishness such as the Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow or the Royal Castle in Warsaw, but also to Polish folk art. As there was a shortage of academic staff in academies and universities, there were no adequate role models. New artistic trends were being reviewed in order to determine which type of avant-garde could be transposed to Poland. The Wawel Castle and the almost Viennese love of tradition on the one hand, and the desire to catch up with modernity on the other, marked the two poles between which the ‘independent’ Polish art sought once again its place in the world.
The panorama of creative attitudes, the forms of expression and the techniques present in Polish graphic art around the year 1918 was very vast. The graphic artists dedicated to realistic mode of imaging, the visionaries as well as the innovators of the first avant-garde, searching for fresh means of expression in graphic arts worked next to one another. The artwork referring to the fights in the fronts of World War I, the illustrations of everyday prison camp existence, the portraits of the commanders as well as the privates of Legiony (Leopold Gottlieb’s file of lithographs, 1916) were created simultaneously to the works by Felix Jabłczyński (who experimented with various graphic techniques, but also referred the current political situation in his works) or the 1st file of lithographs, Bożki Słowiańskie [Slavic Idols] (1918), by Zofia Stryjeńska. Between 1917 and 1921, the artists of the first avant-garde (from Formiści and Bunt art groups) who practiced graphic arts continued their endeavours in searching for a new form, initiated several years earlier. In 1918, Władysław Skoczylas, the author of a woodcut Święty Boże (Wojna) [Holy God (War)] from 1916, a work which opened a new chapter in the history of Polish woodcut, moved permanently to Warsaw. Regaining of national independence and shaping the borders of the Second Repu blic was mirrored in symbolic lithographs by Felicjan S. Kowarski, dating around 1921. Around 1918, the explorations within graphic arts made by the artists from Krakow and Warsaw were enhanced by some new centres, up to then outermost realm of the map of art. One of such places was Toruń, where, in 1920, Konfrateria Toruńska [Toruń Confraternity] was established. Its members practiced artistic and functional graphic art as well. One of them, Felicjan S. Kowarski, founded Artistic-Graphic Workshop “Sztuka”. In 1919 in Poznań, the State School of Decorative Arts and Art Industry was established (with the graphic arts department); in 1920 on Bydgoszcz the State School of Art Industry (with Karol Mondral as its graphic arts instructor). In 1919, the Faculty of Fine Arts at Vilnius Batory University created the Studio of Applied Arts (with Decorations and Graphic Arts Studios). The same year, the Association of Polish Graphic Artists, functioning nationwide, was founded. The article signals the wealth of initiatives as well as the formal and ideological diversity of graphic works created around 1918, those referring to the war and independence issues as well as those aimed at perfecting the technique, the novelty of form, and those revealing certain style-genic aspirations. The author attempts to answer the question of the place of creative (and functional) graphic arts in the first years of the reborn Polish state and indicates which concepts (present around 1918) lay at the foundation of the unprecedented blossoming of graphic arts that occurred the Second Polish Republic.
This article analyses the relationship between word and image in the caricature. The research is centred on the moral caricature, which provides a social commentary on the attitudes of Varsovians during the First World War and later. Examples of cartoons reproduced and discussed in the text come from Polish magazines such as Oset (Thistle), Polski Tygodnik Humorystyczny (Polish Humour Weekly), Sowizdrzał (Eulenspiegel), Szczutek (Fillip), and Świat (World). They were also drawn from graphic albums such as Stanisław Dobrzyński’s and Bogdan Nowakowski’s Ogonki wojenne (Lines during the War of Occupation), Warsaw 1918; Antoni Romanowicz’s and Zygmunt Grabowski’s Warszawa podczas wojny (Warsaw During the War), Warsaw 1918; and Bogdan Nowakowski’s Ciężkie czasy, czyli: Wspomnienia wojenne warszawianki (Hard Times, or the War Memories of a Varsavian), Warsaw 1922. The paper examines the comical aspect of caricature and the types of humour found in it (from jokes to serious satire). The studied material distinguishes between various types of caricature, including cartoons free of any deformation, where the critique inherent in caricature is solely contained in the title and/or caption, and drawings without captions (the so-called humour without words). Selected pictorial and textual comparisons point to such research problems as the interdependence of image and text, and the context of press cartoons. In the case of the latter, the background for a given image is created by other images and press articles often addressing the same subject or idea, and evaluating people, their behaviour, and situations in a similar way. The formal analysis of the reproduced caricatures poses questions about the individual style of the cartoonists, who gave up their ‘manner’ for formal means more suitable for the given message.
The special atmosphere of Zakopane was created by successive generations of notable visitors. Each generation became the heir of the previous one, building on its history and tradition. In 1914, the terrors of war arrived in Zakopane with refugees from Krakow and other partitioned parts of Poland, while the statesman Józef Piłsudski, who lived there sporadically between 1901 and 1914, left town. People descended under the Tatra Mountains as if to a “free town of Zakopane”. At that time, the Pronaszko brothers Andrzej and Zbigniew arrived, as well as the artists Leon Chwistek and Leopold Gottlieb, whereas Tymon Niesiołowski, Władysław Skoczylas and Jan Rembowski already lived there. Only Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was absent, wandering through Russia. Also authors such as Stefan Żeromski, Andrzej Strug, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer and Jan Kasprowicz found their own pied-à-terre under the Tatra Mountains. Moreover, Zakopane became a convenient place for politicians, initially the National Democratic Party, and later socialists, when they came to the fore. The meeting point in Zakopane was the famous restaurant Na Przełęczy (On the Pass), owned by the kind-hearted Leopolitan, Stanisław Karpowicz, nicknamed Karp (‘the carp’). Karpowicz arrived in Zakopane in 1902 from Lvov, and three year later took over Franciszek Muchowicz’s boarding-house and restaurant located at 40, Krupówki Street. The painter Kazimierz Sichulski, who also fled Lvov because of the war, was a regular guest at Karpowicz’s establishment. Although impoverished, he lived in the so-called ‘Tower’ on the premises. At that time, Ludwik Solski suggested to Karpowicz and Sichulski a new joint venture – making caricatures of Zakopane’s regular visitors. The prelude to the impressive gallery of cartoons by Kazimierz Sichulski was the portrait of the writer Kornel Makuszyński, dated 1909. The signature ‘Sich/09: KAWAL ORD. POLONIA / ASTORIA / RESTAURATA’, suggests that the portrait was executed in Lvov, in the famous restaurant of the Hotel Astoria. The remaining caricatures – in total 49 (not counting the portrait of Makuszynski) appeared in the restaurant On the Pass over a period of three years (1914–1917), creating an orderly and densely hung portrait gallery of various characters, all linked by Zakopane and history. After caricatures of writers – poets, novelists and art critics, and then actors, musicians, artists and architects – the caricatures of Galician politicians and legionaries became increasingly numerous.
The planning analysis of Warsaw’s public squares shows that one cannot talk of a “typical Warsaw square” – it simply doesn’t exist. Warsaw squares are not repetitive by nature; they are all different instead. As a result, if we wanted to create guidelines for a new square in Warsaw on the basis of an analysis of the existing squares, it simply can’t be done. On the other hand, we can say that the formal diversity of these squares is their strength. As part of a larger interconnected system (best seen on the city map), these squares provide passers-by with an opportunity to look at various urban interiors, and to locate a variety of services for residents. Squares are also an opportunity to create an individual identity for urban spaces, provided that the squares have a characteristic identity. Above all, they must be squares in the most common sense of the word, that is, they should be easily readable fragments of space limited by walls of a height appropriate for the size of the square. It is almost impossible to establish how much time is needed to create a public square in contemporary urban planning. In the archives, there are of course various annotations on plans and some dates entered by architects, but experience suggests that such information should be approached with caution. This is the result of the dynamics of urban life which dominate everything, often conflicts in the competitive effort to secure valuable space. Such processes are rudimentary elements of the planning and urban planning, and should not come as a surprise. It is, however, a real skill in the management of urban space to be able to keep the spirit of the place, or what we otherwise call the identity of the place, despite various events and changes. Two excellent examples are Warsaw’s boroughs of Żoliborz and Ochota, although this does not mean that urban planning has always been excellent there. Between 1921 and 1923, two new public squares were planned there – Grunwaldzki Square in Żoliborz, and Narutowicz Square in Ochota. In Żoliborz, this was done in connection with the creation of an entirely new district, built around a new city axis. This axis started in the former Citadel, which lost its role as a defence area, and ended in the new semi-circular Grunwaldzki Square. Narutowicz Square was planned as the official centre of the Ochota district.
Both Grunwaldzki Square and Narutowicz Square were created as fragments of larger metropolitan projects built in the tradition of the historical French urban planning. At the same time, the architects used more modern trends in designing cities and green suburbs. The combination of the two produced interesting results in Warsaw – a city full of green spaces designed on a grand metropolitan scale. Thanks to such projects, Warsaw was able to evolve and lessen the difference in living conditions between older and newer boroughs. The civilizational aspect of both projects is evident.
The fate of the two squares was different. While Narutowicz Square was carried to completion thus fulfilling its promises, significant parts of Grunwaldzki Square were never completed. An urban truth was confirmed here, that the delay in the execution of a project (regardless of the reasons) causes such far-reaching changes in the space that it loses its initial character. However, if one asked about these reasons, one should look for answers in the prosaic confrontation between intentions and possibilities. Narutowicz Square was located within a defined urban structure more modest in terms of planned buildings, and therefore easier to implement. Grunwaldzki Square was situated in an empty space at the far end of the city plan, and had to wait for the building work to reach it when shifting from the Citadel towards the west. Unfortunately, when this had happened after the Second World War, different urban planning rules were already in place in Warsaw. Such conclusions, however, are not entirely legitimate, since there is no tangible evidence that the events took this turn.
Hans Frank, who had been the Governor General of the Eastern territories since 25 October 1939, relocated his office to Cracow in line with his intentions and with the consent of Hitler. Frank considered Warsaw “prey” at that time and a future “field of rubble”. The Führer approved the relocation of the Governor General’s office and thus cleared the way for the demolition of the city. Warsaw, which capitulated on 28 September 1939, became a city of secondary importance and one of the administrative centres of the four districts of the newly established General Government. This suggests the conclusion – which is the thesis developed in the present article – that at the beginning there was no official systematic urban development plan for Warsaw. The previous research initiated by Helena Syrkusowa (1973) was based on the assumption of controlled urban development planning; in terms of urban development, parallels with the Gau Wartheland-Poznań model were looked for. The newly discovered source materials do not confirm these assumptions.
Warsaw Mayor Oskar Dengel had a plan to commission urban planner Hubert Groß and to make the population dwindle to a minimum, to reduce the city radically through urban planning, to design a “New German City” and to erect new buildings for the party and government while preserving the old town. Such a plan was his private initiative, entirely confined to municipal administration and was not coordinated with Berlin or Cracow.
The idea of a “New German City”, developed by the Reich planners for German cities such as Würzburg, Poznań and others intended for redevelopment, and for the occupied and annexed cities such as Prague or Vienna, does not apply in this case. A programme for Warsaw comparable with the “New Redevelopment Programme” never existed.
The second planning stage is characterised by the plans of the Chief Development Officers Friedrich Papst and Friedrich Gollert in 1942/43 (Hans-Hubert Leufgen architecture firm). These plans were developed with the target to demolish buildings promoting the identity such as the Castle.
The “Warsaw Case” is a peculiarity of German urban and space planning in the East European territories occupied by the Nazis; both the plans were designed for different normative reasons and show no continuity. The procedure for Warsaw, conceived seemingly only as bureaucracy, also provides evidence of the highly problematic, charged and hitherto undocumented atmosphere in urban and space planning during National Socialism, and was constantly accompanied by shifts in competences.
The present study broadens the already existent discussion about the urban development planning for Warsaw at several levels, among others allowing for the aspects of the spatial planning research, such as urban planning, and considering the backdrop of the occupation practices of the National Socialists in the General Government.
A number of large permanent and temporary exhibitions of decorative arts, design and industrial design have opened in Poland over the last two years. They are varied but linked by the fact that they were all (with one exception) shown in major national museums. Permanent displays included The Gallery of Old Masters. European and Old Polish Decorative Arts, Painting and Sculpture, 15th–18th Century (in The National Museum in Warsaw) which opened in 2016, and The Museum of Applied Arts and The Gallery of Polish Design (both in The National Museum in Poznan), inaugurated in 2017. Temporary exhibitions included Organizers of Life. De Stijl, The Polish Avant-Garde and Design (at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, 25 November 2017 – 28 February 2018) and The other Side of Things. Polish Design after 1989 (in the National Museum in Krakow, 6 April – 19 August 2018). On the one hand, these exhibitions make a case for a full and legitimate participation of Poland in this type of pan-European creativity, not as simple replication, but as participation with its own aesthetic and iconographic vision as well as functional adjustment. On the other hand, the exhibitions invite us to ask the question, if the collections of objects are representative enough to justify this claim? In the case of design exhibitions, there is no doubt that the decision to display it in national museums came about slowly, starting around the year 2000, as part of a wider process of establishing its position in the historical and academic sense within the modern artistic output. The layout and character of the two types of exhibitions are not only the result of the state of the existing collections, but of the tension between knowledge and display. In the case of design and craftsmanship, it is incomparably less important than when exhibiting art. This comes from the fact that in the former the experts’ perspective still dominates over more theoretical views.
From the beginning of the 20th century, images of war were mostly produced through audio-visual methods. This also applies to the Great War, although its earliest on-screen portrayals remain little-known today. Documentary footage filmed during the First World War was often destroyed or dispersed in the interwar period. Nevertheless, it has introduced new cinematic techniques and themes later seen in war reportages. Feature films about the Great War were generally made after it ended. France and Hollywood mostly produced battle scenes and anti-war “posters”. Although not addressing the subject of war directly, some German films of the period were described by the film expert Anton Kaes as “post-traumatic cinema” or “shell shock cinema”. In the newly independent Poland, the Great War first appeared on the screens in the context of the legend of the Polish Legions. The young and underfunded Polish cinematography had difficulties in dealing with such a demanding theme, which fact is well illustrated by the unfulfilled ambitions of Ryszard Ordyński’s film Mogiła nieznanego żołnierza (The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier). At the same time, in the 1920s star Western productions arrived in Poland including such famous films as Abel Gance’s J’accuse or Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They met with great interest among Polish audiences, reaching the rank of blockbusters. These films also triggered discussions in intellectual circles about the ways and the purpose of showing war on screen. The enthusiastic reception of those films may be a counter-argument to the opinion, that the Great War was not properly scrutinised in Poland both on the symbolic and artistic level.
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