TADEUSZ MIKULSKI – THE large WROCLAWIANIN, ‘BEDUCIL OF WROCLAW PATRIOTISM’

Professor Bogdan Zakrzewski on Tadeusz Mikulski wrote: “The man “taken” by Wrocław, the best awakening of Wrocław patriotism.” A prominent literary historian in the capital of Lower Silesia spent a small over thirteen years of highly creative life, highly hardworking. He came here in 1945, but this city, its past and culture, was curious many years earlier.

He was born in 1909 in Chobotów, Gubernia Tambowska of the then Russian Empire. Since prehistoric times, these lands have primarily been inhabited by the Ugrofi peoples. It was not until the 17th century that Russian satrapia tamed them, and as a consequence of the murderous carat policy, they were radically affected by civilian relations – the Ugrofins were marginalized, mostly rewarded and the population from Asia, the European part of Russia and exiles from Poland, among others. After the Bolshevik coup, Guberni Tambowska stood out as 1 of the most fierce opposition to the fresh communist order. The torturers commanded by Mikhail Tuchaczewski, known to us from the unsuccessful effort to gain Warsaw, the lands of Guberni Tambowska tried to master with mediocre results by practicing mass genocide. The impatient Lenin then ordered the usage of combat gases against the population there. The same as the Germans were mass killing soldiers on the fronts of planet War I. The Bolsheviks yet captured the Guberni area, but this was done at the expense of respective 100 1000 casualties. Somehow, the Mikulski household survived hell, which in 1920 managed to get out of it and scope Poland.

Tadeusz Mikulski graduated in Toruń and published his articles in newspapers at the age of seventeen. In 1927 he began his Polish studies at the University of Warsaw, from which he moved to the Jagiellonian University 2 years later. In Krakow he was in the ellipse of prof. Ignacy Chrzanowski. possibly that's erstwhile he became curious in the past and culture of Wrocław. Chrzanowski studied at the University of Wrocław, acted in the ellipse of Wrocław people of science, he was a student of prof. Władysław Nehring, among others. Thus, it may be due to him that Tadeusz Mikulski leaned over the Wrocław and Lower Silesian themes of the past of Polish literature. He published respective technological articles on the subject. In them he drew attention to the advanced artistic class of unremembered artists specified as Henryk Chełchowski. In 1932, he defended his doctoral thesis, worked at the National Library and then, at the University of Warsaw, became 1 of the closest colleagues of Prof. Julian Krzyżanowski. He spent the last fewer years before the outbreak of planet War II on a investigation scholarship in Paris. In September 1939, he fought in the ranks of Polish defenders, including the barricades of Warsaw. After his defeat, he became active in the conspiracy, worked in underground schools, including the secret University of Warsaw. Since the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, he has fought in the ranks of the National Army in the rank of lieutenant, under the pseudonym “Krasicki”. In October 1944, he was captured by Germany and spent respective consecutive months in an officer's prisoner of war camp. After regaining his freedom, he immediately returned to Poland. He had the chance to take a occupation in each of the rehabilitated academic centres. However, he chose the most hard place – Wrocław. At that time inactive burning, consisting mainly of rubble, but again located within Polish borders. Mikulski wanted to participate in rebuilding and restoring Polishness to the ancient Piast castle. So with superhuman energy he joined the creation of Polish technological life in a war-laden city. On 20 November 1945, he gave his first lecture in the walls of the recently created University of Wrocław. In it he said that in Wrocław Poles were always at home. And he proved it by his own historical literary research. He spoke not only about the large Wrocław Polish philologists specified as Wojciech Cybulski, but besides about the poem of Valenty Rożdzieński – in 1936 by Mikulski for a recently discovered and even brilliant, literary and masterful.

As early as 1945, the Wrocław academic community consisted of many prominent professors who managed to last the war just ended. In the largest part they came from the Lviv University of Jan Kazimierz. Realizing the tear-out of Poland half of its territory along with 2 university cities, including Lviv, for a long time being the most crucial centre of Polish culture and science, they decided to proceed their activity on ruins recovered for Poland Wrocław. Most of them, however, were older people. And specified as Tadeusz Mikulski were at the age. And they were the first Titans of all kinds of creative activity. Wrocławska polonistyka – was built primarily by Tadeusz Mikulski. He was able to combine organizational work with technological work, publishing further works on crucial figures of Polish and Wroclaw culture. In 1946, he defended his habilitation work, and a year later he was awarded the title of extraordinary professor. At the same time he became co-founder of the Institute of Literary investigation of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It was thanks to him that the University of Wrocław became 1 of the main pillars of IBL PAN. From 1947 Mikulski was the editor of “Zesszytów Wrocławski” and from 1953 “The Literary Diary”. The main subject of his articles was the activity of Polish writers connected in the 19th century with Wrocław. In Wrocław cemeteries, he found and supervised graves of large Poles, including the erstwhile Rector of the University of Wrocław and an outstanding philologist – prof. Władysław Nehring. First of all, however, he documented literary works of Poles, many of whom in Wrocław spent a crucial part of their lives and in whose works the capital of Lower Silesia had its crucial place. Mikulski reminded that in Wrocław they studied and wrote their poems by Adam Asnyk, Józef Przyborowski, Adam Gdaciuk, Francis Faber, Jan Kasprowicz. Also, that 1 of the most crucial works of his was devoted to Roman Zmorski – a large poet, independency activist, leader of the Warsaw Gypsy. Thanks to the tedious archival work Mikulski documented the works of Fryderyk Skarbek and Józef Wybicki created in Wrocław. He besides pointed out the activities of German polonophiles specified as Jan Mikołaj Fritz – in the 19th century he worked at the University of Wrocław as a Polish language teacher or Herman Koelling in his work resembling Polish themes from the past of Lower Silesia. Mikulski besides devoted 1 of his works to Wroc3aw correspondence by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski.

Since November 1945 Tadeusz Mikulski was besides an animator of the Wrocław cultural life. 1 of the surviving rooms of the Old Town became the site of weekly literary meetings, which were invited by posters spread on the shattered walls of Wrocław. It was Tadeusz Mikulski who gave lectures and presented papers related to the activities of Polish students at the 19th – eternal University. A lot and as the participants of these meetings mentioned highly interestingly – Mikulski told about the Wrocław publishing and printing movement. The fact that the first Polish books were printed in Wrocław and that Wrocław never ceased to be 1 of the most crucial centres of Polish bookkeeping. In the 19th century, the full Korn dynasty, publishing almost all crucial authors of Polish literature, including the premieres of Slovak or Krasiński works, as well as countless Polish textbooks, prayer books or books devoted to Polish history, cared about this. He besides shared Mikulski's discoveries related to Poles leaving before the carat, for whom in the time of the partitions it was frequently Wrocław that was not only the first place of refuge, but life for a long time. Often, as in the case of Hoffman Clementine, this active literary works. 1 of Mikulski's lectures was devoted to “the centennial of Wroclaw's Polish Studies” and afraid the Warsaw Department of Slavic Languages and Literature founded in 1841. In spite of the large wave of work, prof. Mikulski besides managed to print respective books devoted to Wrocław – “Wroc3aw Meetings” and a series of works consisting of a volume later known as “Wroc3aw Theme”.

Tadeusz Mikulski's incredibly active life in August 1958 interrupted abrupt and very premature death. A prominent organizer of technological and cultural life, a large patriot and humanist, a lover of the heritage of Wrocław and Lower Silesia died a fewer months before his 50th birthday. From the memories of his friends and associates, he was actually only then prepared to make the top works of his life. The institutions he created in Wrocław then achieved their independence. Thanks to this, Tadeusz Mikulski yet had time to make works for which he collected thousands of papers for almost thirteen years. The most crucial work was a large panorama reminding of Wrocław as a crucial centre of Polish history, culture and literature.

Many Wrocław pioneers besides wrote about the regular meetings organized by Mikulski in their memoirs. Exiles from their native lands, for which Wrocław was only a stinking and alien mountain of rubble, learned from Mikulski that these were ruins of the city, in which Poland never stopped pulsing. Mikulski in his lectures read fragments of press articles from respective decades ago, in which Polish-language patriotic masses were reported. The archives presented by Mikulski showed that generations before the arrival of Wrocław were filled with the loud singing of “God’s something Poland” or “Poland has not died”.

I do not know whether Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, in the mid-1960s, was aware of Tadeusz Mikulski's activities in the Wrocław Cathedral, which clearly stated that “we have always been in this city”. For sure, however, Tadeusz Mikulski proved the same fact to the crowds of Polish Wrocławans from the mid-1940s.

Artur Adamski