The Kraszewski-Museum in Dresden

In 2011 the Polish Sejm secured the return from Germany of all the documents, writings and personal objects belonging to the writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. They had previously been lent to the eponymous Kraszewski Museum in Dresden,the city in which he had lived and worked for many years. In one fell swoop around 160 exhibits disappeared from the permanent exhibition. After almost 50 years of existence the Museum now felt like a ghostly abandoned mansion. A lively place for a German-Polish dialogue was threatened with extinction.

Today Józef Ignacy Kraszewski is still known as the most productive writer to have emigred from Poland (ca. 600 books of which over 230 were novels). That said, his own name did not always grace his works. He loved to write under pseudonyms like Bogdan Bolesławita, Kaniowa, Dr. Omega, Kleofas Fak or Pasternak, to name but a few. Kraszewski was an expert art connoisseur and a passionate collector. He was interested in Western thinking on philosophy and committed to an independent Poland, a country that was divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia at the time.

Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was born into an impoverished Polish aristocratic family in Warsaw in 1812. Because of the unstable political situation he grew up with his grandmother and great-grandmother in the countryside in Romanow. He studied medicine and philosophy in Vilnius where he was a committed member of the student movement and a supporter of the 1830 November uprising, after which he was arrested and imprisoned for two years before being freed once more. After the failure of the 1863 January uprising (and because he was a member of the “Delegacja Miejska”, the organ of the independent Warsaw administration), he was forced to flee the country in order to avoid being banned to Siberia. He fled to the West with the aim of settling in Paris, but remained in Dresden. At the time Dresden was one of the most important cultural, social and political centres for Polish immigrants, and from here Ignacy Kraszewski arranged help for other Polish refugees who had fled the country. He travelled throughout Europe, including Switzerland, Italy, France and Belgium, and visited the cities of Cologne, Berlin and Leipzig. Due to his political activities he was suspected of working for the French Secret Service. In 1883 he was arrested and condemned to three years in jail. However after two years he was released on bail from his imprisonment in Magdeburg for health reasons. He then sold his house in Dresden and moved to San Remo. For fear of extradition he then sought refuge in Geneva where he died only four days after his arrival, on 19th March 1887. He found his last resting place in the crypt of the St. Michael and Stanislaus Church in Kraków, in the so-called “National Pantheon of Merited Poles".

Since the 18th January 2013 the Museum in Dresden has once again housed a new permanent exhibition on the life and achievements of the Polish writer as well as showing several temporary exhibitions on the culture and history of both countries, Poland and Germany. Following a new contract between Poland and Germany the Kraszewski exhibits have once again been lent out to Dresden. The Museum is currently also an important interface for German-Polish cultural and scientific exchanges. It is also the headquarters of the Deutsch-Polnische Gesellschaft Sachsen e.V. and the Vereinigung Polonia-Dresden e.V.

Adam Gusowski, September 2014