Scholarships for Poles in the ‘Vormärz’ period: Julian Szotarski

In the course of the Great Emigration
 

November 1830 saw the outbreak of the November Uprising in Warsaw, which sought to regain Poland’s independence. After it was crushed in 1831, tens of thousands of rebels were forced to leave Poland as part of the so-called Great Emigration; if they stayed, they faced harsh punishment. Officers, intellectuals and their families, but also students, left the country and crossed the borders into Austria and Prussia. The uprising hit students particularly hard; all institutions of higher education in the Kingdom of Poland were closed and they were deprived of the opportunity to complete their studies in Poland.

Most of the emigrants headed for France, often to Paris, but increasingly, the Poles were also housed in smaller towns and their pensions were cut by the French government. But some of them decided to enrol at German universities, which enjoyed an excellent reputation internationally at the time. In the climate of so-called German ‘Polenbegeisterung’, they gladly took in the Polish refugees.

Especially in southern Germany, the Poles travelling through Germany were celebrated as Europe’s heroes for their fight for freedom. There was generally much willingness to help. Newly founded Polish committees or Polish aid organisations, which were set up separated by gender during the uprising, collected donations and raised large sums of money and goods, which were sent to Poland during the uprising. After the defeat, the coffers and stocks were still well filled. There were very close ties with the universities, and university lecturers were often involved in helping the Poles, so that from 1832/33 these funds were used to set up scholarships for refugees at universities on the travel routes.

Heidelberg student Julian Szotarski
 

“But I can confess that nothing has moved me the way our reception by the Germans did. For me it was a completely new, blissful sensation, unknown to me until then, which I now savoured within myself.” ([Julian Szotarski]: Skizzen aus Polen. Aus der Brieftasche eines polnischen Offiziers [Sketches from Poland. From the wallet of a Polish officer], Frankfurt am Main 1832, p. 85)

One of the scholarship recipients who benefited from this support was Julian Walenty Szotarski from Silesia. The former Warsaw medical student and officer of the November Uprising enrolled at the Baden State University in Heidelberg on 6 June 1832 and graduated with a doctorate in 1836. There, he likely met twelve other Polish students who commenced their studies, including Bronisław Trentowski, Faustyn Więckowski, Jan Gruszczyński and Carl Taege. The Baden government granted the scholarship-funded Poles permission to study at the state university. Szotarski worked as a writer on the side: in 1832, he published his “Sketches from Poland” (Skizzen aus Polen) about the uprising and his experiences in Germany, which were printed in two editions in Frankfurt and Heidelberg. The following year also saw the publication of his “Pulawy: Historical account of the last Polish struggle for freedom” (Pulawy: Historische Erzählung aus dem letzten polnischen Freiheitskampfe), which he dedicated to Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. He also translated the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into Polish, as well as medical writings from English into German and published literary criticism on Polish literature in German journals.

Szotarski’s writings were partly autobiographical, describing the struggle, flight, arrival, German enthusiasm for Poland, the old enmity and the friendship that was now dawning between Poland and Germany; he also tried to act as a cultural mediator between Poland and Germany.

After completing his university studies, Szotarski went to Paris, where he worked in the émigré community as an editor, literary critic, and writer. He was a close friend of Adam Mickiewicz, who is said to have sat by his deathbed until the very end in 1838.