Wyniki wyszukiwania - BazTech

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Poglądy Heleny i Szymona Syrkusów na architekturę w latach 1925-1956

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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2009

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R. 54, nr 3-4

123-164

EN

Helena (1900 - 1982) and Szymon (1893 - 1964) Syrkus were the originators of functionalism in Polish architecture. At their suggestion, and particularly at Szymon Syrkus suggestion, was set up a group 'Praesens', which gathered architects, painters and sculptors, and propagated functionalism, standarization and prefabrication in architecture. An inspiration was a practice of Le Corbusier, Jacobus Johannes Oud, Kazimierz Malewicz (suprematism) and building solutions, among others in Germany and in the United States of America. The gathered in 'Praesens' architects designed and realized ahistorical and extremely modern architecture - for instance, a planned and built in 1929 by Szymon Syrkus Pavillion of Fertilizers, which was exhibited during Public National. Exhibition in Poznan, and consisted of exhibition hall and 30 metres long tower of steel construction. Helena and Szymon Syrkus worked actively on behalf of International Congresses of Modern Architecture (Les Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) delivering speeches and co-authorizing the programme - among others, the Athenian Charter (1933). After 1945 they changed their outlooks radically and declared then for Soviet architectural solutions that in Warsaw are symbolized by Culture and Science Palace, which was enthusiastically welcome by the Syrkus. At the same time, they presented an extensive self-criticism and distanced themselves not only from their inter-war outlooks, but also from Le Corbusier and Kazimierz Malewicz. Their opinions about architecture in the years 1945 - 1956 are illustrated by the enclosed archival materials. The Syrkus, and especially Helena Syrkus, did not make any attempt at explaining their radical change of views and resumption of the programme of the inter-war period in 1956. The fact of relinquishing vanguard outlooks in 1945 was probably caused by a tissue of several circumstances: radicalization of political views (they were active members of the Polish Workers' Party and the United Polish Workers' Party); experiences of World War II- Szymon Syrkus was kept imprisoned in Oświęcim and other concentration camps on th territories of Germany (1942 - 1945), and Helena Syrkus was kept in labour camps in the vicinity of Wrocław (1945); misgivings about their lots in the period of struggle against cosmopolitism and Zionism in Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other contemporary socialistic countries in the years 1948 - 1953; and inclination to make a career - they probably looked forward to key positions in the Academy of Architecture which had to be patterned upon sovietic models according to their conception.

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Stań badań nad dziejami przemysłu w Polsce

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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2008

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R. 53, nr 2

31-81

EN

Polish research interests in the history of industry first appeared on the turn of th 19th century. In the interwar period the searches were taken up in the field of economii history that became then a distinct historical subbranch mainly by dint of such eminen historians as: Franciszek Bujak, Jan Rutkowski and Roman Grodecki. The greates achievements in the range were observed in academic centres in Cracow, Poznań, Warsaw and Lvov. A significant development of searches on the history of industry in Poland was noticed in the period of Polish People's Republic. To a high degree it resulted from the priority of research works over the working class, and resulted in the necessity for taking up the searches on manufacturing establishments. However, in course of time the institutions became autonomous. In those days even appeared the centres that used to take up searches on particular branches of industry that were predominant in a given region. The searches were taken up in many centres: in Katowice - on coal-mining industry (Jerzy Jaros), in Lodz - on textile industry (Natalia Gąsiorowska-Grabowska, Gryzelda Missalowa, Wiesław Puś), in Poznań - on rural and food industry (Czesław Łuczak, Marian Eckert). The centres in Cracow (Helena Madurowicz-Urbańska) and in Warsaw (Ireneusz Ihnatowicz, Juliusz Łukaszewicz, Irena Pietrzak-Pawłowska) had more universal nature. In Warsaw I. Pietrzak-Pawłowska made an attempt at integrating all Polish searches' findings that resulted in publishing gathered materials in three volumes. Other centres published single descriptions. A special attention should be paid to works that were initiated by scientific and technological associations. The most significant triumphs in this field were achieved by: Association of the Polish Electricians, Association of Engineers and Technicians of the Chemical Industry and Polish Society of the History of Technology. Moreover, there also appeared a great number of occasional publications of differentiated value that were a kind of bulletins, and promoted particular industrial establishments. In the 1980s things were trending away from the research works over the history of industry. Historians took up searches on the social and political issues. I think that a successful development of the searches could be possible by dint of their concentration in one centre as, for instance, National Museum of Technology and Industry, which would be both exhibition and scientific institution.

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Dzieje techniki na łamach "Kwartalnika Historii Nauki i Techniki" (1956-2005)

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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2006

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R. 51, nr 1

165-193

EN

A major influence on the shape of articles devoted to the history of technology published in "Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki", since its establishment in 1956 until the end of 1980s, was exerted by Prof. Eugeniusz Olszewski and Prof. Tadeusz M. Nowak. The former paid attention to the information value of the joumal and the latter was responsible for introducing the section " The state of research on the history of technology in Poland", as well as for the greater coverage of military history of technology in the quarterly. The main themes ofthe articles on the history oftechnology published in the quarterly included the following areas: the subject-matter and the research methods of the history of technology, the relation ofhistory of technology to other scientific disciplines, the characteristic features of the history of technology, biographies of eminent inventors, the contribution of Poles to the development ofworld technology, the state of research on the history of technology and the propects for its development. The articles presented in the quarterly were meant to lead to a synthesis of the history of technology in Poland, but this aim has never been fulfilled. The author of the current paper believes that in the coming years problems are likeIy to appear as far the search for materials on the history oftechnology is concemed, due to the fact that many research institutions dealing with the field have been closed or reduced; there are also fewer young researchers interested in the history of technology. It is therefore necessary to introduce radical changes, such as have been made in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where national museums of technology have been formed, in which activities concemed with exposition are combined with research.

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Stowarzyszenia techniczne w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym - spory o model organizacyjny i kierunki działania

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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2003

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R. 48, nr 1/2

83--108

PL

After Poland regained independence in 1918, all kinds of public associations could develop freely. The associations that began to form coalesced according to various criteria: the level of education, specialization, territorial range (town, province, region), and membership of ethnic minority. Altogether, in the period of twenty years between the two world wars, over one hundred technical associations were active, often for only a very short period, and thus there appeared the need to embark on collaboration and to coordinate the activities of the particular associations. Attempts to embark on collaboration dated back to the First Congress of Polish Technicians, which had been held in Cracow [Krakow] in 1882, but the structures appointed to deal with task at successive congresses were not able to do much, practically restricting themselves to organizing the congresses. Soon after the regaining of independence, discussion started anew on how Polish technical associations should be organized, with the idea that there should be an umbrella organization in the form of a national union of such associations, but there soon appeared divergences of views, mainly between associations which grouped only qualified engineers and those that united both engineers and technicians. In 1924 a compromise was reached with the establishment of a Polish Union of Technical Association [Związek Polskich Zrzeszeń Technicznych], which in 1934 had a membership of 7000 in 31 associations. However, spurred by young mechanic engineers, the debate soon reopened again, this time relating not only to organizational matters, but also the areas of activity of the associations. Some engineers, for instance the mechanic engineers, accused the associations of focussing on social activity and demanded that their activities be reoriented, as was the case of similar associations in America, towards advanced technical and scientific work, appropriate for the level of engineers. One consequence of such views was the establishment of an Association of Polish Mechanic Engineers (Stowaryzszenie Inżynierow Mechanikow Polskich) in 1926, and the Chief Organization of the Engineers of the Republic of Poland (N01 - Naczelna Organizacji Inżynierow Rzeczyspospolitej Polskiej) in 1935. The latter soon (in 1938) united 15 organizations with a total membership of 5,500, which constituted ca. 38% of all engineers, whose number is estimated at around 14,500. The greatest success of NOI was that it oiganized the First Polish Congress of Engineers in Lwow (12-14 September 1937), at which 88 papers were presented, later published in seven copious volumes. In response to the formation of NOI, technicians’ associations agreed in December 1935 to set up a Chief Organization of Technicians’ Associations (Naczelna Organizacja Stowarzyszeń Technikow Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej). At the time of the organization’s constitutional congress, which was held on 25 October 1936, it comprised more than a dozen technicians’ associations with over 10,000 members in total. Thus the final outcome of the debate on the way that technical associations should be organized was that there appeared two loosely federated national unions, organized according to the educational status of their members and their specialization.

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Ruch stowarzyszeniowy techników polskich do 1918 r.

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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2002

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R. 47, nr 3

17--42

EN

Technical associations began to appear in the first half of the 19th century, first in England and then in Germany and France. The first Polish technical associations were organized by Polish emigres in Fance in the 1830s and 1840s. Stable structures of such associations formed in the 1870s in Lwow [Lemberg/Lviv] and Cracow, slightly later in Poznań, and only at the very end of the 19th century (1898) in Warsaw, which was due to the restrictive policies of the Tsarist authorities. As Poland was deprived of independent statehood at the time, the associations played an important role on several planes. Since they brought together Poles engaged in technology and since their language of proceedings was Polish, they became major centres of Polish culture, a role that was reinforced by their work on Polish technical vocabulary, which was especially important in the parts of Poland which were held by Prussia and Russia, where Polish society was subject to an increasing wave of Germanization and Russification respectively. The associations inspired scientific research of Polish engineers, and enabled them to publish the results of such research in their journals. The lectures and journals for which the associations were responsible helped to popularize the achievements of world science and technology among Polish technicians and engineers, and also among the public at large. Apart from Galicja, the Austrian-held part of Poland, and a short episode in Warsaw (1898-1905), there were no tertiary-level technical schools in the lands of occupied Poland, and therefore the associations, especially in Warsaw, tried at least partially to compensate for that lack by organizing all kinds of courses and by publishing textbooks for technicians and engineers (such textbooks were at first translations, but then also original works by Polish engineers). Many of the subsequent professors of the Warsaw Technical University [Politechnika Warszawska] were first active members of the Technicians’ Association in Warsaw. It is particularly worth stressing the activities of Polish technical associations during the First World War, when, in anticipation of Poland regaining independence, they began work on outlining the conceptual framework of the directions for the technologicaleconomic and also social development of the Polish state. The associations gave an account of the state of particular industries and called for a speedy industrial expansion, especially of the most modem industries, based on the latest developments in science and technology.

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Żydzi na wyższych uczelniach technicznych w Polsce do 1939 r.

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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2001

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R. 46, nr 2

85--112

EN

Statistics making it possible to ascertain the ethnic origin of students in tertiary technical schools are highly irregular and imprecise. Such statistics dealt mainly with the religion of the students, which did not always coincide with ethnic origin (nationality). At the Polytechnical School in Lwow, the numbers of students whose religion was described as Judaism was second only to those who were Roman Catholics. Beginning from the mid- 1890s the numbers of the former group of students never fell below 10 per cent, with the numbers peaking in the school year 1904/1905, when they reached 15.1 per cent. Similar ratios could be observed at the Tsar Nicolaus II Warsaw Polytechnical Institute (WIP), where until 1905 students of the Judaic faith accounted for over 15 per cent of all those studyingthere. After the boycott of the Institute by Poles in 1905, the ratio of Jewish students fell to below 11 per cent (this being the result of a sudden increase in the number of students of the Russian Orthodox faith), but in absolute numbers there was an increase from 88 Jewish students in the year 1911 to 127 in the year 1914. In the initial stages of the inter-war period (1921/1922) there were more students of the Judaic faith at the Warsaw Polytechnic (Warsaw Technical University), 15.5 per cent, than at the Lwow Polytechnic (Lwow Technical University), 13.3 per cent. In the second half of the 1920s, these proportions were reversed; there was a fall in the numbers of that category of students to around 10-11 per cent, roughly corresponding to the percentage of the Jewish population in the Polish society at large. This fall in student numbers resulted from increasingly numerous anti-Semitic campaigns launched at institutions of tertiary education in the country, which became especially intensive in the second half of the 1930s. It is interesting to note that technical studies also attracted women of the Judaic faith, e.g. in 1935/1936 they constituted 28.3 per cent of all the women students at the Lwow Polytechnic, and 16.8 per cent at the Warsaw Polytechnic. They were to be found mainly among the students of chemistry and architecture. Between them, the two technical universities educated a total of 1200 engineers of the Judaic faith, including 100 women (another technical university, the Mining Academy (AG) in Cracow could boast of no more than a handful of Jewish students in 1920s, and since 1929/1930 there were no students of the Judaic faith there at all).

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Technicy Lwowa i Krakowa wobec perspektywy odzyskania przez Polskę niepodległości

Piłatowicz J.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki

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1999

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R. 44, nr 3/4

89--108

EN

The establishment of technicians' associations and the appearance of journals published by those associations, allowed Polish technicians in the Austrian-held part of Poland to voice their views on many issues, including political and social matters. In Lwów [Lemberg/Lviv], the first such association was established in 1877 under the name of Towarzystwo Ukończonych Techników [Society of Accomplished Technicians], which was later renamed, in 1878, as Towarzystwo Politechniczne [Polytechnical Society] and, in 1913, Polskie Towarzystwo Politechniczne [Polish Polytechnical Society]. In Cracow, 108 J. Piłatowicz the first association of this kind came into being also in 1877 as the Krakowskie Towarzystwo Techniczne [Cracow Technical Society], The members of those associations published their views in two journals: "Czasopismo Techniczne" [Technical Journal] and "Czasopismo Krakowskiego Towarzystwa Technicznego" [Journal of the Cracow Technical Society]. The heyday of the members' active voicing of their ideas came during World War One, when the hopes of Poland regaining independence began to take a more tangible form. The views presented in the journals concened not only current affairs, but also dealt with long-term prospects, such as the socio-economic and political shape of the country after the imminent regaining of independent statehood. The regaining of independence by Poland was treated not only as a token of historical justice, but also, very significantly, a precondition for maintaining peace in Europe. While refraining from a cear-cut stand on the future borders of Poland, the Lwow milieu generally opted for restoring the historical borders of the country. Lwow technicians also supported the capitalist path of development, which was to evolve gradually under the influence of broadly understood industrialization; industrialization was viewed as the only way to overcome the country's considerable civilizational backwardness. They also emphasized the role of exploiting domestic sources of energy, and especially water, for the wide-spread electrification of the country, which would allow the decentralization of industry and major transformations in the everday life of large sections of society. Industrialization would change the role and position of engineers in society. Engineers believed that the knowledge they had at their disposal not only made them qualified to solve technical problems, but also to deal with social problems that necessitated the spirit of social accord. Hence, it was argued that engineers should be able to occupy key positions in administrative agencies, including ministries. This in turn led to the view that the training of engineers at the tertiary level should have a special role, and should be oriented not only at professional knowledge and skills, but should also prepare young people for conscious participation in the life of a democratic society. Many of the Cracow and Lwow technicians supported the classical liberal model of the state, with a reduced role of the bureacracy and decentralization of power.