Metadata: Lwów Polytechnic
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Lviv Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний Архів Львівської області
- Postal address:
- ul. Pidvalna 13, 79008, L’viv
- Phone number:
- +38 (032) 235-47-22
- Email:
- archive_lviv@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 27
- Title:
- Lwów Polytechnic
- Title (official language):
- Львівська політехніка
- Creator/accumulator:
- Lwów Polytechnic
- Date(s):
- 1848/1939
- Language:
- Polish
- German
- Extent:
- 26,264 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Most of the documents that pertain to the history of Jews in Poland deal specifically with anti-Jewish discrimination and attempts to counter it. These include a memorandum by a representative commission of Jewish student youth on eliminating the quota restriction on Jewish admissions to Polish universities (1921); announcements by the administration of Lwów Polytechnic that classes in the faculty of agriculture and forestry were being temporarily halted, that a disciplinary commission was being organised to investigate anti-Semitic disturbances perpetrated by students in the village of Dublany in October 1924, and, upon completion of the commission’s work, that courses were resuming – there are minutes of meetings of the disciplinary commission; minutes of interrogations of the instigators of anti-Semitic disturbances, and witness and victim statements; and the commission’s report (1924-25); an appeal issued by the Union of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic to protest the situation by which Jewish students who were not members of the Fraternal Aid society were thus not entitled to vote at a general student assembly (1925), and a leaflet issued by the board of the Fraternal Aid society calling for a general meeting of students to discuss proposed bylaws of a newly established association called the Youth Representation of Lwów Polytechnic that would provide for the participation of Jewish students (1928); minutes of an emergency meeting of the Lwów Polytechnic senate in connection with anti-Jewish unrest at the school; a letter from the Ministry of Religion and Education to administrators of Lwów institutions of higher education stating that the “bloody” events of November 1935, marked by anti-Jewish disturbances at Lwów colleges and universities, must not be allowed to recur; reports by the rector of Lwów Polytechnic on incidents in which Jewish students were assaulted, and other anti-Jewish disturbances in classrooms and on the school’s premises; a telephonogram from the Ministry of Religion and Education requesting that information be sent immediately on the circumstances of the anti-Jewish disturbances, and a report from the rector on the number of Jewish students who had been assaulted and sought medical assistance; resolutions of the faculty assembly that directly referred to the disturbances as “anti-Semitic outbursts”, and of an emergency general meeting of Jewish students of Lwów Polytechnic that accused the rector of engaging in empty rhetoric, insofar as he made reference to “ensuring peace and order during the educational process” and “guaranteeing the safety of Jewish students” despite the numerous instances of attempts to terrorise Jews at the school; a directive by the rector to faculty stipulating that he be immediately informed as to any subsequent student unrest; a notification by the Lwów Polytechnic rector’s office to the Lwów Municipal Starostwo to the effect that the school senate had adopted a statement refuting a protest resolution of the general assembly of Jewish students, and about media coverage of anti-Jewish unrest, including in the newspaper Chwila on 5 December 1935; a memorandum by the Lwów Polytechnic rector’s office to the Ministry of Religion and Education explaining the longstanding tradition by which Jewish students had sat close together and “segregated” in classrooms, and that it was only recently that Jewish students had begun to defiantly occupy the front rows along with non-Jewish students and to refer to attempts to get them to sit in the back as being sent to the “ghetto bench”; a report of the Lwów Polytechnic rector’s office to the Ministry of Religion and Education to the effect that the anti-Jewish disturbances of January 1936 were ongoing, despite all efforts to forestall them, and that these disturbances were meant to force Jewish students to sit in the back rows of the classrooms; a memorandum on the course of a student meeting of the chauvinist Młodzież Wszechpolska (Youth of Poland) organisation at which the recurring theme was the need to establish a national state and, in particular, to segregate Christian and Jewish students in classrooms and laboratories; an anti-Semitic leaflet issued by certain Lwów Polytechnic students that accused Jews of killing a Polish worker named Ross on 13 November 1935 in Warsaw, and warning their fellow Christians who showed tolerance toward Jews (whom the leaflet derides as “Shabes goyim”) that they would be treated the same as Jews; and calling for “struggle against the Jewish invasion”; a resolution of a general assembly of the Union of Jewish Engineers in Wilno/Vil’na expressing support for the Jewish students of Lwów Polytechnic who had suffered during anti-Jewish rioting, and condemning the policies of the university administration, which the resolution claims had in effect legitimised the practice of the “ghetto bench” (1936); correspondence of the Lwów Polytechnic rector’s office with the Ministry of Religion and Education regarding Sejm Deputy Emil Sommerstein’s inquiries to the chairman of the Polish Council of Ministers about anti-Jewish disturbances at Lwów Polytechnic, in particular, about taking measures to determine the circumstances of the death of the student Markus (Mark) Ländesberg, who had been killed in a building of the school (1938-39); resolutions of faculty and student assembly meetings regarding this crime (1939); etc.
There is also a significant number of documents pertaining to Jewish student organisations. These include a ruling of the Viceroyalty of Galicia granting the registration of the Union of Jewish Students (Auditors) of the Polytechnic School, and correspondence of the student initiative group with the rector’s office on establishing this association – the students insisted that the ethnonym “Jewish” be kept in the association’s title, whereas the administration recommended using the traditional religious designation “students of the Mosaic (Judaic) confession,” insofar as, from the standpoint of the senate of the technical school, the Austrian Empire had no such designation, either for a nationality or a religion, as “Jewish” (1912-13); appeals by the union’s board to the Lwów Polytechnic senate requesting approval of amendments to the union’s charter to reflect changes in its function, due to the fact that the Fraternal Aid to Students of Lwów Polytechnic association, which was a Polish students’ association, had ceased providing material assistance to Jewish students (1923-24); a notification of the board to the effect that the union was being renamed the Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic, and letters from the board explaining the reasons for this change (1927-28); documentation by which the Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic declared that it was loyal, legal, and did not engage in any political activity – filed in accordance with a decree of the Polish government of 20 April 1933; protocols and reports on the results of election meetings of the board of the Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic (1926-27); regulations governing elections of its board (1938-39); grant applications by the board of the Union / Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic (1925-27, 1933); bylaws of the Union of Jewish Technical School / Lwów Polytechnic Students, with subsequent additions and amendments (1913, 1928-29, 1938); annual reports of the board for the 1922-23 – 1938-39 academic years (no. 3); historical information on this association’s activities (1936); an application by the student initiative group of the Jewish Students’ Circle (Koło) of Lwów Polytechnic to this institution’s senate requesting registration of its bylaws; a notification of the Ministry of Religion and Education consenting to the inclusion of the Jewish Students’ Circle’s athletic department in the register of sports organisations of Poland; a memorandum on elections of the circle’s board, and reports on its activities; the circle’s bylaws; an application by the circle’s board for funding for sports and cultural events held by the organisation; its budgets and financial reports (1933-38); etc.
The same group of documents also contains data on the number and composition of Jewish student organisations: an analytical report of the Polish student society Fraternal Aid to Students of Lwów Polytechnic on the number of members of the inter-university assimilationist Polish Youth Union of Students of the Mosaic Confession Zjednoczenje [Solidarity] (1922); a list of Jewish students having received charitable assistance from the inter-university Jewish student organisation Ognisko [Bonfire] (1926); a general list of members of the Union of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic (1926-27, 1939); a report of the Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Students of Lwów Polytechnic on the number of the society’s members as of 1 February 1933; documentation by the board of the Jewish Students’ Circle of Lwów Polytechnic on the size of the organisation as of January 1934; statistical data on students and auditors of Lwów Polytechnic that show that in the first half of the 1927/1928 academic year, 288 Jews were enrolled at the university, including 26 who gave Yiddish as their native language.
The fonds also includes notifications of the Viceroyalty of Galicia and a report (memorandum) from the Police Directorate to the rector of the Technical Academy regarding the arrest of a student named Haim König for an attempt to take part in the Polish uprising in the Russian Empire (1863); correspondence of the Lwów Polytechnic rector’s office with the charities department of the Lwów Voivodeship Administration about conditions for the competition for the Julian Kapelner scholarship [Kapelner was a landowner and engineer]; according to stipulations of the donor, awarding of the scholarship was to alternate between Jewish and Polish students of Lwów Polytechnic (1928-33); a letter from the rector’s office of the University of Lwów to that of Lwów Polytechnic about the university’s intention to submit a request to the Ministry of Religion and Education that the Jewish Student Chamber be abolished, among other things due to its alleged pro-communist tendencies (1931); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Lwów Polytechnic was founded in 1844 as the Technical Academy (Polish: Akademija Techniczna). It originally had two sections: technical and commercial, with six departments: mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, descriptive geometry and technical drawing, chemistry, and geodesy. After 1872, the Technical Academy consisted of four sections: engineering, construction, chemistry, and machine-tool design (the commercial section was abolished at this time), and it was accredited as an institution of higher education. By 1876 the number of departments had increased to 15. In 1877, the Technical Academy was renamed the Polytechnic School in Lemberg/Lwów (Polish: Szkoła Politechniczna / German: Technische Hochschule). At the same time, the sections were formally reorganised as faculties, specifically, those of engineering, (architectural) construction, machine-tool design, and chemical technology. In 1914, the school underwent another reorganisation, now featuring five faculties: two engineering (terrestrial and maritime), (architectural) construction, machine-tool design, and chemical technology; and there were 43 departments. In 1919, an agricultural academy in the village of Dublany and a school of forestry in the city of Lwów were added to the Polytechnic; these became the basis for the newly established faculty of agriculture and forestry. A general faculty was established in 1921 to train secondary- and vocational-school teachers in descriptive geometry, drafting, and drawing (it was abolished in 1934). Also in 1921, the Polytechnic School was renamed Lwów Polytechnic (Polish: Politechnika Lwowska). In 1939, Lwów Polytechnic became the basis for the newly established L’vov/L’viv Polytechnic Institute.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Ländesberg, Markus
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises five series; nos. 1-3 are arranged chronologically and nos. 4-5 (personal files of faculty, employees, and students) alphabetically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary