Wincenty Pol Cross in the Tatra Mountains (Kościeliska Valley)

The postcard Wincenty Pol’s Cross in the Tatra Mountains was published in 1912 in Kołomyja by the bookstore of Michał Żyborski, the father-in-law of Jerzy Pol (the poet’s grandson). It shows a scene of putting up a cross with the inscription ‘And Nothing But God’ in the Kościeliska Valley in 1852, during a scientific trip organised and led by Wincenty Pol, a professor of geography at Jagiellonian University. This event turned into a patriotic demonstration, and was reported to the partitioning authorities, as a result of which Pol and three other professors were removed from the University.

Owing to the letters from Zofia de domo Pol Podoska to Władysław Leon Antoniewicz, purchased by the Wincenty Pol Museum in 2001, it was possible to establish the date of the printing of the postcard and to find out the name of the person who initiated its publication and published it. Zofia Podoska, the poet’s daughter, for unknown reasons decided to conceal her participation in this undertaking, allowing the entire merit to be attributed to Michał Żyborski, the father-in-law of her nephew Jerzy Pol. And yet, as she noted in a letter, it was another of her actions undertaken to commemorate her father’s merits. Earlier, together with her brother Wincenty Hugh, she had published his correspondence and prepared the Diary of Wincenty Pol (Pamiętnik Wincentego Pola), which having been deposited in the collection of the National Library, was destroyed by fire during the Warsaw Uprising.

From Zofia’s letter to Antoniewicz, one can also learn that the postcard was issued based on a watercolour painting owned by her, painted by Stanisław Nagajski, a participant of this trip. There, the artist recorded the moment when students put up a wooden cross, fixed on a millstone, in the place where according to legend there was the tomb of a miller of king Sigismund I the Old. People, gathered in three groups, assist the scene. In the middle one, Nagajski placed the figure of Professor Wincenty Pol, the initiator of this patriotic initiative.

This unique postcard was printed in blue, unfortunately on quite thin, poor quality paper. Zofia also took care of its distribution, sending copies, out of the small edition, around Galicia. In 1986, it was donated to the collection of the Wincenty Pol Museum by Halina and Marian Przetoccy, heirs of most of the memorabilia of the Pol de Pollenburg and Longchamps de Bérier families.

Grażyna Połuszejko