Birth certificate of Juliusz Pol

Juliusz Pol, one of the poet-geographer's grandsons, son of Marek Stanisław and Maria, née Zienkowicz, and later a painter, was born in Warsaw in 1878. Twelve years later, possibly in connection with his application for enrolment at a secondary school, since it would have been too early to register conscripts, an illegibly signed registrar in Warsaw issued him with a birth certificate, based on the registry books of the local All Saints parish. The document was drawn up in Russian, the official language of the time. In January 1907, when at the age of twenty-nine Juliusz was about to leave Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts for good, one of the city's attorneys, Ludwik Landy, the Domestic Court in Kraków, made a certified translation of the certificate into Polish. The address of the lawyer's office (1 Grodzka Street) indicates that it was located just off Krakow's Market Square, in the 15th-century Celestine Tenement House (named after its 17th-century owner, Jakub Celesta, a merchant and city councillor). It was rebuilt after the city fire of 1850, and thoroughly rebuilt in the years 1906-1907. Juliusz Pol, therefore, applied for the translation just after the reconstruction had been completed.

The Imperial and Royal Domestic Court in Kraków, which was listed on the translator's stamp as the court of first instance (along with its counterpart in Lviv), was part of a unified court system established in 1855 in Galicia.

Let us add that the All Saints Church (standing on what is now Grzybowski Square in Warsaw), whose vicar, Father Wincenty Miechowicz, attested to the document of birth with his signature, is the work of Henryk Marconi (1792-1863), an Italian architect active on Polish soil since 1822 and is one of the most eminent representatives of Classicism.