Reproduction of a postcard from the ‘Great and Famous Polish People’ cycle with an image of Wincenty Pol

In 1995, the Manor House of Wincenty Pol in Lublin hosted a festive bibliophilic opening of the Lublin Society of Book Lovers, during which Tadeusz Zakrzewski (1922-2014), a Toruń lawyer, researcher into the history of his city, publicist, and lastly a collector and bibliophile, was awarded the Order of the White Raven with a Sunflower. His visit to the Manor House resulted two years later in him donating many interesting poliany to the Museum, including the postcard described above.

It is a reproduction (made soon after the original was published) of one of the cards forming the series ‘Great and Famous People of Poland’, which was issued over a period of several years, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It featured several dozen designs with images of particularly distinguished Polish kings and aristocrats, scientists, poets, writers, painters or composers. The fact that Wincenty Pol found himself in such good company attests to his actual fame at the time.

Interestingly, a short biographical note, placed next to the portrait of the poet-geographer, gives both the wrong place of his birth (‘Firlejówka’ in Grodzka Street in Lublin's Old Town) and the wrong date of his death (3, not 2 December).

The postcard (with New Year's greetings) was sent in Toruń on 31 December 1898. We do not know who the sender was (Roman). However, we were able to identify the addressee. It was Henryk Szuman, then less than 17 years old, who also lived in Toruń (then still German: Thorn) on Werderstrasse, adjacent to the Old Town from the north-east (now Leon Szuman Street, named after Henryk's father, a famous surgeon). A few years later Henryk entered the seminary in Pelplin and became a priest of great distinction. Forty years after receiving these warm wishes, he was shot by the Nazis in October 1939. His beatification process is now underway.