Poland [antikvár]

ntroduction R oenix on the Plain For a person such as I - born in Warsaw and one who has spent his whole life in the Polish capital - Poland appears to be one of the most mysterious and exotic places in the world. One may travel across deserts and oceans, the Andes and the prairies of America, Amazonian jungles and the metropolises of the west, and still be astonished by this surprising country which sometimes was also a state, although in the past this was by no means the rule. We encounter the first mystery while posing an apparently banal question concerning the location of Poland. As we all know, Ubu Roi maintained that the answer is: nowhere. For years, the famous sentence: "In Poland, in other words, nowhere" infuriated the Poles, but it is not as nonsensical as it appears to us. In comparison to other large European countries, the situation of Poland was in this particular respect far from clear. he wandering country While studying the political map of Europe from the last centuries we may follow the transference of state borders. Certain states, such as Bohemia, Ukraine, Hungary and the Baltic or Balkan countries, emerged or disappeared. Others, such as Germany, Austria or Prussia, lost and regained parts of their territory on a more or less permanent basis. Only Poland forfeited and gained, appeared and vanished, until finally, more than half a century ago, it traversed several hundred kilometers from the east to the west due to the political decisions made after the second world war by the victorious powers. History is full of innumerable wandering nations. The same holds true for itinerant states. There was no such thing, however, as a wandering country. Poland is the first country to have accomplished this feat. After all, her transference from the east to the west meant that not only state frontiers and state institutions, i. e. offices and garrisons, shifted, and not only society, in other words, millions of persons were on the move, but that the whole country - entire villages, towns, universities and clinics - was affected. The University of Lwow was revived in Wroclaw, and the University of Wilno - in Toruh.