The town on the river Pełtwia was founded in the 13th century by Daniel I Halicki of the Rurykowicz dynasty, after the destruction of Halicz by Batu-Han. The name of Lwów (Lwihorod) was probably given to the city in honour of Lew I Halicki (Daniłowicz), the son of the founder. Initially, it was only a wooden castle, or “a hideout from the Tatars”, built in a remote area “to protect itself and its treasures from the enemy”. In the 14th century, Lviv came under the rule of King Casimir III the Great, who built a brick fortress called the High Castle on a hill that still bears the same name today, in the place of the destroyed wooden castle. This hill was an important place in the topography of interwar Lviv, commemorated, inter alia, by Stanisław Lem. In 1356, Casimir the Great granted city rights to the settlement. Until the 18th century, Lviv was repeatedly attacked, besieged and plundered by Tatars, Turks, and Cossacks under the command of Bohdan Chmielnicki and the Swedes. Thanks to many cases of heroic defence, it has been called the “top-class rampart” and the “bulwark of Christendom”.
In 1772, with the first partition of Poland, Lviv belonged to the territory occupied by Austria. The city was established as the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria – a province dependent on the Habsburg monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since then, it began to change its fortress character. In 1777, the liquidation of the anachronistic fortifications began, which allowed for the expansion of the town and its suburbs. The Poles living in Lviv and in Galicia were initially subjected to strong Germanization. “The foreigners made it the capital of oppression, it had to become by its own power the capital of resistance and defence”. From the 1860s onwards, Galicia began to gradually expand its autonomy. In 1869, the Polish language was established as the official language in the administration and judiciary of Galicia. In 1870, the Lviv City Council and Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria passed a separate statute and the rights of local government to the city. This act allowed for the dynamic development of the city in the following years. “A number of public buildings were built, which are a decoration of Lviv (otherwise lacking in architectural monuments): schools, humanitarian institutions, institutions devoted to science and art, and finally financial institutions all multiplied and developed, and many associations of all kinds were created, intellectual movement increased and public life developed in all social strata”. In the 1860s, Lviv also obtained the first railway connections, including the one with Cracow. Along with the increasing autonomy of Galicia, Lviv was transforming into the cultural centre of the formally non-existent Republic of Poland. The city was called “the heart and brain” of Poland: “Here the hearts of Poland beat the most daringly”, said Józef Piłsudski. “Whoever wanted to breathe the feeling of freedom and follow the traditional thread of thought or fight for Polish independence, had to base his work on Lviv, where hearts eager for freedom were beating harder”.
The cultural and intellectual life of Poles developed in Lviv, and at the same time, independence and military organizations were established, such as the Union of Active Struggle (1908) and the Riflemen’s Association (1910). New dailies, magazines and associations were created. Lviv was a city of artists and writers such as Aleksander Fredro, Seweryn Goszczyński, Kornel Ujejski, Artur Grottger, Władysław Bełza, Jan Kasprowicz, Leopold Staff, Gabriela Zapolska, Maria Konopnicka and Maria Dulębianka. Many artists lived in Lviv, some came here to create, and some to get drunk in famous Lviv pubs – like the legendary Atlas, considered the most important art place in the city on the river Pełtwia, where Henryk Zbierzchowski, known as the bard of Lviv, reigned. According to Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, “Nowhere have you drunk so wonderfully as [...] in Lviv”.
It was in Lviv that the Polish General Exhibition was organized in 1894, at which the economic, scientific and cultural achievements of Galicia were presented, “from the artist’s creativity to the effort of a farmer, from the intelligentsia’s fruits of research to the home-made production of a peasant’s hand”. The exhibition was to be the result of the cooperation of all social groups, a manifesto of Polishness – a project serving the whole nation beyond the partitions. As part of the exhibition, the first electric tram in Galicia was launched, the oil industry, paintings by Jan Matejko and the monumental The Racławice Panorama 150 by 15 meters were presented – “a huge propaganda success that strengthens and unites Polish hearts”.
In 1918, after the battles for Lviv, in which the inhabitants, including children and youth (called Lviv Eaglets), played a huge role, the Poles took over the city. Between 21 and 22 November, Ukrainian troops withdrew from the city, and already around 8 a.m. “the whole Lviv was in Polish hands”. Two years later, Lviv was awarded for these struggles – as the first city in history – with the Knight’s Cross of The War Order of Virtuti Militari. The Cemetery of the Defenders of Lviv, also known as the Cemetery of Eaglets, has become a national monument and an important memorial site. During the interwar period, the defence of Lviv would become a national myth of Poles: “In the name of the idea of independence and belonging to the Motherland, the great, powerful Deed of the Defenders of Lviv uplifted, the people who are so dear to every Polish heart «Eagles and Eaglets» about which the academic senate once said memorable words: ‘Like lions seized their arms, and in the face of their bravery and contempt of death, the fame of Thermopylae knights pales’. With the bayonets of its Defenders, Lviv forged its own belonging to Poland”.
The triumph in 1918 did not mean the end of the Polish-Ukrainian war, which lasted until May 1919. The November victory of the Poles did not guarantee the safety of the inhabitants of Lviv. Anarchy prevailed in the city, supported by the military, including the high-rank officers. Already around 9 in the morning, i.e. an hour after regaining the city, a massacre in the Jewish quarter began, during which about 100 people were killed [21]], including children and the elderly, nearly 400 were injured, 50 buildings were burnt and over 3,700 flats and commercial premises were plundered.
In such circumstances, the city entered the borders of the reborn Second Polish Republic. The eastern borders of Poland were officially recognized only in March 1923 by the Conference of Ambassadors.
In the second decade of the 20th century, the former capital of Galicia lost its role as the most important Polish city. Political life moved to Warsaw, and with it also the cultural centre of Poland – “from a small great city, from a large capital of the country, it has turned into a big, small town today. It has lost its literature for the benefit of the capital, it left its wings in the theatre, it greyed in the press”. Therefore, Lviv was no longer unconditionally idealized. In the series “Cuda Polski” (Polish Miracles), Stanisław Wasylewski does not spare the city bitter words. He calls it “a ragged pauper”, a city devoid of monuments and large squares, “ugly in the Viennese, trite style” and, moreover, “lacking face and expression”. But, as the author notes, the look of Lviv in the times of the Second Polish Republic is a consequence of its heroic past, the result of wars, sieges, fires and, of course, the harmful urban policy of the Austrian partitioner. That is why Lviv – concludes Wasylewski – is “a ragged pauper but a virile one”, it is a “noble” city, an urbs princeps.
Despite its unfavourable economic situation, the city partially retained its former position as an important centre of science and culture. It was the third largest city in Poland in terms of the number of inhabitants and one of the four most important publishing centres in the country (together with Warsaw, Poznań and Cracow); it had a university, a polytechnic, at least nine libraries, great museums (including the King Jan III National Museum) and theatres (including the Grand Theatre), neo-Romanesque and Gothic churches, including the Bernadine church and monastery and the famous necropolises: the Lychakiv Cemetery and the Cemetery of Eaglets. Moreover, “one of the most beautiful Polish monuments of the poet”, that is, the column of Adam Mickiewicz designed by Antoni Popiel, and the statue of Jan III Sobieski by Tadeusz Barącz (1898), which was moved to Gdańsk after the Second World War. You could still see the Racławice Panorama, exhibited at the Eastern Trade Fair (“you could feel the breath of Europe on them, but we and my friends ran there mainly to drink the free Maggi broth”) every day from 10 a.m. until dusk and climb the Union of Lublin Mound in the Lviv High Castle, which was built on the initiative of Franciszek Smolka (the construction lasted several years, starting from 1869), bringing land to Lviv from various places important to Poles, including the graves of Mickiewicz and Słowacki – “The view of the city from the Mound is unparalleled in entire Poland and is superior to the view from the castle hill in Vilnius”.
In 1926, there were 12 tram lines in the city. One could walk in four parks, including the High Castle, about which Lem wrote: “What heaven is for a Christian, the High Castle was for each of us”. It was in Lviv, at ul. Akademicka, where the famous Zalewski’s confectionery was located: “It was possible to come to the conclusion that Zalewski could recreate the entire cosmos in sugar and chocolate”. The J. A. Baczewski vodka and liqueur factory (established in 1782) was also located here.
The popular radio show Wesoła Lwowska Fala was created in Lviv, featuring Szczepcio and Tońcio, i.e. Kazimierz Jan Wajda and Henryk Vogelfänger. Thanks to them, the entire Poland learned about bałak (the street dialects) and batiarzy (hooligans, thieves, street crooks and noble swindlers, happy and cheerful residents of the Lviv suburbs, who were characterized primarily by love for Lviv).
Lviv was perceived as a proud, open and multicultural city, inhabited by various nations, including Poles, Ukrainians, Armenians, and Jews, a silent witness of glorious and shameful events, a city of constant disputes, national quarrels, attacks, racist and anti-Semitic riots and economic disorders. It was an important city for the national identity of Poles and Ukrainians. It was called the “bulwark of Christendom”, as it had withstood 24 sieges up to the 18th century. It was also the capital of artists and writers, the cultural and spiritual centre of Poland under the partitions. During the interwar period, the city was strongly personified, treated by Poles as a national hero – distinguished by loyalty (Leopolis Semper Fidelis), bravery (decorated with the Knight’s Cross of The War Order of Virtuti Militari) and involvement in matters concerning Poland and Poles – “Lviv ‘always loyal’, was sensitive to all manifestations of national movements”. Stanisław Lem claimed that “Lviv is irreplaceable”.
Bruno Schulz lived in Drohobycz, which “from Warsaw’s perspective seemed to be a small town drowned somewhere in the borderlands”. And yet it was close to Lviv, which was the capital of Galicia and the political and cultural centre of Poland until the regaining of independence. It was in Lviv, and not in Warsaw or Zakopane, that Schulz began to establish his first extensive contacts with the artistic world. In 1910, he began studies at the Polytechnic School at the Faculty of Civil Engineering. In the following years, he contacted writers, artists (including Tadeusz Wojciechowski and Hersz Weber), literary groups (such as Przedmieście), unions (The Association of Polish Artists and Designers, Trade Union of Writers) and Lviv publishers – including Karol Kuryluk from “Signals”. Therefore, Lviv was for Schulz an important cultural and artistic centre, as well as a social one. He had many friends (for example, Debora Vogel, Maksymilian Goldstein) and family in Lviv.
Bruno’s older brother Izydor Schulz moved with his family to Lviv in 1926, where he took the position of director of the nationwide headquarters of Galicyjskie Towarzystwo Naftowe Galicja SA. Schulz regularly visited Izydor and his nephews – Wilhelm, Ella and Jakub. According to Jerzy Ficowski, during his visits to Lviv, he often painted portraits – mainly of children – that decorated the apartment of the Schulz family in Lviv. Sources provide different addresses of this apartment: ul. Matejki 8 (in August 1934) and ul. Bogusławskiego 8 (in January 1935).
In Lviv, he sometimes met with Józefina Szelińska, who lived in the nearby Janów, as well as with Ostap Ortwin, Wilam Horzyca, Arnold Spaet, Marian Promiński, Jerzy Janisch, Józef Nacht and Rachela Auerbach. He exhibited his graphic works and paintings here: in 1920* as part of the First Jewish Art Exhibition, in 1922* during a collective exhibition of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Lviv, in 1930* during the Spring Salon organized by the Lviv Society of Friends of Fine Arts, in 1935* as part of the exhibition of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers, and during the war, in 1940* during a collective exhibition of engravings by the Union of Soviet Artists of Ukraine.
In 1937*, he also took part in a literary evening at the Powszechny Teatr Żołnierza on ul. Rutowskiego, during which he read the short story Edzio. Schulz even considered moving to Lviv, although he was probably more tempted by Warsaw (“I would like to move even to Lviv if it is somehow difficult to move to Warsaw”) – he even took specific steps toward this end, sending letters to the Board of the Lviv School District in which he asked to be transferred to a school in Lviv. He also went to Lviv to see doctors and specialists, including the ones who treated kidney stones, and in 1937 he also took ill Józefina Szelińska to Lviv for treatment. (ts) (transl. mw)
