Góry w serii „Cuda Polski” Rudolfa Wegnera

Abstrakt

The mountains in Rudolf Wegner’s “Poland’s Miracles” series

The article is devoted to an analysis of several works from a series entitled “Poland’s Miracles — Monuments of Nature — Monuments of Labour — Historical Monuments” published by Rudolf Wegner’s publishing house from Poznań. The author discusses five works: Śląsk by Gustaw Morcinek 1933; Tatry i Podhale by Rafał Malczewski 1935; Huculszczyzna, Gorgany i Czarnohora 1936, Karpaty i Podkarpacie 1939 by Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski; and Sandomierskie. Góry Świętokrzyskie 1938 by Aleksander Patkowski. She focuses on the way the mountains are presented and on how literary representations of the highland landscape acquire extra-aesthetic values. In addition, she points to the method used by the authors of the monographs to describe the activities of people living in the mountains and highland areas, primarily in the sphere of a broadly defined culture. She demonstrates that both landscape nature and products of human labour were interpreted in the monographs as cultural texts. The article also contains a typographic analysis of the monographs in question, as Rudolf Wegner’s entire series was particularly meticulously prepared. In addition, there are arguments showing that mountain- related works were part of a number of initiatives implementing the ideas of regionalism in the inter-war period.