State Archives Service in Poland
The history of the Polish archives service goes back as far as the Middle Ages. The
formation of archives was possible when the Polish State came into existence and its
agencies begun their activities. The first informations on chancelleries in the early
Polish offices are quite old and the oldest documents that have survived till our
times are from the end of the 11th century. Unquiet times, wars and fires were hostile
to the documents and that is why most of them were destroyed. After a period of
two hundred years of the partition of the country into more principalities Poland
was reunited in the 14th century.
Then came the times of consolidation and a long period of welfare and political
power. This was very profitable for the culture as well as for the development of
archives. They existed with the state authorities, in provincial administrative
offices, in towns, monasteries and so on. It is significant that they were very care
fully protected and looked after. Their physical condition was excellent. There exist
a lot of indications that those archives were put in order and listed.
Greater losses to this cultural goods occured in the middle of the 17th century
during the Swedish invasion of Poland. Then came the unfortunate 18th century
with its exterior and civil wars and with dismemberment of Poland. Since that time
our country was divided between three neighbour states i.e. Austria, Prussia and
Russia. The development of each of these three parts of Poland was quite different
not only in political but also in economic, social and cultural aspects. It was true in
organising the state archives as well. According to the French model occupational
states organized such archives as specialised institutions for care, putting in order,
listening and conservation of documents produced in different institutions and
enterprises.
The first Polish state archives were founded in the period of Napoleon's wars in so
called Warsaw Principality in 1808. They have survived until now. In the 19th
century some other state archives were created in Polish territories under Austrian,
Prussian and Russian occupation.
The Polish state archives service was organized at the end of the First World War.
It was in the rebuilded Republic of Poland. It is very significant that just in February
1919 the then Polish government had issued the first Polish law on archives. This
law had defined the principles of the organization of the Polish State Archives
Service. As a head office the State Archives Division at the Ministry of Religion and
National Education was created. The network of the Polish state archives was not
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very extended at that time. There were only 5 central archives in Warsaw and 8
provincional ones. Documents were also collected by other institutions, such as
libraries, museums, municipal authorities, scientific societies, churches and monas
teries. The staff of trained archivists was very small in number and amounted to
about 120 persons.
Nevertheless great work was done in Polish archives in this period. A large propor
tion of former Polish documents was won back from neighbour states. Almost all the
documents were put in order and a good deal of archival materials published. An
important achievment of this period was a periodical Archeion issued since 1927
and the manuel of archival work published in 1929 by Kazimierz Konarski under
the title Modern Polish archival science and its tasks.
During the Second World War the Polish archive organization was destroyed by
the German Nazis. A great many documents were transported to German archives
in Berlin and at Königsberg. The Polish archival staff was very limited especially in
territories immidiately annexed to the Reich. Some archives were destroyed during
the campaign of September 1939. During the Insurrection in Warsaw in 1944 the
following archive offices were burned: the Archives of Ancient Documents /about
250,000 archive units/, the Finance Archives /about 30,000/, the Municipal Archives
/about 150,000/, and the Central Archives of Ancient Documents /about 1,750,000
cards of inventories/. At the end of the war some archives in other towns such as
Poznan were burnt down to the foundation. These losses were disastrous and amoun
ted to 73 per cent of the pre-war store of documents.
The period after the Second World War was one of expansion, consolidation and
advance of Polish state archives. First five years after the war were devoted to
rescuing documents scattered in several places by the Germans and to collecting
those left without any protection.
In 1951 such a degree of consolidation of the archives service was attained that a
new law on archives could be issued. It created the Polish State Archives Head
Office as the central organ of the state archives in Poland. This Head Office was
till the end of 1956 under the supervision of the Prime Minister and from that date
is was attached to the Ministry of Culture and Arts. Then, from 1958 is was at the
Ministry of Higher Education and now since 1962 it is subjected to the Ministry of
Science, Higher Education and Technics. The situation seems now to be stabilized.
It must be said that in spite of all those changes the Head Office has maintained its
interdepartmental position and no minister or central body is allowed to issue
directions on the preservation of documents or organization of archive repositories
in offices, institutions or enterprises without its agreement.
Another law of 1957 is very important because it decrees that the Polish state
archives should receive all documents of historical, social, economic, cultural and
scientific importance, produced by all offices, institutions, etc. except those produced
by the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
Ministry of the Interior, by political parties and by the churches. Thus the Polish
archives service is centralized to a high degree. This law allows lending of documents
to scientific institutions, museums and libraries even for a long time.
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