Adam Mickiewicz Slept Here! A Worldwide Guide to Museums of Poland’s Poetic Hero
The Polish author and activist Adam Mickiewicz was both an accomplished artist and a tireless advocate for his nation. He expressed this passion not only in the imagery of his writing, but he himself worked to organise Polish political and cultural circles in order to achieve independence, undeterred by controversy or risk.
By the time of his unexpected death at age 57, he had contributed to the romantic movement’s oeuvre on par with his contemporaries in Britain, France and Germany. His works remain at the forefront of Poland’s classical literary canon to this day: the romantic epic poems of Pan Tadeusz and Konrad Wallenrod, as well as the four-part play Forefathers’ Eve — the play whose later, controversial performance, directed by Kazimierz Dejmek, arguably sparked the 1968 Polish political crisis.
As far as we know, few other figures in history anywhere on earth have four of their former homes all as museums, not to mention three gravesites (although a number of famous Poles, including Chopin and Pilsudski, have their hearts and bodies buried separately). Because of Adam Mickiewicz’s international fame, whoever can do so would logically want to get a piece of credit as the setting that produced his masterpieces. If Mickiewicz so much as ate lunch there, it seems there’s a monument to him.
In honor of International Museum Day, as well as to honor our institution’s namesake, Culture.pl presents a timeline and map of the varied places Mickiewicz called home – even if only briefly – and how those places now remember him.
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The Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Navahrudak, Belarus, photo: archives of Zenon Zyburtowicz / East News
This town (known in Polish as Nowogródek) belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth – until 1795, when it was partitioned to the Russian empire. Three years later, Mickiewicz was born here on Christmas Eve 1798, the second son of Polish nobles Barbara Majewska-Mickiewicz and Mikolaj Mickiewicz. (The first national educational committee in history was established by the Polish school system of this town at the time Mickiewicz was a young student.)
Today, the house where he was born and raised was restored to its historic character in 2001 and is currently a museum of Mickiewicz’s early life.
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The house Adam Mickiewicz lived in in 1882, Vilnius, Lithuania, photo: Gerard / Reporter / East News
In Vilnius, Mickiewicz more expressly began his career as a writer. It was in the Polish-language as well as Lithuanian newspapers that he published early drafts of his later-illustrious works of Grażyna and Dziady.
Upon his graduation, though, he was imprisoned for his membership in secret Polish organizations like the Philomaths society. After his release, he spent time amongst the intellectual circles of Moscow and Odessa. Both of these cities have monuments to him today.
While his home in Vilnius is no longer around, several monuments have stood to honor his stay there. In 1925, a large wooden sculpture was inaugurated by Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. However, a storm damaged it, and it was taken down.
There were several different subsequent designs of varying artistic styles, none of which were ever implemented because of the outbreak of World War II. Decades later, in the 1980s, Lithuania put up its own monument to Mickiewicz, featuring a sculpture of his figure as well as smaller ones depicting scenes of his plays.
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The Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Śmiełów, Poland, photo: Wojciech Strożyk / Reporter / East News
When the 1831 Polish uprising against Russia began, Mickiewicz left his home in Rome and traveled through the Prussian partition of Poland (now the Wielkopolska region) in order to gather reconnaissance for the resistance. During this time he was romantically involved with Konstancja Łubieńska at her family estate in Śmiełów, a town on the border of the partitions and therefore often used as a safe house for the underground. The grand estate is preserved in the historic Polish style – and despite the years-long illustrious history of the house, they still take great pride in Mickiewicz’s having there, if only for a matter of weeks!
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Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Paris, photo: Marta Darowska & Marta Darowska / Reporter / East News
For the years after his university education, Mickiewicz moved around frequently between European cities. As it was difficult in Eastern Europe to make a living as an author, let alone one associated with political controversy like Polish nationalism, Mickiewicz finally settled in Paris, where there was a sizable community of Polish émigrés.
While there, he taught at the literature faculty of the Collège de France, as part of his managing the Polish Library of Paris, which preserved many Polish cultural texts that had been at risk under the foreign partition. He also developed a friendship with fellow Polish Parisian Frédéric Chopin — the two collaborated on several works where Chopin provided music to Mickiewicz’s poetry.
Today, the Polish Library of Paris is still an active library, as well as a museum designed to resemble how it did when Mickiewicz worked there. It also houses a museum for Chopin’s work of that time as well.
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Plaque at Adam Mickiewicz Müzesi in Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Turkey Dat., photo: Darwinek / Wikimedia.org
After involving himself more seriously in the political activities of the Polish diaspora, Mickiewicz moved to Istanbul, hoping to organise the Polish community in the Ottoman empire to ally against Russia in the Crimean War. In this time he continued writing on later acts of Forefathers’ Eve as well.
Mickiewicz’s health quickly declined, though, and he died only two months after his arrival. His body was buried in the basement for a short time, before being moved to the Polish cemetery in Paris. Years later, in 1900, Mickiewicz’s coffin was once again moved, this time to the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, the resting place of many Polish heroes over the centuries. (The Austrian partition, which encompassed Kraków, had relative autonomy for the Polish population, including the right to their own linguistic, cultural, religious practises.)
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Renovation of the Adam Mickiewicz Monument on Krakowskie Przedmieście St. in Warsaw, photo: Bartosz Bobkowski / AG
Mickiewicz’s legacy in building the political and cultural foundation of Poland is vast. Perhaps because of his outsize stance as a visionary of the state, not only all these museums but also many other sites are named after him. Most Polish cities have a monument or street named after him, even if he never visited there.
Amongst the other things bearing the Mickiewicz name in his honor are a neighborhood in Gdańsk, where every street is named for one of his books or characters; a brigade in the Spanish army; a theatre in New York; a waterfall in Slovakia; and perhaps most unique, a crater on Mercury and an asteroid near Mars.
Although he devoted his life and work to rejuvenating a Polish national political identity, Mickiewicz is also considered a national hero by Lithuanian, Belarussian and Ukranian literary thought as well. Because of the controversy his political agitation often caused, as well as his adventurous spirit, which continually drew him to a new frontline, he spent much of his life amongst his countrymen in exile — outside the future borders of a Polish state which he would never see, but for whose foundation and existence he surely bears great responsibility.
Written by Theo Canter, May 2021
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