Sunbathing & Masticating: The Vegetarian Lifestyle in Modernist Poland
Towards the end of the 19th century, bold new ideas about health and sustainability began to emerge in the United States and Western Europe. Dieticians and doctors alike were looking to natural remedies and diets to ensure a healthier lifestyle. On Polish lands, these issues were also being addressed and advanced. Meet the pioneers of vegetarianism and natural medicine in Poland.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries a big wave of new ideas emerged about health and the human body. In the United States, historians sometimes talk about Health Reform or Clean Living Movements, with were led by the likes of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of corn flakes, Horace Fletcher, a food faddist known as ‘The Great Masticator’ and Upton Sinclair, the author of the ground-breaking novel The Jungle, which exposed the horrors of the meat industry in America. As historian Ruth C. Engs notes in her book Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform: ‘physical activity and diet were integrated into reform activities emanating out of religious revivalism’. Treatments for the good of body also became an important issue in Europe, and on Polish lands during the modernist Young Poland period – with ideas such as vegetarianism, alternative therapy, homeopathy and herbalism front and centre.
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John F. Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, photo: Wikimedia Commons
Vegetarianism became a prominent idea in the West in the first half of the 19th century (in 1835 Asenath Nicholson published the first vegetarian cookbook in America Nature’s Own Book; in 1847 the Vegetarian Society was formed in the UK). Polish culture embraced it under the Polish name of jarstwo (although nowadays we use the ‘foreign’ term wegetarianizm much more often) a few decades later. Leaders from different political parties and ideological backgrounds – socialists such as Janisław Jastrzębowski, religious nationalists from the Eleusis society, priest Wincenty Pixa, and progressive pedagogue and psychologist Józefa Joteyko – were equally fascinated by this new way of eating and living.
The pioneer of vegetarianism in Poland was, without a doubt, Konstanty Moes-Oskargiełło, who translated Alfred von Seefeld’s popular work entitled Jarosz i Jarstwo (The Vegetarian and Vegetarianism), and wrote, among other things, Jarstwo i Wełniarstwo w Dziejach Słowiańszczyzny (Vegetarianism and Wool-Making in Slavic History). He claimed vegetarianism is innate to the nature-loving, gentle Slavic people, who were spoiled by meat when it arrived from the West. He believed meat to be the cause of most social problems and ‘scientific vegetarianism’ to be the religion of the future and the path to universal happiness. In Warsaw, Konstanty Alfons Moes-Oskargiełło organised vegetarian dinners, but mostly he used a meatless diet to treat his patients in his sanatorium in Bojarów, near Otwock – 25 km from the centre of Warsaw.
Bojarów was a bit like a miniature version of John F. Kellogg’s Battle Creek or Maximilian Bircher-Benner’s (the Swiss doctor, who invented muesli) Zurich resort, and it was a fruit of its time. In the late 19th century, many sanatoriums and spas were established in Europe, Central Europe in particular, in places like Marienbad, Karlove Vary, Baden Baden, Wörishofen, Krynica Górska and Davos in Switzerland, which would later be immortalised by Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain. Bojarów was a part of this trend – although it only operated for a few years, beginning in 1883.
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Patients at a poppy seed field, photo: Polona.pl
What Oskargiełło advised was a return to natural life: wooden spoons, woollen clothing and sunbathing were among the elements he believed important for good health. He promoted a holistic lifestyle in which each element was closely connected and all were rooted in nature. Yet it was the vegetarian diet he dedicated most of his works to.
The diet he recommended to his patients was close to what we would now define as vegan and raw, yet he wasn’t always as strict. Beginners could still incorporate some sugar and dairy into their diet but the preferred foods were fruit and grains. The ‘fast’ he advised to the ailing consisted of:
Text
(…) taking a handful of grains and masticating them until they turn into a floury mush, which – depending on the state of one’s teeth – can take from 6 to 12 minutes. For one meal, one should eat enough to feel satiated, adding some nuts and either fresh or dried fruits to the grains.
Although this sounds quite bleak, his collection of essays and recipes, entitled Przyrodzone Pokarmy Człowieka i Wpływ Ich na Dolę Ludzką (Man’s Natural Foods and Their Influence on the Human Condition, 1888), does not read like a fasting manual for those who want to deliberately suffer and masticate food for hours (which, by the way, was a big trend in the US at the time: Horace Fletcher known as ‘The Great Masticator’ was one of the biggest health gurus among the American elite). It actually includes a collection of well-known Polish dishes and flavours, which just happen to be meatless. Beetroot barszcz and sorrel soup, pierogi with different fillings, potato dishes, lots of cabbage and carrots, as well as many fruit and grain-based desserts. Health is at the forefront of Oskargiełło’s thought, yet he also believed that the strength that comes with a plant-based diet can be part of a moral project. He believed it could potentially lead to fixing the wotsrld in general, and liberating Poland from the oppressors in particular. Leo Tolstoy – one of history’s most famous vegetarians – apparently was an admirer of Oskargiełło’s work.
Another sanatorium, even more popular among the Polish intellectual and artistic elites, was established by doctor Apolinary Tarnawski in Kosów Huculski in 1893. Along with his wife Romualda, he treated his guests using nature-based healing methods, gymnastics, sunbathing, fasting and a light vegetarian diet. Numerous important figures of the time visited Kosów, including the politician Roman Dmowski and other members of his National Democratic Party, the author of major financial reform Władysław Grabski, writers Gabriela Zapolska and Maria Dąbrowska, philosopher Wincenty Lutosławski, and many others.
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The Sanitarium in Kosów, photo: Polona.pl
While the serene atmosphere of the rural mansion awaited his patients, they also had to submit to some strict rules: move more, eat less, and ‘control yourself’ (‘władaj sobą’) – as a sign on the entrance stated. There was no medicine at the resort, since Tarnawski believed good health could be achieved strictly through regular exercise, working in the garden, sunbathing naked, running on the grass at dawn, bathing in a cold stream, as well as receiving massages, fasting and – obviously – sticking to a vegetarian diet based on local ingredients.
Just like health gurus and holistic dietitians of the modern day, the couple published two cookbooks Kuchnia Jarska Stosowana w Lecznicy Apolinarego Tarnawskiego w Kosowie (Vegetarian Cuisine Served at Apolinary Tarnawski’s Sanatorium in Kosów, 1901) and Kosowska Kuchnia Jarska (Kosów’s Vegetarian Cuisine, 1929). What the authors promised was ‘simple meatless fare’ which should somehow deal with ‘the spoiled tastes of those who got used to supposedly refined French recipes’. They also advise not to eat too much and not to get too excited by food – such an introduction does not promise a fascinating read, yet many recipes which the Tarnawskis included actually seem worth trying, even today. They write about budeń – a steamed souffle of sorts – made with egg-yolks creamed with butter, an egg-white foam and mushrooms, cheese or cauliflower. There are also lot of interesting sauces they recommend – redcurrant and horseradish, capers and caramel (!) – which the authors propose serving with poached eggs and vegetables. Eggs can also be served with truffles, and there’s even Sachertorte for dessert – it all sounds terribly fancy for ‘simple, modest meatless fare’. The key to good health, according to the couple was to eat all of this ‘in moderation’. Sounds like a pretty good diet!
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Vegetarian Cookbook Covers, photo: Polona.pl
Even more recipes can be found in Maria Czarnowska’s book Jarska Kuchnia Zawierająca Wypróbowane Przepisy Smacznych a Zdrowych Potraw Roślinnych oraz Naukowe Uzasadnienie Jarstwa (Vegetarian Cuisine with Proven Recipes for Tasty and Healthy Plant-Based Dishes and a Scientific Justification of Vegetarianism) published in 1898 is filled to the brim with meatless dishes – there are 444 recipes to choose from
The potato is king, obviously – there are more than twenty recipes for potato pancakes, pâtés and bakes. There are even sweet potato dishes, where spuds are combined with applesauce and served with buttered breadcrumbs (however, maybe it’s not that surprising, considering we still eat potato-based knedle dumplings filled with plums). There are carrots, cauliflower, swede, spinach and kale, even scorzonera and purslane, as well as herbs such as dandelion and nettle, that are praised by the author for their undeniable health benefits.
The introduction to the book was written by another important health expert of the time – homeopath Józef Drzewiecki – a well-educated doctor, whose methods became quite popular among the people of Warsaw. He opened the first homeopathic pharmacy on Nowy Świat St, published articles in British and Austrian medical reviews and advocated for vegetarianism. And not only as a matter of health but a matter of the diet requiring less water and soil and, all in all, being much better for the environment. Doesn’t this sound familiar?
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Sanatorium in Sokołowsko, photo: Radek Jaworski / Forum
Oskargiełło closed his resort in 1890, moved to Kraków and became fascinated by the occult; he died in 1910. After years of neglect his villa – now inside Otwock’s city limits – has turned into a ruin, and has only now been rediscovered by activists and admirers of the Świdermajer architectural style. The sanatorium in Kosów was closed when the Red Army entered the – now Ukrainian – town, and Tarnawski had to flee to Romania, and then Jerusalem, where he died in 1943. Drzewiecki was shot dead in 1907. In the later years of turmoil and wars, this gallery of eccentric reformers and healers was generally forgotten. Yet some of their work – recipes, philosophical reflections, views on health, wellness and ecology – often seem strangely current.
Written by Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, Nov 2020
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