The Flying University: Towards the Emancipation of Polish Women
During the 19th century, Russian-occupied Polish lands were a difficult place to be, especially for a woman. But despite all of the oppression, a secretive group worked to provide women with higher education and support them in their fight against being secondary citizens. Alexis Angulo paints the scene of what this dangerous period was like.
The Napoleonic Code in Poland
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Polish translation of Napoleon's Codex from 1804, photo: Wikimedia Commons
In 1807, after emerging victorious from the Battle of Friedland, and having signed the treaties of Tilsit, a Polish state was established with the help of Napoleon, known as the Duchy of Warsaw. In the negotiations of the treaties, Prussia lost almost half of its territories. Although the duchy itself lasted only a decade, it was enough time to import the Napoleonic Code to the region, a tradition that would later have an impact on the Polish rule of law.
It brought some liberties and equality among citizens, but importantly, it did not consider women equal and had a big influence on the poor way they were treated in the 19th century. They were to obey men and follow their husbands wherever they decided to go. While a man could demand a divorce if his wife cheated on him, women were solely allowed to do so if their husband was caught bringing his concubine to their common residence. In Napoleon’s own words: ‘Women ought to obey us. Nature has made women our slaves!’.
Can you keep a secret?
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Nowy Świat Street in Warsaw. 1873, photo: Polona.pl
Warsaw 1887. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a distant memory. This once-proud city had been occupied at the end of the 18th century, and now Russian was the mandatory language of instruction. It was an average cold day. A young Polish woman in elegant clothes, darts her eyes back and forth, avoiding the glare of the watchful eyes. She discreetly enters a building on Złota Street, a long street that used to be exactly where the Palace of Culture and Science is located now. Two minutes later, two young ladies wearing long and dark dresses enter the same building. All the women entering had to be synchronised. They had to go in one by one, sometimes in pairs. They knew they could not enter the building together. Otherwise they could arouse the suspicion of the Russian police.
But, where were they all headed? Well, that was actually a secret, but we believe you deserve to know the truth. They were attending university.
Breadwinners
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The buildings of Warsaw University, a lithograph from 1824, photo: Polona.pl
The University of Warsaw was opened in 1816, however, women were not allowed to attend. That, or any other university for that matter. It was all but impossible for women to receive any sort of higher education. Conditions for women were precarious. Many had lost their husbands during the January Uprising, when in 1863 many Poles had risen up against the occupying powers. The widows had become the only breadwinners of the household. The situation forced them to work and, with their poor education, it was hard for them to find reasonable jobs. Polish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa portrayed this struggle in her book Marta, where a woman tried her luck in many professions without success.
There was limited access to free education and women’s primary schooling was mostly private and at home. Women with higher qualifications studied abroad. It was largely believed that they should not be overqualified, since their place was at home with the children they were supposed to raise. Even one of the most progressive women of the time, Polish novelist Klementyna Hoffmanowa wrote: ‘Only a modest woman can be skilled with impunity’.
Hoffmanowa is considered one of the first truly independent Polish women: she was able to earn a living as a writer. While she prompted women to work in order to become independent, her approach was still very traditional and, in her mind, women had to remain subordinate to men, and be both religious and patriotic.
The governess factor
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Klementyna Hoffmanowa, 1834, photo: Polona.pl
Hoffmanowa stressed that young women should read little and avoid romantic literature. She was convinced that only men could benefit from books and women had to be limited to specific kinds of work. Even women from rich families had little chance of working for a living, but at least their parents hired governesses to teach them something in the privacy of their own homes.
Anna Nakwaska wrote in her Pamiętnik Warszawski (Warsaw Diary) that it was thanks to this profession that education for girls became more and more popular. French governesses, in particular, were highly desired. Becoming a governess was often the only way a single educated woman could get work. The concept came to Poland in the 18th century, when French became a fashionable language to learn. Women from the upper classes had to know the basics of French in order to fulfil their functions as companions to their husbands during elegant soirées. In fact, the word towarzystwo (‘companion’) was initially used in Polish literature to refer to a woman.
The Flying University
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'The Student' by Leon Kowalski, 1905, photo: National Museum in Warsaw
However, all of these obstacles did not stop Polish women from finding a way to acquire higher education. Meeting together in secret, small groups of women pitched in a few rubles to pay professors to teach them different subjects. These gatherings, of course, were more accessible to upper class women who had the means and the basis of primary education.
Since the seminars had to be kept secret, they were organised at the homes of the students or the professors. For security reasons, they had to keep changing their meeting place, so as not to get caught – this constant movement led to the gatherings becoming known as ‘The Flying University’.
The professors who taught at the flying university were the cream of the crop, all at the top of their respective fields. Some of them had been left unemployed after the Russian authorities had shut down Polish universities. How did they know where to be, you ask? They kept in close contact with the organisers of the classes, who would tell them where to go.
The couple behind this incredible initiative were Jadwiga Szczawińska-Dawidowa and her husband Jan Władysław Dawid. Jan had studied Law and Natural Sciences in Poland and Pedagogic Studies in Germany, and became a lecturer at the flying university. Dawidowa, on the other hand, was a teacher at secondary school, a writer, translator and an important spokesperson for the fight for women’s education.
Their flying university system was so fine-tuned that they managed to run it for two full decades without getting caught. Even if they did have to bribe the police once in a while to turn a blind eye to what was going on.
How it worked
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Marie Skłodowska-Curie, photo: rep. Piotr Mecik / Forum
One of the first tasks of Szczawińska-Dawidowa ‘was to merge the study groups, integrate existing programmes, unify the form of organisation, and keep up the standards of the seminars’, Jadwiga Mackiewicz-Wojciechowska writes in her book Uniwersytet Latający: Karta z Dziejów Tajnej Pracy Oświatowej (Flying University: A Page from the History of Secret Educational Work).
Women who studied at the university usually did so for around five years, attending ten hours of classes a week. Initially, the university concentrated mainly on natural sciences. After some time, they were also able to introduce social sciences with top professors such as one of the most important ideologists of Polish Positivism, Aleksander Świętochowski, and Polish geographer Wacław Nałkowski.
Among the famous Poles who worked at, or attended this university were the pedagogue and doctor Janusz Korczak, writer Zofia Nałkowska, anthropologist Maria Czaplicka, and the Nobel-prize winning scientist Maria Skłodowska-Curie.
In Unrevealed Pages from Jadwiga Szczawińska’s Life written by Agnieszka Muszczyńska, we learn that the university’s founder was especially concerned about working conditions for women and their education:
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They call us the weak gender and deny our rights. They recognise the same rights only when one of us commits a crime [...] I am calling on you to organise if you want to get out from under this yoke of slavery.
Journalism played an important role in women’s emancipation, and thus, in the emancipation of Poles. Szczawińska-Dawidowa was the author of many texts advocating for women’s rights published in magazines such as Przegląd Pedagogiczny (Educational Review), Społeczeństwo (Society), Głos (Voice) and Przegląd Społeczny (Societal Review).
Towards a republican university
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The first female students of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Jagiellonian University, photo: Jagiellonian University Pharmacy Museum
Unfortunately, not everything went smoothly for the students of the university. In 1889, a conflict of interests arose. Szczawińska-Dawidowa wanted the flying university to become a social institution with research vacancies for educated women. But, this idea was only embraced by those who had already studied there. She wanted them to continue their education and create a new wave of female educators. But she did not receive much support for her plan. Instead, graduates and students were in favour of giving these opportunities to new students, who had not yet had the chance to benefit from the secret university.
Some began calling her a despot and decided to create their own ‘republican university’. This echoed the 19th-century ‘Republic of Youth’ thought up by the Philomaths, who dreamed of creating a new educated society from scratch. This splinter group of educated women was against the idea of a ‘monarchical and despotic’ university.
The author Zofia Nałkowska wrote in her memoirs that the Flying University meetings did not lead to the creation of a community. This may help explain its evolution. While the university was founded in 1885, twenty years later in 1905, it was essentially replaced by the Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych (Society for Academic Courses). Many smaller study groups started to emerge, making it difficult to institutionalise them. Mackiewicz-Wojciechowska writes that the flying university’s role had started to decline and Dawidowa resigned from her post. Unlike its predecessor, the Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych was given legitimacy by the Russians, who mistakenly thought that suddenly providing higher education might reduce dissidence among the Poles. It developed over the next decade or so, and, at the end of World War I, formally became the Wolna Wszechnica Polska, or the Polish Free University.
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'Our New MPs' article in 'World' (Świat) no. 2, 1931, photo: Sejm.gov.pl
Thanks to the Flying University and its later iterations, many women showed just how wrong Napoleon was – they had the right to an education, they had the right to have rights. This had a strong impact on Poland at the beginning of the 20th century: Polish women won the right to vote just days after Poland’s independence was regained in 1918, after 123 years of partitions and foreign rule.. The first women were elected to the Sejm in 1919: Gabriela Balicka, Jadwiga Dziubińska, Irena Kosmowska, Maria Moczydłowska, Zofia Moraczewska, Anna Piasecka, Zofia Sokolnicka, and Franciszka Wilczkowiakowa.
