The Inconspicuous Women of Warsaw
Casually strolling through familiar public spaces, do you still pay attention to monuments? Although they stand in their fixed, habitual spots, do they manage to catch your eye? Apart from turning into bizarre playgrounds for local pigeons, what else do they offer?
Of course, monuments are a part of the public space we experience everyday, their presence weaving a discrete layer of history and prominence into the fabric of the city. Prominence, because only the most privileged ones – those deemed the most important – secure their forever homes in the squares of capitals. Speaking of privilege, of the approximately 170 statues in Warsaw, a staggering amount portray men. A narrative stitched from the same bland yarn, however, quickly becomes dreary and uninspiring. For a change then, come with me on a journey in search of the feminine element in Varsovian public space.
Paying a visit to monuments dedicated to women in Warsaw is not the easiest task to perform. They are neither conspicuous nor too imposing in their presence. For the most part, these are not the kind of statues that stop you in your tracks or divert your attention from whatever you were in the midst of doing. Visiting, and therefore finding and noticing these few women requires effort. You need to search for them – but if you do, a completely fascinating, entirely different dimension of Warsaw will show its face.
I start with a clean slate: I currently live in this city, but it hasn’t been home for long. This means my eyes aren't playing tricks on me just yet and don’t cover the statues with the veil of a quotidian routine. They will all be new to me, and if not, the least I can do for them will be to defamiliarise them from their ordinary abodes. Before my day with women’s monuments, I map them out, researching each location. I want to make sure not to miss a single one. Then, equipped with my digital map, I buy an all-day city ticket to set out on my quest.
It’s almost daybreak. The sun is still on its way up as I depart early, needlessly fearing I won’t manage to visit them all in daylight. The rules of the game are simple: I need to ‘catch them all’, and I need to move around using public transportation, making sure I don’t go underground, as it is necessary to see them – or their absence – with the full background of the city. Perhaps I can find more than I have on my list, so I want to keep my eyes wide open, just in case.
The truth is, there are only a handful of women written into the fabric of the city with a lasting force of stone and bronze. My list holds a few dozen monuments, but only nine of them are dedicated to historic figures, depicting merely seven women whose lives were deemed worth remembering. Two of them have been granted two statues. Lamentably, Warsaw is not that much different than, say, New York City – the latter boasting a staggering total of five monuments of women (with, fortunately, another six planned).
There is, of course, a small subgroup of monuments and sculptures that represent women without necessarily having a concrete person in mind or turning them into metonymic representations of larger, abstract concepts. Thus, there are some statues of mothers and motherhood; there are dancers erected as a tribute to all the artists; a few nameless sculptures of naked women; Holy Marys; a victorious Nike dedicated to the Heroes of Warsaw... And last but not least, the mermaids of Warsaw – the city’s symbol, found on plaques and public transportation. This doesn’t change the fact that the percentage women commemorated is, across the board, rather abysmal.
On my way to my first ‘meeting’, the bus passes several gargantuan monuments of men. There is Jan Matejko in Mokotów, accompanied with the iconic figure of the court jester Stańczyk. Further north in Ujazdowski Park, visible from afar is Jan Paderewski, sitting firmly on his chair, a figure hard to miss by the park’s entrance. Then the bus passes by Ronald Reagan and stops in close proximity to towering Wincenty Witos, leader of the pre-war peasant party. This is not, however, a piece about overbearing statues of men, so I shake off my old habits and proceed to find the first monument.
In order to find Wanda Tazbir, you have to know that her statue is not immediately noticeable and that you won’t bump into it if you happen to stroll around Three Crosses Square. Miss Tazbir is seated on a bench, right by the Instytut Głuchoniemych (Institute for the Deaf), and if you want to visit her, you need to make sure to walk through the gate into the Institute’s courtyard. It could be one of the most humble statues that you have seen in your life. You will surely feel a tremendous dissonance between the modesty of the statue and Tazbir’s biography. On the stone plaque, in three languages – Polish, English and Hebrew – you will see the impossibly long list of accomplishments that earns a woman a monument in Warsaw.
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Monument to Wanda Tazbir, Three Crosses Square in Warsaw, photo: Bartłomiej Zborowski / PAP
Tazbir was a soldier of the Armia Krajowa (The Home Army), a scout mistress of the Polish Scouting Association, was named ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for risking her life saving Jews during WWII, took part in the Warsaw Uprising and was imprisoned in Nazi German camps for it. When the war ended, she spent two years in Great Britain working for the Royal Air Force, but then returned to Poland to educate scout leaders and dedicate her life to the students at the Instytut Głuchoniemych. These days, having completed such an incredible life of valor, Wanda Tazbir is sitting quietly and humbly on her bench, unimposing and distant, separated by a fence from the hustle and bustle of the heart of the city.
Next up is Halina Mikołajska, waiting for me in a nearby park. During the walk from one monument to the other, which lasts merely nine minutes, I pass two pairs of stern policemen, realising I ventured a little bit too close to the Sejm. It is not the most welcoming part of the city, after all, but fortunately, I soon find respite next to Mikołajska’s monument. The inscription characterises the actress as the one who ‘served art on the stage of freedom’; underneath that short introduction, a quote from Czesław Miłosz reminds us that in historical moments, when nothing depends on people, in fact everything depends on them.
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Monument to Halina Mikołajska, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły Park, ceremonial unveiling of the monument, 2012, photo: Agata Grzybowska / AG
Mikołajska is simply beautiful, confidently standing her ground, despite the fact she is standing barefoot on a red marble slab. The statue is presumably holding a script in one of her hands, both of her arms slightly crossed. However, that gesture of defensiveness is in the midst of breaking up, as if her arms were about to unfold to a fully confident pose. The actress has her own tiny amphitheatre, as a couple of benches form a small circle around the statue, inviting tired passersby to sit down next to her and admire the spark in her eye, and her mocking smile she is sending in the direction of the nearby Parliament.
The novelist Eliza Orzeszkowa, who also resides in a park (albeit a little bit further down the road), wasn’t lucky enough to stand or sit. That is to say, of course, that her monument is simply a bust on a pedestal. It takes me a while to find her; after a few minutes of strolling back and forth in the park, I spot her behind a row of evergreens. The ‘living wisdom and the feeling heart of the whole epoch’, as Józef Kotarbiński described the writer at her funeral, is here commemorated in sandstone, her ‘living wisdom’ immobilised behind a stern look on her face.
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Monument to Eliza Orzeszków, carved by Henryk Kuna, 1938, Praga Park in Warsaw, photo: Mateusz Opasiński / Wikipedia.org
Later on in my quest, while strolling through a park in the neighborhood of Praga, I experience déjà vu. There she is again, her bust – with a similar, rigid grimace on her face, located off the main alley, hidden somewhere in the thickness of the greenery. Apart from Mikołajska and two Orzeszkowas, the fourth woman located in an arboreal setting is Maria Konopnicka. This remarkable Polish writer sits humbly and patiently in the Saxon Garden, her gaze slightly distant. Matronly and expressionless, Konopnicka’s monument does not reflect even slightly the vivid life of the writer.
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Monument to the poet Maria Konopnicka in the Saski Garden in Warsaw, photo: Jacek Turczyk / PAP
While the presence of women’s monuments in Warsaw is for the most part inconspicuous, access to General Maria Wittek is practically restricted. I head to the Polish Army Museum, imagining the monument dedicated to her will be greeting its visitors somewhere in front of the Museum’s gates, or at least in the forecourt. Before I get to the building, however, I must make my way through the maze of old aircrafts, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. Looking for the statue and getting lost in this ghostly junkyard, I almost give up, chased away by the burdensome omnipresence of wartime equipment. I probably shouldn’t even be there, as it’s the middle of the pandemic, and all the museums are closed. In a sudden burst of courage, however, I direct my steps to the now-abandoned entrance of the museum and cross the threshold, walking towards the courtyard. A security guard stops me midway, but before he manages to turn me out from the premises, I ask about Maria Wittek.
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Monument to Maria Wittek at the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, photo: Bartłomiej Zborowski / PAP
Thankfully, I am granted a few surveilled minutes with the first female general of the Polish army. Her life-size statue is located in the inner courtyard of the museum, between two conifer trees. Wittek, standing firmly and confidently on the ground, is locked away from the general public – despite the fact that her task here is of great importance. She stands here both for herself and for thousands of other women, as the statue is meant to commemorate her and thousands of (here anonymous) female soldiers who died fighting on all fronts of World War I and World War II. This is what the plaque next to the general is ironically pleading: ‘Passer-by, please commemorate [here] the many thousands of Polish women who died fighting for independence…’ even though conceivably, people do not pass by this statue very often.
On the other hand, across the river, in the neighborhood of Saska Kępa, many pedestrians pass by the Agnieszka Osiecka statue. She is seated, legs crossed and confident, at a table located on Francuska Street, close to a crosswalk – finally, a woman who is hard to miss. The lady is visibly caught mid-work, her poems scattered across the table, in a sight familiar to all slightly absent-minded writers. Approachable and accessible, Osiecka defies any conventional paradigms.
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Monument to Agnieszka Osiecka, Saska Kępa in Warsaw, photo: Wojtek Laski / East News
The difference in portraying women on Warsaw monuments is perhaps best encapsulated by two vastly different monuments of Marie Skłodowska-Curie, which I visit to conclude my pilgrimage. One of them, erected in 1935, depicts the scientist with quasi-masculine features. Apart from the folds of her dress, not much gives away her femininity. She is standing straight, her head facing down, with a hand supporting her chin. She looks worried, pensive and absent.
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The Monument to Maria Skłodowska-Curie, on the square at the corner of Wawelska and Skłodowskiej-Curie streets in Warsaw, photo: Marek Bazak / East New
On the contrary, the Marie Curie standing on a Wisła escarpment – a rather recent addition to the landscape of Warsaw – stands here facing a beautiful view of the river. Apparently, this is where Skłodowska-Curie loved to take her walks, so it feels good to know she is standing where she felt the most comfortable. The folds of her coat and dress are flowing, therefore giving off a feeling of movement, of taking a step forward. She is holding in her grasp her own accomplishment – Polonium, the chemical element she discovered.
She seems to be awaiting a change on the horizon, and thanks to her, so are we.
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Monument to Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Kościelna Street, Nowe Miasto, Warsaw, photo: Arkadiusz Ziółek / East News
Written by Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur, Jan 2021
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