Research projects of the Section

An edition of the accounts of Main Town Gdańsk from the second half of the 14th and the 15th century

Funded by: National Science Centre
Call: SONATA 3
Project number: 2012/05/D/HS3/03679
Project leader: Dr Marcin Grulkowski
Duration of the project: 2013–2017

Project objectives: Only a fraction of the account books of Main Town Gdańsk has been edited, with most editions dating back to the period before 1939. The aim of the project was to conduct research on the external appearance and internal composition (content) of the oldest books created in the chancellery of Main Town Gdańsk and maintained by the accounts office (kamlaria) with a view to preparing an edition. The books subject to the survey included the oldest book of accounts from the years 1379–1382 was included in the survey (ref. APGd, 300, 12/1), three hand-registers of the office from the second half of the 15th century (ref. APGd, 300, 12/488), the register of income and expenditures of the office from 1481–1483 (ref. APGd, 300, 12/489), and the oldest two rolls of the underaged of Main Town Gdańsk from the years 1441–1460 and 1451–1460 (ref. APGd, 300, 12/479–480). An important objective of the project was to compare the analysed material with books of this type produced by chancelleries in other cities under the influence of German law.

Results of the project: The account books produced by the accounts office of Main Town Gdańsk were published in two volumes of the publication series Studia i Materiały do Dziejów Kancelarii w Gdańsku (see: Monographic series). The publication of these sources makes them more widely available for use in research not only on city finances, but also on childcare in the late Middle Ages. These editions will broaden the knowledge about the history of many historic buildings in Gdańsk. In the future, they will also be used in research on the society of late medieval Gdańsk and the family networks which existed within it.

Gdańsk houses and their inhabitants from the late Middle Ages to the mid-19th century

Funded by: National Science Centre
Grant call: OPUS 5
Project number: 2013/09/D/HS3/00603
Project leader: Professor Edmund Kizik
Duration of the project: 2014–2018

Project objectives: The aim of the project is to offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary reconstruction of housing conditions in Gdańsk in the pre-industrial period with a particular emphasis on sociotopography and its transformations from the Middle Ages to the first half of the 19th century. The project aims to also characterise the types of residential buildings (their decoration, facilities, distribution in certain parts of the city, and location within individual plots of land) and to define the social functions of residential houses in Gdańsk. Another field of interest is the legal regulations related both to the construction process (e.g. the role of fire walls) and to the commercial uses of residential buildings in Gdańsk (e.g. the rent market, the role of land registries, the institutions of Gdańsk law in relation to debt recovery). The process of political marginalisation of Gdańsk in the first half of the 19th century, which manifested itself in the preservation of housing patterns, was also one of the topics covered by the study.

Results of the project: The continuation of the series Studia i materiały do dziejów domu gdańskiego [Studies and materials for the history of the Gdańsk House]. A very important achievement is the monograph on the sociotopographic diversity in Gdańsk in the first half of the 19th century, i.e. at a time when the city’s prominence was on the wane (E. Barylewska-Szymańska, Z. Maciakowska, Miasto i ludzie u progu nowoczesności. Socjotopografia Gdańska w pierwszej połowie XIX wieku [The city and its people at the threshold of modernity. A sociotopography of Gdańsk in the first half of the 19th century], Gdańsk–Warszawa, 2016). The results of the project are published in the collective volume Dom gdański i jego mieszkańcy od późnego średniowiecza do połowy XIX wieku [The Gdańsk House from the late Middle Ages to the mid-19th century], ed. E. Kizik, Gdańsk–Warszawa, 2017).

A celebration of power. Public ceremonies in the major cities of Royal Prussia in the 16th–18th centuries

Funded by: National Science Centre
Grant call: OPUS 9
Project number: 2015/17/D/HS3/00169
Project leader: Professor Edmund Kizik
Duration of the project: 2016–2019

Project objectives: The aim of this project is to reconstruct the course and significance (in terms of their political, propaganda, aesthetic and economic roles) of public ceremonies organised in Gdańsk, Elbląg and Toruń, i.e. the major cities of Royal Prussia in the 15th–18th centuries, in honour of the state (royal) and city power. The study covers the celebrations of elections, coronations, homages, triumphs, city ingresses, marriages, funerals, and the births of royal children, as well as the election of mayors, the anniversaries of Poland’s sovereignty over the cities (1645, 1745), and the anniversaries of the Reformation (1617, 1630, 1717, 1730). Alongside the reconstruction of ceremonies and the presentation of logistical issues tackled by organisers, the project outcomes will also include a search for diplomatic, ceremonial and iconological-literary models that were used in the preparation of celebration scenarios. The authors venture a hypothesis that the ceremonial scenarios were developed at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, during the reign of Sigismund III. They were continued until the end of Poland’s sovereignty over those areas and the incorporation of the cities in question into the Prussian monarchy of the Hohenzollern family.

Translation into English and publication of Sylwia Bykowska’s book Rehabilitation and Ethnic Verification of the Polish Population in the Gdańsk voivodeship after World War II

Institution financing the project: The Programme of the Minister of Science and Higher Education “National Programme for the Development of Humanities” (NPRH), 2015
Module: Internationalisation 3a
Project number: 3aH 15 0035 83
Duration of the project: 2016–2018

Objectives of the project: The project consists in translating into English the monograph by Sylwia Bykowska entitled Rehabilitacja i weryfikacja narodowościowa ludności polskiej w województwie gdańskim po II wojnie światowej (Gdańsk, 2012). The funding will be used for the publication of the book in the Peter Lang publishing house as part of the series Geschichte – Erinnerung – Politik. Studies in History, Memory and Politics (eds. P. Forecki and A. Wolff-Powęska).

“History of Gdańsk”, vol. 6: 1945–1990

Institutions financing the project: the statutory funds of IH PAN, the City of Gdańsk
Project leader: Professor Edmund Kizik (IH PAN), Professor Mirosław Golon (the Gdańsk branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)
Project Secretary: Dr Sylwia Bykowska (IH PAN)
Duration of the project: 2017–2022

Project objectives: The aim of the project is to offer a synthesis of the history of Gdańsk after the Second World War and to complete the History of Gdańsk series initiated by Professor Edmund Cieślak. The project is based on cooperation with the Gdańsk branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. The project also involves the Deputy Director of the Deutsches Polen-Institut, Dr Peter Oliver Loew. An additional objective is to gather together a scholarly community studying the recent history of Gdańsk. The project will produce two parts of Volume 6 of History of Gdańsk presenting the history of the city (1945–1960 and 1960–1990, respectively). The series will end with Volume 7, containing a bibliography of works on the history of Gdańsk published since the 1980s and a supplement to the formerly published bibliography of works printed before 1985 (E. Kizik, “Projekt kolejnych tomów Historii Gdańska. Dylematy badawcze”, in: Szkice z życia codziennego w Gdańsku w latach 1945–1989, eds. G. Berendt, E. Kizik, Gdańsk, 2012, pp. 193–199.