Vikipeedia:GLAM/Estonia-Poland relations/1

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Polish students in Dorpat 1802–1918[muuda lähteteksti]

Although the University of Dorpat was first opened in 1632, it was closed down due to the Great Northern War and the university ceased to exist for almost a hundred years before it was reopened in 1802. Although by 1802 Dorpat (today’s Tartu) had already been part of the Russian Empire for almost a hundred years, the reestablished university still used German as a teaching language. The city itself, which grew from a small provincial town to a real university town and center of attraction due to the reopening of the university, had a real German vibe – the stories of that time even describe that visiting Dorpat gave people from other parts of the country a feeling of being abroad.

Such a pleasantly liberal atmosphere and high-quality education attracted a large number of Polish students to study in the city, who in the period 1802–1918 made up about one tenth of the entire Dorpat’s student body and are known in Polish as "dorpatczycy". The temporary closure of the universities of Warsaw and Vilnius after the November Uprising of 1830–1831 certainly plays a role in such a large proportion of Polish students, and the fact that Russification of the University of Warsaw in the second half of the 19th century began almost 20 years before the Russification of the University of Dorpat. The main fields of study that Poles came to study at the University of Dorpat were medicine, economics, law, diplomacy, theology and mathematics.

The first Poles arrived to the University of Dorpat shortly after the reopening of the university. It didn't take long for the first student organisations and associations of Poles studying in Dorpat to emerge. Probably the best known and the most important of them is the oldest Polish student corporation, Konwent Polonia, which is still operating today and was founded in 1828 in Dorpat. With short breaks due to the political situation, Polonia operated in Dorpat until 1918, after which the organization moved to Vilnius.

Although the Baltic Germans studying in Dorpat, who formed a clear majority in the student body until the beginning of the 20th century, were rather cautious and kept away from being on close terms with the memebers of Konwent Polonia, there was one clear exception – at the beginning of Polonia's years of operation, a great friendship was established with the Baltic Germans’ Curonia, which united Baltic German students from Courland studying in Dorpat. When Curonia celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1908, Polonia’s members gifted them a silver-framed ox horn with the words "Polonia-Curoniae". To buy the horn, the members of Polonia had already started raising money in the autumn of 1898. Such a precious gift to the Baltic Germans was, of course, astonishing to the Poles, who weren’t members of Polonia. They accused Polonia’s members of, for example, degrading Poland's dignity and indifference to Prussian arbitrariness in Poznań. At the same time, we must not forget the endurance of Curonia's and Polonia's friendship, and the fact that although German students in Dorpat at that time were in a much more privileged position than Poles, it were the members of Curonia who stood up for the privileges and rights of the members of Polonia in this German-led "student state" The Polish students also were on good terms with the local Estonians. While in the first half of the 19th century there were still very few Estonian students studying at the university, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century more and more Estonians were able to obtain higher education at the university. One of the most important milestone of increasing the numbers of other students beside the German ones happened in 1895 when the teaching language of the university was changed from German to Russian. This, of course, led to the departure of most German professors, and many German students left with them. However, it was not only the Russians who took their place, but such changes also favored an increase in the number of Estonian, Polish and other students in the student body. The increase in the number of Estonian students also led to the growth of student organizations uniting Estonians. The first Estonian corporation founded in Estonia, Fraternitas Estica, grew a strong friendship with the aforementioned Konwent Polonia, which continues to this day, although Konwent Polonia moved from Dorpat to Vilnius after the end of the First World War and now operates in Gdańsk.

The Polish student life in Dorpat was quite colorful. The students went to bars and restaurants, organized duels, attended concerts and theater performances, practised sports and, of course, studied. The students also organized shorter trips to the countryside, where they could forget about their everyday problems and just relax and enjoy nature and the people around them. In retrospect, many Poles who studied in Dorpat have positively recalled the times spent there, even saying that they spent the best years of their lives in Dorpat. While a considerable number of Poles were still studying in Dorpat during the First World War, everything changed after 1918, and in 1919 the language of instruction at the university was changed to Estonian, which is why only a few Poles have studied in Dorpat since then.

Sources[muuda lähteteksti]

Polish Baltic fraternities before 1918. Warsaw. 2011. ISBN 978-83-933116-0-6

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