Although in recent decades Count Władysław Zamoyski has been attracting a lot of interest on the part of historians, which resulted in numerous papers and popular science works, he has not yet been the subject of an exhaustive scientific monograph. Its preparation is, however, going to be a difficult task for its future author. The many dispersed source materials and the Count’s more than 40 years long social, economic, and to a smaller extent political activity under the Prussian partition, in Galicia, among the Polish emigrants in France and during the first years of the Second Polish Republic – need to be described in the historical context, and, what follows, call for broad knowledge extending beyond these sources. Zamoyski’s path leading to his establishment in 1924 of the foundation ”Zakłady Kórnickie” – his life’s grandest work – should constitute the narrative axis weaving through all the chapters of his biography. It would be desirable to present extensively not only the Count’s activity in Galicia, Zakopane and his role in the famous dispute on Morskie Oko, but also his less researched and less known participation in the Polish-German fight for land in the Prussian partition in the late 19th and early 20th century.

This paper discusses Gen. Józef Bem’s activity related to the promotion and improvement of the Polish mnemonic method ( méthode mnémonique polonaise) in France. The manner of teaching chronology – and, over time, also other subjects – announced by Antoni Jaźwiński at the turn of the 1830s, was developed from 1836 by Gen. Bem and his collaborators. The evolution of the system, changes of the name of the method, as well as efforts to popularise it in education, have largely been reconstructed on the basis of materials held by the Kórnik Library. The analyses covered an interesting, mainly hand-written collection Korespondencja gen. J. Bema w sprawie metody tegoż uczenia historii [ Gen. J. Bem’s Correspondence Concerning His Method of Teaching History] and other relevant sources. The research made it possible to verify the findings of Gen. Józef Bem’s biographers concerning his activity in the period 1836–1846. Source analysis also facilitates reflection on the actual significance and impact of Bem’s didactic solutions, which as of 1841 were called méthode mnémonique franco-polonaise.

The numerous cimelia of the Kórnik Library include Stanisław Sarnicki’s work Descriptio veteris ac novae Poloniae, printed by Aleksy Rodecki in Cracow in 1585. It is protected by a parchment binding with orientalising decoration marked with a supralibros dedicated by Jan Sienieński to King Stephen Báthory. In view of a scant number of the surviving bookbinding bathoriana, the paper provides a book cover-focused analysis of the work. It makes it possible to examine the binding against the Polish bookbinding art of the late 16th century, identify its maker, link it to other bindings of printed books from Báthory’s book collection, and picture the connections between the decoration of the covers and the illustrations of the publication the binding protected.

This paper analyses, using the recently restored Evangelical cemetery at Radzewice as an example, the circumstances of the phenomenon which should be described as funerary inheritance. The cemetery, just like tens of other cemeteries in its nearest vicinity, fell into oblivion after the Evangelical community was displaced. However, in contrast to the majority of non-Catholic burial sites in the region, its further decomposition and ruination were stopped owing to the activity of the persons indicated in the publication. The above was possible in view of certain specific local relations, the existence of which formed the basis of the inheritance process. Above all, they included the dominance of individual memory over the collective and the national memory, and the preserved sense of sacred space, connected with the area, space of the cemetery. The reconstruction of the former cemetery chapel was a harbinger of the restitution of the cemetery, which was carried out in the late 1980s. Its circumstances and consequences, i.e. the establishment of a memorial site and a new Catholic cemetery next to the former Evangelical cemetery, now covered by maintenance, picture the funerary inheritance announced by the title of this paper.

The wheel seems to be an invention which – created at the dawn of human civilisation – does not require any changes. Its implicit perfection is a derivative of the definition of the wheel given in mathematics. However, this simplified point of view needs to be confronted with the conditions of land transport, complete with the uneven surfaces hampering the movement of the wheel.
This work presents the subsequent steps, which – during an attempt at a reform of knowledge on land transport – could have led to Józef Hoene-Wroński’s invention of a new type of the wheel. The applied analysis was based on the law of creation developed by the philosopher. The invention is so revolutionary that it still cannot be accepted by constructors of land vehicles.

This paper seeks to acquaint the readers with problems related to Wojciech Kętrzyński’s 1893 edition of Epitaphium Dithardi abbatis [ Epitaph of abbot Dithard] in volume six of Monumenta Poloniae Historica. In contrast to the information the scholar disseminated which was subsequently commonly adopted, Epitaphium Dithardi abbatis was not a part of the hand-written collection of the so-called Oliva sources ( Fontes Olivenses). This laudatory work in a verse form, in honour of the first abbot of the Oliva monastery, was probably created in the 13th century, and today is known mainly from the 17th-century epitaph tablet surviving in the Oliva Cathedral in Gdańsk, which Wojciech Kętrzyński did not see personally. He issued Epitaphium Dithardi abbatis taking as the basis a copy of the text surviving in the Kórnik manuscript call no. BK 65, copied from this tablet in 1749. Today, in view of the existence of an older copy of the text, included in the Gdańsk manuscript (APG, call no. 940/422) copied not from the tablet but from the 15th-century polychrome, Kętrzyński’s edition should be considered insufficient.