Archives of the Polish Ethnological Society

History of the repository
This repository has direct provenance to the Library of the Polish Ethnological Society, an organization which operated in Cieszyn in the years 1901-1939. In 1930, the collection of the Polish Ethnological Society was taken over by the City Museum. Until 1960, manuscripts from other sources, which found their way to the Museum, were also incorporated into the abovementioned collection. This was the case with a part of the Museum’s own archive and items from Leopold Jan Szersznik Foundation. Therefore, the name “Archives of the Polish Ethnological Society” is used just for convenience.

 Contents of the repository
The repository includes almost 9,000 items, such as documents and acts (originals and copies), literary and scientific works, correspondence, iconography, sheet music, ephemera etc. They document all aspects of political, social, economic and cultural life from the 16th to the 20th century. The great majority of these materials are related to Cieszyn Silesia in terms of their content and origin.

Search system
This repository was organized and described in the 1960s and 1970s by Ludwik Brożek and Jan Konieczny. The collection has a record drawn up by hand and was grouped into 45 thematic categories. Each category covers from several dozen to several hundred individual documents or groups of documents. Each category has a set of cards with its distinct number (1-45) and the number of documents included in that category (starting from 1 in each category).

Components of individual item descriptions
Descriptions usually include the following elements:

    • the number of a given document in its category and the invalid serial number,
    • title or identification of the content,
    • incipit and explicit,
    • creation place and date,
    • external description (number of pages, dimensions, notes on the material and script, the relation to the original, stamps).

Sometimes there is no mention of the incipit or explicit, content or some other elements.

 Call marks
The call mark in this repository is made up of the letters APTL, a number which indicates a given category (from 1 to 45) and the number of a given document within a specific category, e.g. APTL 01-20, APTL 12-281.

 Essential literature
Grim: Ks. Józef Londzin (Szkic biograficzny), “Roczniki Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk na Śląsku”, 1930, pp. 68-95; F. Popiołek: Zbiory cieszyńskie, “Roczniki Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk na Śląsku”, 1930, pp. 220-224; L. Brożek: Zbiory cieszyńskie, (in:) Biblioteka Śląska 1922-1972, ed. Jan Kantyka, Katowice 1973, pp. 67-83; A. Rusnok: Biblioteka Polskiego Towarzystwa Ludoznawczego w Cieszynie, (in:) “Pamiętnik Cieszyński”, vol. 11: 1996, pp. 43-52.

Książnica Cieszyńska