Abstract

DOI

The Zakopane Style – Stanisław Witkiewicz’s artistic idea from the turn of the 20th century – was heavily entangled in politics even at the beginning of its history. In their analyses of handicraft and architecture designed by Witkiewicz, researchers have very often pointed out the national¹ and, at the same time, regional² character of the concept formulated by the Polish painter and critic. Initially, the Witkiewicz style was primarily meant to offer a remedy for the “Zakopane manner” – which was becoming widespread in the Tatra Mountains region, promoted by Austro-Hungary as a partitioning power – a term that referred to the artistic revision of the regional style favored at the Zakopane School of Wood Industry. Witkiewicz’s architectural-artistic idea, whose reach was merely regional, became the first major concept of national style at the threshold of the century, accompanied by proliferating pseudo-scientific theories that legitimized its “proto-Polish” status.³ This regional-national ambivalence inherent in the Zakopane Style provokes new research questions. Owing to the boycott of the “Zakopane manner,” a style championed by the Austrian authorities, and the turn to regional art, Witkiewicz halted the process of transforming Zakopane into one of many mountain health resorts within the Austro-Hungarian borders. Furthermore, he turned the town into a center of national culture on the enslaved Polish territories. Tapping into the tools of postcolonial theory, I seek to demonstrate that the Zakopane Style, which served to confront an imposed artistic-architectural convention, itself became a style of “the other” – a colonizer from Warsaw.⁴ Both the institutionalization of the “Zakopane manner” and the popularization and scholarly legitimization of the Zakopane Style bear characteristics of the cultural oppression of “others” – the indigenous population of the Sub-Tatra region. Further in the text, I seek to prove that this double colonization continues to exert a major influence on the architectural identity of modern-day Zakopane.

Setting the text in the framework of postcolonial theory results above all from my willingness to use specific notions – identity and “the imagined” – derived from the postcolonial triad of geography, memory, and creation.⁵ The concretized conceptual apparatus distinguishes postcolonial studies in art history from the abundant literature devoted to relations between art and politics.⁶ Postcolonial theory is currently applied with much success in cultural research outside “Oriental” territories, as shown by numerous publications that focus on Central and Eastern Europe.⁷ The essence of postcolonial studies in this region is an attempt to analyze relations between culture and power, and to answer questions concerning the identity of its inhabitants. Research in the field concentrates primarily on relations between empire and the cultures of resistance that act against it, as well as relations between centers and peripheries. Ewa Domańska formulated the universal dimension of postcolonialism as follows: “Postcolonial theory pays particular attention to ‘colonial aftermaths,’ to the persistence of the colonial system and the stigma of the colonial past which resonates in the contemporary cultures of states that are already independent and poses a serious problem for their identity, as well as to the symptoms of new, neocolonial forms of subordination resulting from the expansion of capitalism and the processes of globalization.”⁸

All the postcolonial aftermaths discussed by Domańska can be observed in Central and Eastern Europe, a region that has experienced abrupt political changes and long-lasting forms of enslavement for centuries. The development of postcolonial studies on an “alien” geopolitical territory testifies to the “traveling” character of this “concept-as-method”⁹; however, it is worth adopting a critical approach to attempts to apply postcolonialism in Polish research, where – as Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez rightly emphasized – “practices have more in common with the need to favorably manage the stigma,”¹⁰ and often function as “an element of nationalistic-martyrological narratives.”¹¹ Postcolonialism in Poland, a country with a rich and stormy history, often serves biased interpretations, laying bare authors’ stereotypical attitudes, for example toward Russians.¹² The theoretical tool in question is also seldom used beyond analyses of cultural identity. This does not mean, however, that no publications exist that go against the grain of the general tendency; each year sees the release of numerous and valuable studies in which research centers on ever newer topics, such as the exhaustive, comparative urban studies by Błażej Brzostek¹³ and Markian Prokopovych,¹⁴ and Owen Hatherley’s¹⁵ extensive book devoted to communist architectural koine.

Studying relations between empires and subjugated territories, along with the cultural analysis of politically dependent societies from the postcolonial perspective, often allows for a revision of consolidated views and academic paradigms while opening up completely new, updated research perspectives. A very promising field in this respect is offered by studies devoted to architecture, which powerfully expresses political influence and relations between the colonizer and the colonized. As Martin Heidegger wrote: “The relation between location and space lies in the nature of these things [buildings] qua locations, but so does the relation of the location to the man who lives at that location.”¹⁶

The frequently shifting borders in Central and Eastern Europe have contributed to the fact that the buildings in which people live are relics of the postcolonial past and, as such, may be researched not only in the context of their architectural value, but also their political connotations. Postcolonialism in the field of art history or – more narrowly – in the field of architecture opens an interesting perspective for researchers that allows for the reinterpretation of buildings as indicators of political history and determinants of their inhabitants’ identity.

Some of the most interesting areas of architectural research concern metropoles and borderlands. An example is the apt description of Warsaw as the “Paris of the Other Europe”¹⁷ and the highlighting of architecture’s role in co-creating dependent “Otherness”: “Symbols of dependence dominated in the real and imaginary landscape of the two cities [Warsaw and Bucharest], marked by enormous buildings violently hammered into their city centers. Under Russian rule, Warsaw had an Orthodox sobor towering above the city in the early 20th century, and later, in the mid-20th century – the Palace of Culture and Science.”¹⁸

Not only did Russia as a partitioning power introduce in Warsaw the distinctive signs of its presence noted by Brzostek, but also subtler indicators, for example the buildings and architectural alterations designed by Antonio Corazzi, such as the Grand Theatre, raised in the place of the Marywil complex established by Queen Marie Casimire Sobieska.¹⁹ The Prussian Partition left an equally indelible mark on Poznań in the form of the Imperial Castle,²⁰ established at the beginning of the 20th century and adapted by the Nazis during World War II. The castle formed part of a broader project to redevelop the city center.²¹ In turn, the territories under the Austrian Partition experienced a completely different process whereby architecture was given a political dimension.

A territorial superpower in 19th-century Europe, Austro-Hungary is associated with the tradition of pluralism, the multiplicity of languages, and the diversity of cultures. Studies devoted to the period are dominated by the belief in the inspirational role of its capital city – Vienna – and its positive impact on the monarchy’s peripheral cities,²² such as Budapest, Kraków, Lviv,²³ and Prague. As for Kraków under the Austrian Partition, Emil Brix wrote: “Vienna could thus offer Polish Cracow an opportunity to develop its cultural aspirations that did not collide with the national interest.”²⁴ Satisfying the aspirations mentioned by Brix was part of the acculturation process on the territories of the Austrian Partition. It is noteworthy that despite the existence of numerous pan-European tendencies in 19th-century architecture,²⁵ cities under the reign of Franz Joseph were characterized by similar architectural and urban planning solutions, developed in part during the redevelopment of the Ringstrasse in Vienna.²⁶ This well-considered architectural canon slowly spread across the entire territory of the empire (the influence of the center on the peripheries).²⁷ The late-Habsburgian architectural legacy formed something of an artistic community in Central and Eastern Europe. Every major city was given or sought artistic framing modeled on the Vienna metropolis, as shown by the admiration for the Austro-Hungarian capital felt in Polish Kraków: “For the Cracow of the second half of the nineteenth century, Vienna was one of the models for the status of ‘Polish Athens,’ as Cracow was called at the turn of the century. Architects who came from Vienna or studied there left their mark on the urban development of the city.”²⁸ As opposed to the other partitioning powers, the Austrians pursued a “soft policy” in a subtle way: by training architects and encouraging the use of ready designs published in textbooks and architectural template books they introduced similar building forms. For this reason, the architecture, but also the culture of Galicia is often evaluated solely in positive terms. This can be seen particularly clearly in statements by the advocate of the concept of Mitteleuropa, Emil Brix: “One of the traditions of Central Europe is the search for cultural leadership, and not the pursuit of equality. […] We should therefore think whether it is possible for cultures to co-exist on an equal footing, or whether it is rather about assimilation, adaptation, and uniformization.”²⁹ The postcolonial perspective ushers in a reflection on relations between culture, power, and identity. By offering Kraków the possibility of cultural development, Vienna existed as a politically powerful imperial center that subordinated another, previously important, cultural center. Granting a culture-formative role to the Austro-Hungarian capital – regardless of the reasons why the capital gained its prerogative to influence major cities populated by other nationalities – testifies to the exclusive focus on cultural profits derived from belonging to the Habsburg state. Vienna appears as a political superpower that generates the atmosphere of the seeming “imaginary” freedom for Kraków to develop in cultural terms.

The architecture of large urban centers³⁰ often provides the main topic of detailed studies, whereas the artistic situation of the Polish borderlands, where “identities intersect and cause trouble,”³¹ is not as popular an object of critical studies. I mainly refer here to the territories that allowed for building culture “from scratch” and implementing a colonial “civilizational mission.” In the 19th century, Podhale was one such region under the Austrian Partition, especially the Zakopane Valley. Flourishing interest in the Tatra Mountains, which led in the early 20th century to the establishment of an important center of culture in their foothills – not only regional but also Polish in general – had been part of the European phenomenon of discovering mountains since the turn of the 19th century.³² Initially, those territories were not particularly attractive for Austria as a partitioning empire, as shown for example by the sluggish introduction of economic reforms³³; however, on the tide of the massive population influx from all the other Partitions, especially the oppressive Russian one,³⁴ and the mythologization of the Tatra Mountains as an area that “preserved original Polish culture,”³⁵ the small town in the foothills became an arena of cultural struggle, which manifested itself most powerfully in architecture and the decorative arts.

Owing to the activity of the Tatra Society [Towarzystwo Tatrzańskie] founded by the Warsaw physician Tytus Chałubiński, Zakopane began to witness the establishment of urban buildings and institutions.³⁶ The first structures, raised in the last quarter of the 19th century, largely repeated the forms of Alpine chalets while also representing vernacular architecture. Moving slightly away from the pan-European debate on this mode of building³⁷ and focusing on architectural phenomena in Zakopane alone, we need to underline that the builders of the era perfectly imitated forms known from Tyrol and Switzerland. Buildings in Zakopane fully corresponded to the vision of the architecture of health resorts in the foothills, thus forming part of the Austrian architectural community that was supposed to embrace this territory.³⁸ The “paradoxical” phenomenon whereby national styles were shaped on the basis of the Alpine style was discussed by Marta Leśniakowska, who emphasized that all initiatives toward creating vernacular architecture sought to move away from the Alpine style, which, nevertheless, offered the main source of inspiration.³⁹ The first special manner of building in the Sub-Tatra territories, initiated by Franciszek Neużil from Czechia and continued by Edgar Kováts from Hungary, was the “Zakopane manner,” officially approved by the partitioning power and developed at the Zakopane School of Wood Industry.⁴⁰ Practically the only difference between that style – embraced as one of the national styles on the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire⁴¹ – and the Alpine style was its builders, Tatra highlanders in the former case. As early as the 1880s, visitors to the Podhale town noted the groundlessness of the “Zakopane” building style. This can be seen in a report by Walery Eljasz Radzikowski from the visit of the Belgian architect Charles Buls to the Tatra region.⁴² Both the foreign visitor and the author of the first monograph devoted to the Zakopane Style believed that the Zakopane School of Wood Industry, headed by a Germanized Czech, posed a serious threat to regional folk art. They noted the incongruence between Alpine architecture, compiled with colorful edelweiss motifs (an Alpine rather than a local flower), and the simple huts of local highlanders.⁴³ Despite faint voices of opposition, the first buildings, inns, and chalets for guests were built in typical Tyrolean style.⁴⁴ Designs were based on ready templates from abundantly illustrated Austrian architectural textbooks.⁴⁵ As many as 50 new buildings in the Tyrolean style were raised in Zakopane over two years (1890–1891)⁴⁶; moreover, between 1876 and 1890, the activities of Neużil and Kováts, who built following the “Zakopane manner,” gained recognition in Vienna, where praise was lavished on the work of the two artists.⁴⁷

That architectural and artistic concept was boldly confronted in the last decade of the 19th century by Stanisław Witkiewicz, alongside other individuals fascinated with Zakopane, hailing primarily from the Warsaw intelligentsia. Witkiewicz systematically described his activities in Kurier Warszawski in 1891. The series titled “Styl zakopiański” [The Zakopane Style] begins with an account of Witkiewicz’s first encounter with the folk buildings and handicraft of Podhale in 1886.⁴⁸ The same text also attacks Franciszek Neużil and the “Zakopane manner.” Witkiewicz described the situation in which he, along with Mr. and Miss Dembowski, confronted Neużil, seeking to convince him to use Polish highlander (and not Tyrolean) motifs at the Zakopane School of Wood Industry. In subsequent issues of Kurier, Witkiewicz harshly criticized the formal characteristics of the “Zakopane manner.” In his argument, he pointed out that Neużil made use of typically Tyrolean ornaments, such as edelweiss instead of grass of Parnassus, a Tatra plant, and denounced the overall “gaudy” character of his work.⁴⁹ Three years before his lampooning of the “Zakopane manner” appeared in Kurier Warszawski, Witkiewicz published a drawing of a door in the Zakopane Style in another magazine, Wisła, thus anticipating its establishment.⁵⁰ Construction of the first building designed by Witkiewicz began in 1892.⁵¹ Not only was this a manifesto against the Tyrolean-style architecture promoted by architects who pursued the cultural policy of the Austrian Partition, but also a response to numerous Polish men of letters (such as Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Bolesław Prus, and Antoni Sygietyński) who had been calling for the formulation of a national style since the 1860s.⁵² The Zakopane Style was founded on two formal principles. The first involved the color effect of natural materials (wood and stone), chiaroscuro, and the logical structure of the shell.⁵³ The second concerned decoration – Witkiewicz introduced common plants of the Tatra Mountains to the repertoire of ornaments: the martagon lily, fern, carline thistle, mak halny, and creeping pine.⁵⁴ Over the course of time, the style that was supposed to counter the Tyrolean manner of building became a national style promoted by Witkiewicz and other visitors to Zakopane, as shown by the number of house designs commissioned from Witkiewicz by individuals from across Poland.⁵⁵ His variation of the highlander hut acquired the rank of a “national Promethidion,”⁵⁶ as remarked in press comments on the Zakopane Style from the turn of the century:

And the Zakopane Style could have been tainted if it had not been for the persistence and passion of St. Witkiewicz, who declared war on the incompetent imitations of Switzerland and Tyrol. Beginning with Koliba, built in 1892, and ending with the strangely beautiful villa of Mr. and Miss Pawlikowski, an entire range of buildings was raised (around 30) according to his designs, not only in Zakopane, but also in the Kingdom and Lithuania. […] The new search for documents of vernacular art and the accidental discoveries convince us that decorative and architectural motifs encountered in Zakopane are not unique to Podhale. Similar motifs have been found in the Kingdom of Poland in Sławków, in the village of Charoszczyzna Wielka near Miechowem, in the town of Czeladź near Będzin, and in a great many other towns. These are remnants of the old-time Polish style, which had almost completely disappeared under the levelling influence of pan-European culture and has been preserved solely in secluded locations. Young artists and builders have so far been trained outside the country, unaware of the rich field of historical vernacular art.⁵⁷

Highlanders also believed in the salvific mission of the Zakopane Style:

[Witkiewicz] was the first person in Poland to start work toward Polonizing the artistic industry, and he did a lot for resort architecture industry because he created it. Without Witkiewicz, Zakopane and Podhale would look different, like Smokowiec on the other side of the Tatra Mountains – Tyrolean and Swiss styles. That one part of Poland was built in a uniform manner is thanks to him, and it is to his merit that he was able to convince people that he should build houses in a highlander style with highlanders.⁵⁸

The above-quoted statements highlight two different perspectives on the function of the Zakopane Style. For the author of the first quote, Warsaw architect Porczyński, it was a collective national style that was supposed to appeal to all Poles across the borders of the Partitions, whereas for the author of the second statement, highlander Wojciech Brzega, it offered a weapon with which to fight for local art, underscoring the difference between Podhale and other mountainous regions.

Another interesting aspect in this context is the negative reception of the Zakopane Style in Kraków, where Secession architecture, popular in Vienna, was promoted at the time.⁵⁹ At the beginning of the 20th century, Architekt magazine published texts by its editor, Władysław Ekielski.⁶⁰ These failed to mention Witkiewicz even once until as late as 1902,⁶¹ and the only architectural novelty from Podhale that was actually praised was the “Zakopane manner,” represented by Franciszek Neużil’s successor, Edgar Kováts. It was only in 1902 that Architekt reported on the course of the conflict between Witkiewicz and the directors of the Zakopane School of Wood Industry, siding with Witkiewicz’s opponents.⁶² The political conditions and the architectural tastes of the era compel a question about the attitude of Austria, as a partitioning power, to the Zakopane Style.

On that matter, hints can be found in reports and comments from the Paris Exposition of 1900. Witkiewicz was invited by the organizers of the Galician Pavilion, Julian Zachariewicz and Marian Sokołowski, to send materials concerning the Zakopane Style in order to present them in Paris. The documents submitted to Zachariewicz were not displayed due to the curator’s sudden death, and “the Zakopane Style was excluded from the program of the Lviv committee. Its place was taken by the ‘Zakopane manner,’ which imitated that popular concept, and Mr. Franke and Mr. Kováts sent to Paris a pavilion in the ‘Western- and Eastern-Galician style’.”⁶³

The pavilion was exalted by Ekielski, who one year later criticized Witkiewicz in Architekt.⁶⁴ Co-organizer of the exhibition Sokołowski established a close cooperation with Witkiewicz, but that eventually failed. Commissioned by the Kraków professor, Witkiewicz and highlanders built a model of the Pod Jedlami villa,⁶⁵ which arrived at the show destroyed and was prohibited from display by the Austrian commissioners.⁶⁶ The symbolic exclusion of the Zakopane Style at the Paris Exposition, and promotion of an essentially Tyrolean-Swiss work, called the “Zakopane manner” in a homely fashion, can be interpreted through the Heideggerian category of the “world picture,”⁶⁷ applied by Timothy Mitchell in his postcolonial analysis Colonising Egypt.⁶⁸ In the light of this category, the Paris Exposition, or, more precisely, the Galician exhibition, was supposed to represent the orderly reality of art in the Austrian Partition. The pavilions, which failed to show Witkiewicz’s designs and the model of the villa, presented the artistic realm accepted by the partitioning power and corresponding to its vision of art on the territory of Galicia. The gesture of the exclusion of Zakopane Style buildings by the Austrian commissioners can be understood symbolically as a political refusal, which testified to a colonial perspective on art even on the territories of a Partition that was recognized as relatively liberal.

This episode from the history of the Zakopane Style acquires a topical meaning when using the tools of postcolonial theory. Embraced as an interpretative key, such an approach lends coherency to the narrative of the first chapter of the Polish artistic tendency that aspired to be recognized as “national.” In the context of the competition with the “Zakopane manner” promoted by the partitioning power, the nationalization of the Zakopane Style fully corresponds with the mechanisms of colonization.⁶⁹ Narratives concerning the Zakopane Style have so far been dominated by interpretations connecting the national character of the style with a response to the calls from Polish men of letters to establish a mode of building that would transcend the borders of all Partitions,⁷⁰ to the escapist enthusiasm of the Polish intelligentsia for the Tatra Mountains,⁷¹ and to pan-European vernacular tendencies.⁷² The above analysis indicates that the Zakopane Style also became a form of resistance to the Austrian “soft policy” pursued by promoting the “Zakopane manner” officially recognized by Vienna, based on architectural template books popular in the Habsburg Monarchy and implemented by architects trained by the partitioning powers. Applied in architectural research, the postcolonial perspective appears to reflect well the political and historical nuances, engaging the non-artistic background in the architectural analyses.

A question that remains concerns the way in which the history of the Zakopane Style and the “Zakopane manner” resonates in today’s architecture of the Tatra Region. The postcolonial aftermaths in architecture are worth identifying. Observing the chaotic and inconsistent modern-day architecture of the town, we may venture the opinion that Zakopane completely lacks an architectural identity, a situation resulting from changeable geopolitical circumstances and growing interest in the town over the last 150 years. After the years of the flourishing regionalisms of the partitioning power and the Polish nation, Zakopane witnessed the era of modernism, manor house style, and the so-called Second Zakopane Style – a mutation of Witkiewicz’s concept.⁷³ In the post-WWII years, buildings in the socialist style were raised in Zakopane alongside the first multi-story blocks of flats, housing estates, and mass tourism infrastructure. 1989 opened a new chapter in the history of architecture in Zakopane and Poland. Excellent studies on the manor house style,⁷⁴ and the search for the sources of Polish culture through a “return to the manor house”⁷⁵ mentioned by Andrzej Leder in Prześniona rewolucja [Sleepwalking the Revolution] also provide an adequate point of reference for the phenomena unfolding in the Tatra region.

Modern-day architectural development in Zakopane bears testimony to the internally “split” visions of the origins of Zakopane residents, and therefore also to the possibility of a return to a specific tradition. In this context, we should reflect on what the “Zakopane manner” and Witkiewicz’s Zakopane Style essentially meant for the formation of the architectural identity of Zakopane today. The former certainly responded to the need for tourist infrastructure in the Tatra Mountains; its specific character lent Zakopane the air of a mountainside resort. The style was therefore addressed primarily to tourists, newcomers, and “non-local” visitors – above all from Austria, a partitioning power. Thus, the “Zakopane manner” acquired a cosmopolitan profile that indicated the specific character of a town aspiring to the role of a European resort. The Zakopane Style was supposed to counterbalance the universalizing aspirations of the “Zakopane manner.” It referred to regionalism,⁷⁶ glorifying the role of Zakopane as a “proto-Polish” settlement that has preserved the memory of the artistic work of “proto-Poles.” Tapping into the experience and competence of traditional highlander builders, Witkiewicz employed them to raise buildings that did not respond to the requirements of the highlanders themselves, but to his own needs and those of similar non-local eulogists of regionalism.⁷⁷ Buildings devised as comfortable, spacious, and well-suited to the modern urban lifestyle were characterized by a style that evoked the highlander tradition. The Zakopane Style was therefore not a style of the Zakopane residents or for the Zakopane residents, but above all a construct appreciated by Witkiewicz and his milieu. Notably, the majority of proponents of the Zakopane Style hailed from Warsaw, which was also the city from where most of Zakopane’s tourists came. It is therefore no surprise that Witkiewicz’s proposed conceptualization of the style in question was in fact addressed to visitors from Warsaw.

Both artistic concepts were founded on the unstable ground of aspirations and myths formulated not by local highlanders but by newcomers from elsewhere – representatives of the partitioning power and the Warsaw intelligentsia. The “invented” identity of the modern-day residents of Zakopane is therefore torn between two traditions based on contradictory pursuits. What, in the contemporary context, is genuinely vernacular or authentic in a given region or culture?⁷⁸ Buildings whose architects often quote inspiration from the traditional mountain hut and Witkiewicz’s work dominate in the architecture of hotels and rental properties. Using the category of the “imagined”⁷⁹ frequently evoked in postcolonial narratives and analyses of culture in Central Europe, we may think that for the owners of those buildings Zakopane is a small village in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains, attracting visitors with its folk culture and natural charm. In turn, as we observe the mushrooming of luxury neo-eclectic structures with tympanums and entrance porticos, which fail to blend into the landscape in any way and whose flat roofs contradict the logic of building in the Alpine climate, we may get the impression that, in this case, the projected image of Zakopane involves the town’s transformation into an exclusive cosmopolitan resort with the same profile as those in the Alps. Multiple historical codings and stylistic changes resulting from historical-political factors contribute to the image of Zakopane as a place of split, inconsistent identity: of the highlanders who raise regionally decorated huts as symbols, and of the lowlanders who settled there and pursued the goal of building a European resort. “Autochthonous identity”⁸⁰ – the lack of acceptance of a certain vernacular aspect of culture and an attempt to compensate for such a trace of rurality by pursuing a bizarre vision of metropolitan style – appears to be the main postcolonial aftermath clearly visible in the analysis of architecture against its historical background. The compensation, in turn, is amplified by the abovementioned neocolonial forms of subordination discussed by Ewa Domańska⁸¹ – particularly with regard to changes in the relations of ownership⁸² resulting from the rampant capitalism of the 1990s, which intensifies in the Tatra Mountains from year to year and wreaks havoc on the landscape and architecture of Zakopane.⁸³ The pursuit of “modernity,” the attempt to turn a small town into a massive tourist center that lives off visitors from across Poland, and the critical identity split of highlanders⁸⁴ and lowlanders – analyzed exhaustively by Ewa Klekot – is reflected in the architecture of gruesome buildings raised in Zakopane’s Równia Krupowa area: “vernacular” huts ready to accommodate hundreds of visitors and failed eclectic structures.

The above analysis of architecture in the postcolonial spirit highlights important questions that can be approached by using the methodological tool of postcolonial theory, which allows for the signalizing of crucial problems that resonate in the contemporary era. The question of identity enjoys key importance not only in research on the condition of modern-day societies, but also in architectural studies. In architecture history, postcolonialism opens up a discourse that concerns, for example, what the architectural tradition in Central and Eastern Europe is. What is the artistic identity of these territories? To what extent is national character manifested by architecture? What forms this character? These questions are important insofar as they reveal that referring to historical architecture – returns to which were sought after 1989 – is extremely difficult. In a situation where tradition, devoid of imperial influence, continues to be inaccessible or unclear, attempts to find something that is “vernacular,” “ours,” or “not-theirs” leads to groundless glorification and mythologization.

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Monika Stobiecka