The Carpathians

Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine

Patrice M. Dabrowski

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781501759673, 9781501759673
• eBook ISBN: 9781501759680
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In The Carpathians, Patrice M. Dabrowski narrates how three highland ranges of the mountain system found in present-day Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine were discovered for a broader regional public. This is a story of how the Tatras, Eastern Carpathians, and Bieszczady Mountains went from being terra incognita to becoming the popular tourist destinations they are today. It is a story of the encounter of Polish and Ukrainian lowlanders with the wild, sublime highlands and with the indigenous highlanders—Górale, Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos—and how these peoples were incorporated into a national narrative as the territories were transformed into a native/national landscape.

The set of microhistories in this book occur from about 1860 to 1980, a time in which nations and states concerned themselves with the "frontier at the edge." Discoverers not only became enthralled with what were perceived as their own highlands but also availed themselves of the mountains as places to work out answers to the burning questions of the day. Each discovery led to a surge in mountain tourism and interest in the mountains and their indigenous highlanders.

Although these mountains, essentially a continuation of the Alps, are Central and Eastern Europe's most prominent physical feature, politically they are peripheral. The Carpathians is the first book to deal with the northern slopes in such a way, showing how these discoveries had a direct impact on the various nation-building, state-building, and modernization projects. Dabrowski's history incorporates a unique blend of environmental history, borderlands studies, and the history of tourism and leisure.

Part I

The Tatra Mountains of Galicia

Chapter 1

Where Freedom Awaits

The first mountainous territory to figure in the consciousness of those who lived to its north, the Tatra Mountains comprise the highest and visually most distinctive part of the vast Carpathian range. Located in the western part of the Carpathians, bordering modern Poland and Slovakia, they can be thought of as a miniature Alps. With more than 60 peaks at around 8,000 feet, and a combined area of 303 square miles—less than one-quarter of which falls on the northern, Polish side—the Tatras are the most conspicuous geographical formation of the Carpathian Mountain system.

Essentially an uninhabited borderlands in the medieval period, the Tatra region became more of a genuine “frontier” (in the American understanding of the word) only as of the thirteenth century.¹ Pioneers came from all directions: in ethnic terms, colonists would be identified as Polish, Slovak, Ruthenian (Ukrainian and other East Slavs), Hungarian, “Saxon” (German) peasants, artisans, and pastoralists, as well as Wallachian (Romanian) shepherds migrating with their herds from the east. Many originally resided at the foot of the mountains: in Podhale (translated as “beneath the alpine meadows”) on the northern, colder, Polish side of the border; in Orawa (Orava, Arva, Árva), Liptów (Liptov, Liptau, Liptó) and Spisz (Spiš, Zips, Szepes) on the warmer southern side, today part of Slovakia, although it historically had been part of Hungary.² The result of centuries of mixing, the highlanders—the word for highlander in Polish was góral, from the term góra (mountain)—were shaped by various forces: their experience of the terrain, the migrations to the region, particularly from east to west, as well as by the mutual interaction of the different ethnic groups.³ They were a borderland population par excellence.

Map 3. Podhale and the Tatra Mountains (pre-1914). Map by Daniel P. Huffman.

While relatively small in scope and inhabited by a population of undeniably mixed provenance, the “Polish” Tatras are nonetheless the most significant mountainous terrain ever associated with any state that could be labeled Polish: these included the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the large, multiethnic, noble-dominated state that in the wake of three partitions disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795 (see map 1.) The seizure of the Polish Tatras in 1770 by Habsburg empress Maria Theresa had foreshadowed the “first” partition of 1772, in which not only Austria but Prussia and Russia helped themselves to large swaths of the country.⁴ Following the first partition, the Carpathians formed the frontier between two provinces of the Habsburg (Austrian) lands: Hungary (to the south—a province which included today’s Slovakia) and, to the north, the Polish territories annexed by Austria, which were christened the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.⁵

In the nineteenth century, the impact of this alpine borderland region, located far to the south of the vast plains of the Polish heartland (under Russian and Prussian/German rule), would transcend its geographical remoteness. Poles from across the partitioned lands would not only visit the Tatras; they would come to know, even identify strongly with the mountains and the highlanders who dwelled at their foot. The latter enjoyed a freedom of movement that was the envy of lowlanders, worn down by the cares of a civilization that came courtesy of the partitioning powers. That a rugged alpine territory should come to play an important role for the inhabitants of former Poland, the very name of which designates the territory as quintessential flatlands, is but one of the many paradoxes of this story.

Despite the fact that the Tatras were to some extent already known, a different encounter with the highlands and the indigenous highlanders was to take place in the last third of the nineteenth century.⁶ This discovery, which had ramifications for how the Tatras were experienced, was of significance not only for the mountain environment. It would, as we shall see, have repercussions for the nation as well as for nature.

Early Encounters

The process of nationally conscious Polish elites encountering the Tatras started at the very beginning of the nineteenth century. The earliest to leave his mark on the region was the Enlightenment figure Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826), the first Polish scientist to investigate the Tatra Mountains. Now known as the “father of Polish geology,” Staszic visited the Western, High, and Bielskie Tatras as well as various valleys, climbed a number of mountain peaks, even spending the night on one so as to take scientific measurements.

Despite his scientific concerns, Staszic was also moved by his encounter with the mountains. An excerpt from his book, On the Geology of the Carpathians, and Other Polish Mountains and Plains, hints at the type of impression that the region was yet to make on his fellow countrymen. Staszic’s trips—in 1802, 1804, and 1805—came at a difficult time for the Poles: they had just lost their independence as a result of the partitions of the late eighteenth century. Staszic projected onto the mountains he “conquered” an undeniably Polish message. As if addressing the very mountains themselves, he intoned: “You enormous cemetery of past centuries, you most lasting monuments for future centuries, in an inaccessible elevated height, your peaks filling the clouds, you will preserve the indestructible name of the Poles. Unreachable by any human violence, you will preserve this sign and convey it to the next centuries as testimony that the first one to stand on this your polished summit was a Pole.”⁷ The natural feature that was the Tatra Mountains thus became a metaphor for the Polish nation. By leaving his mark on Łomnica (Lomnický štít), thought at the time to be the Tatras’ highest peak, Staszic was, in essence, demonstrating that the nation still existed: the memory of the stateless, territoryless Polish nation would somehow endure. That the mountain fell on the Hungarian side of the border, and that Staszic was not actually the first, but the second person—after the English naturalist Robert Townson—to reach the summit, made the observation all the more bittersweet.⁸

This example shows how, from the outset, even those inclined to see the Carpathians as a site of scientific inquiry were not immune to its potential national symbolism. Coming generations would continue Staszic’s scientific investigations. This was especially true of the period of Romanticism. Here one might mention the multifaceted work of geologist and paleontologist Ludwik Zejszner (1805–71); Seweryn Goszczyński (1801–76), the “father of Podhale ethnography”; or the poet, geographer, and ethnographer Wincenty Pol (1807–72), who escorted students to the Tatras in 1852.⁹

Yet the Tatras were more than just a destination for scientists. These mountains, which later generations would come to see as unspoiled wilderness, were paradoxically the site of early industrial development. During the first half of the eighteenth century, an ironworks was established in the locality that would come to be known as Kuźnice (after the Polish word for ironworks). Henceforth mining and metallurgy would be developed in the region by a succession of landowners, with varying degrees of success. In the late eighteenth century, the Habsburg court sent Balthasar Hacquet into the Carpathian Mountains that formed the southern border of this new province of Galicia to investigate its newly acquired territory. Hacquet wrote a multivolume work detailing what he learned from his trips, beginning in 1788, through the “Dacian and Sarmatian or Northern Carpathians,” this designation coming from his title.¹⁰ This first major work of scholarship on the Carpathians did not convince the Habsburgs that they should involve themselves in the mining or metallurgy industries in the Tatras. Ultimately the Kuźnice and Kościelisko ironworks were purchased by the Homolacses, a Hungarian family who later bought the adjacent Zakopane demesne, with its extensive forests, in 1824.¹¹

The two landholdings of the Homolacses, Kuźnice and Zakopane, the latter of which would figure importantly in the later discovery, would develop in different ways. The Homolacses settled in Kuźnice, in the vicinity of the forge, building a manor house with a garden and animal park, where the occasional traveler to the region would be housed and entertained.¹² Foreign workers were brought in to administer the iron works. Those highlanders from the village of Zakopane who found work with the Homolacses figured mainly within the cohort of miners, some 120 strong, although foreign miners from Bohemia and the German lands were also employed. Others served as drivers, carting the iron ore mined in the Kościelisko and other valleys to Kuźnice to be processed.

Mining and metallurgy shaped the look of the land. In the Tatras, it pockmarked the sections of the valleys where the ore was mined. Trees from the Zakopane forests, in the form of charcoal made on the spot, fueled the forge’s fire, resulting in their gradual depletion and, in places, deforestation. The functioning of the forge doubtless had an impact on air quality, at least in the vicinity of Kuźnice. And primitive roads were created in this mountain wilderness where there had been none before. The wide gentle trail now known by hikers as Droga pod Reglami was created over time by the carters transporting the iron ore to Kuźnice. So much for a pristine wilderness!

Still, around midcentury the occasional intrepid traveler did come to the region.¹³ These included members of the “gentler” sex: the noblewoman Łucja Rautenstrauchowa of the princely Giedroyć family, the inveterate hiker Maria Steczkowska of Kraków, and the Warsaw writer known as Deotyma all published books or articles about their experiences.¹⁴

Visitors also included Roman Catholic priests. In addition to the thrill of mountain climbing, these clergymen doubtless found attractive the possibility of being closer to heaven, atop what later would be referred to as “altars of freedom.”¹⁵ Of the priests to come midcentury there was one who, on summiting a great Tatra peak, would put on his surplice and stole and solemnly intone the Te Deum, his highland guides on their knees. This was Father Józef Stolarczyk (1816–93).¹⁶

Invited by the Homolacses to establish a parish in the Zakopane demesne in 1848, the thirty-two-year-old priest arrived to find a flock of unchurched highlanders, for whom the fat of the marmot held more miraculous power than did any Christian prayer.¹⁷ Of peasant stock himself, the clergyman—an imposing figure who towered over the highlanders—got his parishioners to build him what he needed. Delivering his sermons in highland dialect, Stolarczyk tried to instill Christian morals in the folk, knowing full well that, after Mass, they often headed to the nearby tavern or went a’wooing. (Already Zejszner noted that the passionate as well as gregarious highlanders seemed to accept premarital sex, love affairs, and children out of wedlock as nothing out of the ordinary.)¹⁸ Stolarczyk would rule Zakopane for a full forty-five years—ample time to tame his wild flock, turning poachers and brigands into regular law-abiding churchgoers.¹⁹

Stolarczyk immediately took to mountain climbing and proved to be more than a match for his highlanders.²⁰ Few of them could serve as competent guides for him. As odd as it may seem, Zakopane highlanders did not necessarily know “their” mountains. A shepherd might be familiar with the area where he pastured his sheep, and other highlanders knew a peak or two. The only men who had any deeper knowledge of the mountainous terrain were poachers and brigands. The first pursued with abandon chamois and marmots—rare and endangered animals—and would shoot any bear that should cross their path. And brigands clearly needed to know how to make themselves scarce after an attack on a cottage or tavern. Such men were the company of the priests who scaled the Tatra peaks.

At this time the highlanders, with their marginal, hardscrabble fields, were in need of supplementary employment, as highlander Wojciech Brzega explained in his memoirs.²¹ Their problems increased after midcentury, when the mining of iron ore on the northern slopes of the Tatras ceased to be profitable. Once Kuźnice and Zakopane came into the possession of the German banker Baron Ludwig Eichborn in 1869, the local highlanders were increasingly forced to look for work elsewhere. Their jobs at the rolling mill and forges, making charcoal, or transporting iron to lowland destinations having dried up, the men were faced with few options. They could mow hay in season wherever necessary in the lowlands, or seek work ...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: The Tatra Mountains of Galicia
• Part II: The Eastern Carpathians of Galicia and the Second Polish Republic
• Part III: The Bieszczady Mountains of the Polish People’s Republic
• Notes
• Index