Oldal 414 [414]
OCR
412 Ewa Baniowska-Kopacz We have returned to ancient Piast territories on the Odra River. Ihe republics borders have been set at the Odra and the Nysa. However, years of venomous deceitful Prussian propaganda have grown deep into the minds of European nations. More than that, not all Poles are aware how much Silesia was and is Polish and that, marvellously, it has never ceased to be Polish, that the borders on the Odra and Nysa Rivers are justified and necessary from economic and strategic points of view. Ihe lie about the Germanic past of Silesia should be discarded (...) The objective of the monthly periodical Sigsk is a manifestation of elements of Polish heritage and Polish contemporary life in Silesia (SMI 1946, no. 1: 1). The quotation presented above indicates that the editors of the magazine were aware that the Regained Territories were commonly perceived as Other, ‘different’ and ‘forgotten’. In such circumstances the profile chosen for the new magazine (“manifestation of elements of Polish heritage and Polish contemporary life in Silesia’; SMI 1946, no. 1: 1) was understandable. The magazine was intended as an illustrated monthly and the illustrations were supposed to play an important role in forming the perception of the Silesian Regained Territories by inhabitants of other Polish regions and new Silesian settlers. Illustrations provide a specific kind of evidence that can be read on several levels. The first level is the visual content of the picture. It could be an architectural object, a situation or event, a landscape, a person or a group of people, etc. The conveyance of specific pictures is stronger and deeper if we look at it in the context in which it is presented. Reoccurrence of certain motifs and the context in which a set of illustrations was created also play an important role. Consequently, pictures are not merely a registration of the moment. They exist in their time, but also in their place, in this case in the magazine where they are published. Illustrations should be approached as a text from which we can read more than just who or what is depicted in them. The presented photos of artefacts—sculptures, architectural details and architectural monuments—speak about the depicted objects and their creators, but also about the history of the land where those people lived. The magazine contains a great amount of material about the past. We can find photos of sculptures, reliefs, or busts of historical personalities on tombs and sarcophagi. Images from old manuscripts also appear. Among the presented figures, members of the Piast family prevail. Among them are Henry Il the Pious, Henry IV Probus, Christian of Legnica (1618-1672), and his son, Wilhelm (1660-1675), the last male representative of the Piast line (Figs 177 and 178). We can also find Saint Hedwig of Silesia (Fig. 179), wife of Henry I the Bearded and the patron of the region. Any possible doubts that the reader may have had about the identities of the people presented are dissolved by long captions and the relevant text. The accompanying texts inform us about the time when specific people lived and about
