Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities. Lenny A. Ureña Valerio

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СКАЧАТЬ soil formation; its fetid Warthe, ponds and ditches; the established need for water supply since the Middle Ages (although now being remedied); finally the three different races that the population originates from, [and] the historic, notorious alcoholism of the bottom classes give the epidemics of this city a special imprint, which, from the point of view of the latest researches about the causing agent of cholera, are suitable to take up interest even beyond the municipal area of Posen.”⁸³ Thus, Posen was a special location to study and fight diseases. Disease control depended on the modernization and sanitation of the territories and on the transformation of unhealthy cultural behaviors of the inhabitants. For Samter, the health problems were a legacy of the underdevelopment the city had suffered since the Middle Ages. He considered ethnic diversity a problem for the overall health of the city. The fact that three “races”—by which he meant Germans, Poles, and Jews—coexisted in the same place seemed to contribute to disease communication, but he did not explain how or why.

      The intensity of the cholera epidemics in the Grand Duchy of Posen continued to increase with the years, until a better system of water supply and a sanitary program were introduced in the province at the end of the 1860s and 1870s. A medical report from 1848 registered significantly higher cholera death rates for Poles than for Germans (392 Polish deaths vs. 250 German deaths) in the city of Posen with a population at the time of 42,000 inhabitants—described as 1/5 Jewish, 2/5 German, and 2/5 Polish.⁸⁴ The report recorded 41 Jewish deaths. Many of the early quarantine measures the state took to control the disease during the first half of the nineteenth century actually tended to deteriorate the already precarious condition of the population. Authorities viewed the Prussian-Polish provinces as the natural passageway for the cholera epidemics and held Polish behavior and Catholic beliefs responsible for the spread of the disease. A significant number of medical reports underscored the poverty, underdevelopment, and the inhabitants’ low cultural standing, particularly in the countryside. Polish susceptibility to cholera was also echoed in the report that Hirsch wrote from the investigations he carried out as part of the 1873 Cholera Commission. He concluded that in the mixed districts of Posen and Prussia, when conditions were equal among Poles and Germans, the latter showed greater resistance against the disease due to their orderly living style and sobriety.⁸⁵

      The high toll the disease took in the region and the anti-Polish images spread in medical records were factors that helped mobilize both the Polish and the German medical profession throughout the German Empire. For the Office of Imperial Health as well as for other central authorities in Berlin, the close monitoring of the region became an important agenda for the survival of the imperial and national project. The German civilizing mission in Prussian Poland came to be defined in terms of the need for the modernization of the lands and the cultural conversion of others through science and hygienic teachings.

      Polish Scientific Organizations

      The recommendation that Jean-Jacques Rousseau made to members of the Confederation of Bar in his essay “Considerations on the Government of Poland and on Its Planned Reformation,” which he published just a few months before the First Partition of Poland (1772), was to cultivate the ideals of the nation in the heart of every Pole. He observed that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had neither the political strength nor the military discipline to counter the territorial expansion of neighboring countries, and it was thus doomed to lose its political independence. According to Rousseau, the single means to protect Polish culture and identity was “to infuse, so to speak, the soul of the confederates into the whole nation; that is to establish the Republic so much in the hearts of the Poles that it continues to exist there in spite of all its oppressors’ efforts.”⁸⁶ Although he was extensively criticized for giving such a conservative response, Rousseau’s advice defined the political approach that many Poles used in the second half of the nineteenth century when the prospects for national independence seemed to be bleak.

      The anti-Polish movement that characterized German official policy after the November Uprising in 1830 confronted Poles with the option of either joining the efforts of Polish revolutionaries abroad for national liberation or engaging in legal political opposition to the partitioning powers. The majority of Prussian Poles decided to follow the second path, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century came to be known as “organic work.”⁸⁷ Polish positivist thinkers borrowed this concept from Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theory to encourage Poles to take advantage of available civil liberties and economic opportunities to further Polish culture and educate the Polish masses. Throughout the nineteenth century, Polish intellectuals tried to overturn German colonizing agendas by teaching people Polish language and history and promoting Polish industry and trade. After the failure of the January 1863 uprising, many believed that the energy directed towards national armed revolutions should be guided instead towards national self-defense. This political stance actually helped consolidate the professional classes, particularly the medical profession.

      One of the predecessors of Polish organic work in Prussian Poland was Karol Marcinkowski (1800–1846), a Poznanian physician with medical training in Berlin, Edinburgh, and Paris.⁸⁸ Marcinkowski raised funds from Polish landowners to create social programs for the advancement of cultural activities in the region. The money was invested in the construction of the Polish Bazaar and the Polish Casino in order to boost the economic growth and entrepreneurial activities of Polish-speaking subjects. These institutions became important symbolic gathering places for Polish intellectuals. They contributed to the development of political alliances and social networks and the furthering of Polish civil society in the nineteenth century.

      Karol Marcinkowski was also a key figure in the formation of an educated Polish middle class in Prussian Poland. He created in 1832 the first Medical Society (Towarzystwa Lekarskiego) in Posen, which included Polish and German members.⁸⁹ He organized meetings with the Royal Medical Council in Posen (Königliches Medizinal-Kollegium zu Posen) to discuss statistical data about epidemics and clinical research. He also founded the Society for Academic Aid to the Youth of the Grand Duchy of Posen (Towarzystwo Naukowej Pomocy dla Młodzieży Wielkiego Księstswa Poznańskiego) in 1841 to promote the study of the sciences in the province. The cholera epidemics had convinced Marcinkowski that a poor city like Posen needed more physicians and people with scientific training.⁹⁰ The Society for Academic Aid was the first institution to offer scholarships to Polish students from all over the Prussian-Polish provinces. Although medicine was a priority, recipients were also trained to become businesspeople, teachers, lawyers, and technicians. This society was replicated in other territories with a significant Polish-speaking population such as West Prussia and Galicia (Austrian Empire).⁹¹ It was also the model followed in the creation of the Society for Academic Aid to Polish Girls (Towarzystwo Pomocy Naukokowej dla Dziewcząt Polskich), founded in Thorn in 1869 and Posen in 1871.⁹²

      Polish physicians trained in the second half of the nineteenth century considered Marcinkowski an influential figure and founding father of the Polish medical profession in Prussian Poland. He was viewed as a patriot who fought for the Polish national cause and contributed to the development of Polish society. He was deeply troubled by the poverty many suffered in his hometown and sought ways to improve their condition, mainly through medicine and social activism. According to Dr. Ignacy Zielewicz, Marcinkowski was arrested at a young age for his political involvement in the student organization Polonia, a Polish fraternity with liberal views founded at the University of Berlin.⁹³ He worked for several years as a surgeon and obstetrician at the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy (Szpital Sióstr Miłosierdzia/Hospital der grauen Schwestern) in Posen before joining the Polish November Uprising in 1830. During the revolution, he fought the Russians in Lithuania and became an expert in cholera treatment after working on patients at a hospital in the village of Mienia. He also treated cholera patients in Memel (Prussia) on his way back from the war front.⁹⁴ During his exile years in Scotland and Paris he learned new medical techniques and shared his knowledge on the disease with French physicians. In fact, he was allowed to come back to Posen due to the cholera epidemic of 1837, where he joined other physicians in the fight against the disease.

      To this date, Karol Marcinkowski СКАЧАТЬ