‘Here Szela, the hero, was made’. Selected Issues From the 19th Century Scientific Discourse Around the Forest Germans

The article is concerned with the changes undergone by the Polish scientific discourse (mainly ethnographic) on the phenomenon of the so-called ‘Forest Germans’ (in Polish: Głuchoniemcy) in the 19th century, i.e. from the late Enlightenment to 1914. The author analyses excerpts from scholars accounts by, among others, Franciszek Siarczyński, Wincenty Pol, Józef Łepkowski, Oskar Kolberg, Józef Szujski and others, as well as narratives appearing in reaction to them in the press. The history of the Głuchoniemcy – as descendants of medieval German settlers in the Carpathian Foothills, who became completely Polonised in the 19th century, and the discourse, both academic and public, constructed around them, reflects the mechanisms governing descriptions of peasant history and culture in Polish ethnography and related branches of the humanities, and related to aspirations for national independence.