Ziemia. Illustrated Weekly Magazine on Local History. Volume III. Nos. 1–52. Complete annual [1912]

Title: Ziemia. Illustrated Weekly Journal of Local History. Volume III. Nos. 1–52. Complete annual.

Compiled by: Kazimierz Kulwieć (1871–1943) [naturalist, educator, and regional historian; co-founder and vice president of the Polish Regional History Society; initiator and editor of *Ziemia*].

Publisher: Warsaw; editor and publisher Kazimierz Kulwieć.

Year of publication: 1912.

Format: 29 cm.

Volume: 848 pp., numerous illustrations and maps.

Binding: Period half-leather binding.

The weekly magazine *Ziemia* was published starting January 1, 1910, on the initiative of Kazimierz Kulwieć, vice president of the Polish Tourist Society. As early as February 27, 1910, the PTK’s general assembly unanimously recognized the magazine as its official publication, but out of fear of repression by the tsarist authorities, this connection was not disclosed at first. The Society itself was founded in 1906 in Warsaw, in the Russian Partition. Its founders included, among others, Aleksander Janowski, Karol Hofman, Zygmunt Gloger, Kazimierz Czerwiński, and Kulwieć himself, and its motto was “Through knowledge of the country to love for it, through love to self-sacrificing deeds.” The presented Volume III (1912) is the complete series of 52 issues, published two years before the outbreak of the war, which halted the magazine’s publication in August 1914. The yearbook comprises 848 pages and is richly illustrated with photographs, maps, and drawings. The content covers, among other topics, the Tatra and Carpathian Mountains, descriptions of regions of Poland, historical monuments, ethnography, mountaineering, and the origins of Scouting. The publisher also distributed the yearbooks in a cloth-bound edition featuring the PTK emblem, coats of arms, and a view of the castle in Ogrodzieniec; this particular piece, however, was bound in half-leather. In the following decades, *Ziemia* was published intermittently, first as a biweekly and then as a monthly, until 1950. Among its editors were Stanisław Thugutt and Aleksander Janowski.

Kazimierz Jakub Kulwieć was born on May 1, 1871, in Trubiszki in the Suwałki region. After attending middle school in Suwałki, he studied natural sciences at the University of Warsaw and took his final exams in Odessa. From 1901 to 1903, together with Kazimierz Czerwiński, he conducted research on the fauna and flora of the Wigry Lakes and established a makeshift biological station in Tartak on Lake Wigry. He founded a middle school in Warsaw, co-founded the Suwałki branch of the Polish Tourist Society (PTK), and in 1929 moved to Toruń. In September 1939, the Soviet invasion found him in the Nowogródek region. Together with his family, he was deported deep into the USSR, to the taiga of the Arkhangelsk Oblast, where he died on February 14, 1943.

Provenance: on the front endpaper, handwritten notes in two different handwritings, including “I received this as a gift from my colleague Staś Poneta, a ‘builder,’ on October 13, 1977. Praise be to him for this… J.Cz” and a collation note: “No missing pages found! The pagination and rearrangements in Nos. 15–16 are problematic, but ‘mistakes were made in the past as well.’” The identities of the donor and the recipient remain unknown; the piece is free of institutional stamps.

A complete annual volume of a regional studies weekly from the period of the Partitions, verified by the former owner for completeness—for researchers of the history of regional studies and local history, architectural historians, and collectors of early documentary photography.

The block is exceptionally compact and stable, with the original stitching intact and straight pages. The paper is of good weight, clean and bright, free of foxing, water stains, and underlining; all illustrations are preserved without damage. The half-leather binding is in good condition, with heavy surface scuffs and peeling of the leather on the spine and corners, as well as natural wear on the cardboard endpapers along the edges; the structure remains rigid.

Catalog ID: 628-29-A-X