Thanks to a grant from the Study of Polish War Losses program (details of the program HERE), the Malbork Castle Museum has the opportunity to continue the work started in 2018. We are delighted and proud that it is the third time that our Museum has received significant support in this regard. This year’s edition of the project is carried out under the title War losses of the castle in Malbork – elaboration of the acquired material.
Stage I.
Below we will explain what is behind this topic and what tasks we have planned. The end of March for us, which means a number of preparatory work, tedious and seemingly not bringing spectacular results, we are going full steam ahead to implement the intended activities. It would not have been possible without preliminary work and careful planning. The year 2021 will be filled with extremely interesting tasks, the tangible effects of which, we hope, will be announced in December.
And what awaits us this year?
Our plan is extremely ambitious. This year we are going to publish as many as two publications !!!, which will certainly be a treat for enthusiasts of the castle and its history and old collections. After three years of intensive research work, we are ready to publish the first volume of the Catalog of War Losses in Malbork Castle. The volume will be devoted to the collection of paintings, graphics and drawings. As in the previous year, we will keep you updated on the progress of editorial work and the book’s creation process, as well as familiarize you with its content. At the same time, preparatory work for the next volumes of the catalog will be carried out.
After the extremely successful last year’s undertaking of publishing the Polish edition with a critical study, a valuable source for learning about the history of the castle, its reconstruction and collections, which are the Reports of the Board of Reconstruction and Beautification of the Malbork Castle, we decided to continue work in this direction.
This time, the subject of our work will be the pre-war military inventory of Theodor Blell’s, which in 2019 was donated from the National Museum in Wrocław (HERE). The publication will include a Polish translation of the inventory, a transcription of the original and a critical study, which will be presented, among others, by the history of the creation of the military collection at the Malbork Castle, and will complement the existing knowledge about the castle militaria.
Both publications will be reviewed. The added value of our editorial efforts is the availability of sources not only for researchers and specialists, but also for a wide audience. We are aware of this and the more we are happy to have the opportunity to share our knowledge and research results.
But it is not everything. We will continue to develop our website www.straty.zamek.malbork.pl. We intend to make its English version available. We will carry out a number of technical activities aimed at increasing the security of the website, adapting it to people with visual impairments. We will invite you to cooperate and discuss on the emerging forum. One of the most important tasks will also be to make available the database of archives obtained in the course of the project along with a commentary on their content. It should be emphasized that it will not be a base ensuring physical access to documents, but their preparation in terms of suitability for research on the collections of both locks. The database will be systematically updated.
The difficult year 2020 did not allow us to implement all travel queries, which we postponed to this year. However, we are not sure if we will be able to complete the research, which is an important element of the entire project. However, we do not give up and we believe that we will soon be able to share the results of our search. At the end of the year, we will invite you to a conference summarizing our activities and presenting the latest design publications. Let’s just hope we can meet in person.
We will report on any actions we undertake, which is why we encourage you to follow our website (www.straty.zamek.malbork.pl), profile on FB (Projekt Loss) and Instagram website (LINK).
Thank you for your continuous support.
(compiled by A. Siuciak)
