Report from the conference

On December 18^th 2020 a conference “War Losses of the Malbork Castle in the Light of Sources, based on the Reports of the Board of the Society for the Reconstruction and Beautification of the Malbork Castle”, took place, organized by the Malbork Castle Museum. Its implementation is the result of activities carried out by the museum as part of the project entitled “Research on war losses in the field of artistic collections of castles in Malbork and Kwidzyn – continuation”, which received funding from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage program Research on Polish war losses.

The meeting, which was also the culmination of this year’s edition of the project, focused primarily on the latest project publication entitled “Reports of the Board of the Society for the Reconstruction and Beautification of the Malbork Castle”. It is a translation from German, an invaluable source for researching the history of the reconstruction of the Malbork stronghold, as well as for getting to know its collection. The publication is accompanied by an extensive scientific commentary, necessary for its full understanding and knowledge of the realities in which it was created. The editors of the publication are Artur Dobry and dr hab. Janusz Trupinda, while the translation was done by Aleksander Masłowski.

Due to the situation related to the coronavirus pandemic, the conference was held on-line on the Microsoft Teams platform. 30 participants from national institutions, museum employees and enthusiasts of the history of the castle joined the conference. The Director of the Castle Museum, dr hab. Janusz Trupinda officially opened the meeting, welcomed the participants and introduced them to the conference. Then, Ms Małgorzata Zając from the Department of Restitution of Cultural Property at the Department of Cultural Heritage Abroad and War Losses of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage took the floor, presenting activities related to the base of war losses of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in the context of restitution activities. She also introduced the procedures related to the submission of a war loss notification, emphasizing the importance of sources in the process of loss identification. The rest of the conference was dominated by speeches related to the main point of the meeting. Janusz Trupinda analyzed the “Reports of the Management Board of the Society for the Reconstruction and Beautification of the Malbork Castle” as a source for learning about the course and social context of the castle reconstruction, while Bartłomiej Butryn and Joanna Czarnowska introduced the publication’s content in terms of decoration and arrangement works and the creation of castle collections.

The last part of the meeting was devoted to the presentation of the new publication. The editors discussed the specificity of working with a historical source and the related problems. They also showed the solutions used in the edition. Aleksander Masłowski shared his comments and dilemmas related to the translation of the Reports followed by Aleksandra Siuciak, who summed up this year’s edition of the project.

We would like to thank the participants for joining our event, while encouraging them to follow the progress of the project on the website www.straty.zamek.malbork.pl

(compiled by A. Siuciak)