A Microcosm of Civic Action: The Kolonie Letnie for Warsaw’s Frail and Impoverished Children, Christian and Jewish, 1882-1922
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
First Advisor
Snyder, Timothy
Abstract
This study traces the history of the Warsaw kolonie letnie (summer camps) for children of the urban poor between 1882 and 1922. It is a history of a forgotten institution, its establishment, formative years, legalization and growth as well as changes and continuities within it across four decades. This is also a history of positivist ideas in practice and of local Polish Christian and Jewish cooperation within the kolonie letnie’s institutional space, where ideas of hygiene and pedagogy were utilized to turn frail, impoverished children of the city into productive and upright members of society. As an idea and project, the kolonie letnie arrived in Warsaw from western Europe. As an initiative executed by local experts and social activists, who sought to alleviate child poverty and its attendant ills, such as inadequate housing, poor nutrition, lack of public greenery, limited access to nature and suitable spaces for play, they became one concrete embodiment of organic work and socio-cultural aspirations of a subjected society of a peripheral city within the Russian Empire. For over thirty years, between 1882 and 1915, the institution of the kolonie letnie grew steadily and flourished despite the lack of positive involvement on the part of the municipal and central Russian authorities. Entirely dependent on private financial and material support, on the active engagement of a diverse civil society led by experts, the official recognition of the kolonie letnie’s rightful place among social and child welfare institutions came only in the formative years of the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939). The experience of the First World War and the immediate post-war years confirmed the indispensability of the Warsaw Kolonie Letnie Society in the broader kolonie letnie campaign across the country, at the same time altering the character of the Society as it sought adaptation to endure the years of crisis and instability. In the end, the Warsaw Kolonie Letnie Society reemerged in interwar Poland, transformed, however, in two fundamental ways: the institution no longer served solely Warsaw’s frail and impoverished children, and it ceased to accommodate Jewish children alongside their Christian peers.
Recommended Citation
Kolpak, Karolina, "A Microcosm of Civic Action: The Kolonie Letnie for Warsaw’s Frail and Impoverished Children, Christian and Jewish, 1882-1922" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1309.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1309
