Father Franciszek Cegiełka (Public domain).

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The first Polish high school

The first Polish high school

Chapters

1. Before
2. Origins
3. The participants
4. Daily life
5. ”A school unlike any other”
6. Fighting
7. Twilight
8. The aftermath
9. Today

Polish refugees flocked to France. Something had to be done to avoid the children losing a school year. A Polish school was due to open in Amiens, but this was quickly changed to a high school in Paris. It was named after the poet Cyprian Norwid.

Father Franciszek Cegiełka had recently made plans to open a Polish high school in Amiens, but this was prevented by the war. With Hitler and Stalin’s invasions causing floods of refugees on the roads of Europe, he knew he had to make a decision. It was longer a question of catering for the children of the economic immigration: he needed to respond to this fresh exodus from Poland. These newly arrived young people did not speak French, and they had to be looked after! Difficulties were piling up and money was scarce. Cegiełka set up an organising committee for the creation of a high school; the wife of a former ambassador sprang into action; the Polish government and its representative for Religious Affairs and Public Education, Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski, supported the project. Instead of Amiens, it would be in Paris.

In the final days of October 1939, the Cyprian Norwid Polish High School opened its doors. The school was located at 14 Rue de Fleurus on the premises of a former private school.

By 1 April 1940, the premises could no longer accommodate all the students. The school moved to 13 Rue de Suger, in the annex of the Fénelon high school. It had four hundred students, only four of whom were former immigrants, all from Paris: Aldon Kosiński and the three Owczarek brothers.

2.2.1 “Who chose the name Cyprian Norwid?”

1871 — Portrait of Cyprian Norwid (Public domain).

—Lucjan Owczarek, student. La Voix Catholique (The Catholic Voice), 1991

The defeat of 1939 led to the arrival in France of Polish families, civil servants and isolated young emigrants. These young people had attended high schools, but even though they were living in Paris, most of them did not speak French. The idea was to organise teaching for them, if possible in the capital, to avoid them losing a year.

Despite the unfavourable situation, Father Cegielka, whose plan to open a Polish school in Amiens had just failed, did not give up. When the embassy refused to help with the enormous expenses, he set up a committee to organise the school with the help of Madame Lipska, the ambassador ‘s wife. At the end of October, the Polish School opened its doors in a former public school, the Institut du Panthéon, at 11 rue de Fleurus. The headmaster was Mr Mélandre. His Polish wife Halina Mélandre worked with the Polish mission and with Madame Lipska.

Who chose the name Cyprian Norwid? Father Cegietka? Mr. Zaleski? Father Jakubisiak? Madame Irène Galezowska? To this day, we do not know. My personal memories lead me to think it was Zaleski. On his return from Poland as government delegate for cultural affairs in France, he supervised the school. During one of his visits, he surprised us by saying that the school was going to be named after Cyprian Norwid, whom not everyone knew and who didn ‘t have the prestige of someone like Mickiewicz, for example… Then later, Zaleski dedicated a book to Norwid in which he expressed his admiration for the poet and highlighted his importance in literature.

2.2.2 “Work, so that we may be reborn.”

Self-portrait by Cyprian Norwid. Engraving, 1880 (Public domain).

—Maria Orzechowska, student. Private correspondence.

Cyprian Norwid was born on 24 September 1821. A poet, writer, painter, sculptor and engraver, he lived and worked in Poland, Italy, Germany, the United States, England and France.

At the age of 21, he left Warsaw to visit Krakow, which at that time was a small independent state. He continued his journey to…

Germany, where he stayed for a few months. There is no mention of any activity on his part, nor any desire to settle there. There is more a feeling that he wanted to get to know Europe, even though he was so young. He continued on his way.

Italy: these were good times. For once, he was not penniless. He has just received his modest share of his inheritance from his mother. Not only did he visit cities famed for their art, he also took sculpture classes in Florence, and travelled to Rome where he met the many Polish immigrants in that city. He was there in 1848 at the time of the wave of uprisings known as the springtime of nations. He wrote a body of poems in which he broke with Romanticism, turning to literature and action.

He then spent about a year and a half in the United States. He soon realised that it was not the America he expected! A disappointment. He could not understand the inhabitants obsession with money! With the little he had managed to save, he took a trip to the Far West to learn about the Indians’ way of life and also, I suspect, to see something of the country, as you would expect.

The boat on which he returned from the USA disembarked in England. He stayed there for five or six months, but decided to return to France, where he had both Polish and French friends.
Cyprian Norwid settled in Paris in 1849. As part of the great diaspora of Polish intellectuals, he met Adam Mickiewicz, Frédéric Chopin, Juliusz Słowacki, and Zygmunt Krasiński. He often had to work on manual tasks to earn a living, but eventually material and romantic setbacks led him to try his luck again in the United States, where he stayed for two years, from 1853 to 1854. In early 1855, he returned to Paris.

A destitute emigrant, he lived in very difficult conditions and was little appreciated by his contemporaries. He died in solitude on 23 May 1883, in the Polish retirement home in Rue Chevaleret, Paris. He is buried in the Polish cemetery in Montmorency.

His work was not published and appreciated until after his death. He is now recognised as one of Poland ‘s greatest and most influential poets and is included in the school curriculum.

Cyprian Norwid was at odds with his Romantic elders, whose verbosity and pathos irritated him. His philosophy was based on collective effort, in opposition to romantic individualism. His artistic and spiritual ideal is the idea of a necessary union between art and utilitarian craft, between beauty and work.

” For beauty is there to inspire work,
Work, so that we may be reborn.
And hence, the greatest poet is the common people,
Who hum with earth-tanned palms.
And hence, the best historian is Caesar,
Who dictated from his horse, not at a desk,
And Michelangelo, who carved the marble himself…”

It was not by chance that Cyprian Norwid was chosen as the spiritual patron of the Polish high school. It was a deliberate association of his name with the preparation of a national future based on order, discipline and shared work.

2.1Collapse and exile

The phoney war and the fall of France2.3