Where Is Poland? | The Noble Manor

Chapter 7

The Noble Manor

Although the nobility(szlachta) accounted for less than 10% of society, it had a dominant position. Manors were not just residences but also self-sufficient economic organizations and centres of Polish culture.

St. Kobierzycki & I. Karwicki in traditional noble costume. Photo by Jan Mieczkowski, 1890. Source: Polona.pl

The rise and fall of the szlachta

Over the centuries the nobility had developed its own culture and customs, which significantly differed from the folk culture. The noble ethos prized such lofty values as honour, bravery, and extravagance.The poorer nobility tried hard to emulate the wealthy nobles In cultivating those values. For a long time, it was these strata of society that gave forth members of the social and cultural elite: writers, artists, statesmen.

After the country came under foreign partition, the nobility lost its economic and political influence. At the end of the nineteenth century, there came to be criticism of the noble model of the Polish identity, which was deemed by its critics – such as Stanisław Brzozowski – to be unproductive, outdated, and purposefully shying away from the challenges of modernity. In Brzozowski’s view, the nobility’s leading role in the life of the nation was meant to be taken over by the proletariat.

Polonaise under the sky, painting by Korneli Szlegel. Source: Wikicommons

The private stronghold of Polish culture

The small noble manor was a very emblematic locale for Polish culture. Most archetypically it was nestled deep in the countryside, with a very characteristic manor home: a single-storey, rectangular building, made of larch logs and whitewashed, sporting a columned portico and a triangular summit, covered by a high, two-tiered roof, typically further surrounded by an outbuilding, chapel, gardens, and agricultural buildings. Such a manor-farm was for a long time a self-sufficient economic entity.

In the partition era, the rural manor home became the symbolic bastion of the Polish identity: here children (including village children) were taught in Polish, traditions were preserved, conservative values were cherished, and Polish-speaking culture was cultivated in the form of poetry and music (such as the songs of Moniuszko). And so it was from the manors that many soldiers came forward to join in the successive uprisings – young men belonging to the noble families, as well as from among the manor officials.

The second half of the nineteenth century, however, brought the downfall of the traditional manor home. Economic changes (the enfranchisement of the peasants) and repressions in the wake of the uprisings (property confiscations) led the landowning gentry to lose their assets and move to the cities, where they frequently became members of the intelligentsia.