PANORAMA OF THE UPRISING. THE NEVER-CREATED MUSEUM MONUMENT TO SILESIASPOLISHNESS

Abstract

In 1958, on the occasion of the 40th anniversaryof the Silesian Uprisings, the administration of the KatowiceVoivodeship decided to create the Silesian Panorama: aninstitution combining a museum of insurgents mementoes,the Battle of Annaberg Panorama, and the first in Polandpanoramic cinema. The plans entailed establishing a museum-and-educational institution, pioneer in its character,not merely in Poland. Since the infrastructure ofmemory, finally unaccomplished, has never been discussedin literature, the first part of the paper speaks about thecourse of the organizational works, the stage of shaping theproject, as well as the reasons for giving up the idea. Thenecessary information was provided by materials preserved inthe State Archives in Katowice as well as in press releases.The planned commemoration was presented in the contextof the development of the technology of panoramic cinemaand its application in museum praxis; its role in the historyof the efforts to create a permanent display of mementoesof Silesian Uprisings in the Katowice Voivodeship has beendiscussed, and so have the sources of the projects originatorto reach for the genre of a panoramic painting, in thediscussed period considered anachronical.