The purpose of the “Zakłady Kórnickie” Foundation was to assure fi nancial basis for the institutions founded by Jadwiga and Władysław Zamojski. In the law passed in 1925 the first place among the aims of the Foundation was held by “maintenance and development of The Housework School for Women”. The Foundation, however, was not performing this legal obligation properly. Preliminary school budgets were set at a level that was too low and the funds were paid too late and not to the full amount. This disorganized life at the School. There was not enough money to pay employees’ salaries on time, income tax, health insurance etc. were likewise was not paid. It was necessary to request for loans, buy food and coal on credit, etc. Drastic savings were made at the cost of the School during the great economic crisis. In 1931 two of the three courses run by the School were closed. The situation began to improve in the School year 1934/35. In 1937, besides the traditional course, a two-years’ high school of economics was inaugurated. In 1938 complete reconstruction of the School buildings was started but the outbreak of the war prevented its completion.

The Kórnik Library owns the richest collection of papers related to the mathematician and philosopher Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński (1776-1853), the founder of Polish Messianism. Among them there is a copy of a letter written to him in 1853 by Alphonse-Louis Constant (1810-1875), better known under his later literary pseudonym “Éliphas Lévi”. He became an admirer of Wroński (the letter is signed “your devoted disciple”) and one of the few people present at his funeral. He also helped Leonard Niedźwiecki with cataloguing Wroński’s manuscripts. The paper discusses his life and relations with the Polish aristocratic emigration in France. Of special note is his friendship with Flora Tristan, the feminist activist, through whom he met Balzac and probably Adam Mickiewicz, quoted with great admiration in his later books on magic and occultism. It is even possible that those interests of Lévi were partly inspired by Mickiewicz’s readings of Swedenborg, Jakob Böhme and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. The key discovery is that the phrase “Poland is the Christ of nations”, known to every Polish pupil, was not formulated by Mickiewicz (as is widely believed) but by Constant in a political pamphlet Le Deuil de la Pologne (1846). After his metamorphosis into a modern magus, Éliphas Lévi became a close friend of Madame de Balzac (to whom he dedicated an occult novel), brothers Aleksander and Konstanty Branicki, as well as Jerzy Mniszech, who became the sole heir of his magical manuscripts and a curious instrument called “prognometer”. It is not known what happened to the manuscripts, but the “prognometer” is now in the collections of the National Library as a deposit of the Branicki Library in Wilanów.

The painting discussed in the article was brought to Poland from Italy by general Władysław Zamoyski as “Radziwiłł’s entrance to Rome” and its title hero was first identifi ed as “Cardinal Jerzy Radziwiłł” in the inventory of 1924. According to the author, pace Baglione and Manilli, the thesis about Antonio Tempesta’s authorship is unlikely. The parts of the sky and the ruins of Rome may be attributed to Agostino Tassi. A group of people in the lower part were painted by at least two artists who are difficult to identify but be narrowed to a dozen or so assistants of Tassi or Andrea Sacchi, who are known by name. The painting may be related to the inauguration of the pontifi cate of Paul V, Pope Innocent X or Urban VIII. It must be dated to the thirties of the seventeenth century and may have been painted at the order of the Borghese for their new villa on the Pincio. The contractor of this painting was probably the workshop of Tassi. Zamoyski probably bought it on the antiquarian market rather than directly from the Borghese, because in that case there would be no significant error in the title of the work.

The paper discusses the lives and activities of two printers: Johann Gottfried Haase and Gottfried Börner who operated their printing houses in Szlichtyngowa, a small town on the borderland of Great Poland and Silesia, during the years 1715-1740. Their output is represented by 101 items known today, dominated by ephemeral literature, documenting social and family life of Protestant elites, the burghers and gentry of the historical Land of Wschowa and Duchies of Głogów and Wołów. The authors of those prints were mostly Lutheran clergymen and town offi cials from Wschowa, Leszno, Głogów and other places. Very few items are connected with the local Catholic community. The downfall of printing in Szlichtyngowa was brought by the competitive activity of Michael Lorentz Presser in the nearby town of Leszno, who also served Polish language clients.

In the collection of the Kórnik Library there is an unfinished project of a heraldic plate (call number D. IV. 131) which was mentioned in the book by Stefan Kuczyński „Polish land arms: genesis, content, functions”. This article is the first attempt to analyze this forgotten and never completed heraldic project of Tytus Działyński. The heraldic design is a rectangular piece of paper with glued drawings of coats of arms of provinces, sometimes with notes. They are arranged according to the administrative division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. A comparative analysis discovered the sources of the engravings of coats of arms which were used in the project. It was also established that the project was created between 1859 and 1861.

In the Moorish Hall of Kórnik Castle there is a group of 12 stucco coats of arms, situated according to the programme developed by Tytus Działyński, owner of the residence. Another 34 coats of arms painted on canvas were meant to be put on the northern wall of the hall. This article contains a new, much improved in comparison to the previous ones, description of the whole set, as well as an attempt to reconstruct the process of its creation and analyze the ideas standing behind its design. Thanks to the research it was possible to identify the graphics used as models by Działyński, describe the various stages of his work, point out what was never finished and above all to propose a new and in-depth interpretation of the ideological message embedded in the whole set. It seems that Działyński intended to depict the history of Poland in its golden age by the use of the coats of arms. Those 34 missing coats of arms of the voivodeships of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were meant to be the most important of all and their absence makes it impossible to understand Działyński’s intentions.