Prussian Culture
About Prussian Culture
Seven scenes follow Poles in Poznań under Prussian rule: the folk school at Września, Professor Kulturtreger, the punishment of the children, expropriation, Prussian soldiers, Drzymała's wagon, and an apotheosis of Poland called Jutrzenka.
Cast & crew
More about Prussian Culture
Mordka Towbin produced it. Also called Les Martyrs de la Pologne and Pruska kultura. A surviving copy runs 8 minutes and 20 seconds. It opened inside the Russian Empire in 1908 and was stopped by the tsarist censors after the showing. Copies with French subtitles kept playing in Italy and France. Thought lost until Małgorzata and Marek Hendrykowski found it in 2000 at the Archives françaises du film in Bois-d'Arcy. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Themes
Background
The two protests it stages, Września in 1901 and Drzymała's wagon, were still recent in 1908.
Making
Towbin's picture was banned after the Russian-Empire premiere and kept circulating farther west.
Preservation
Found in 2000 at Bois-d'Arcy after being treated as lost. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The Września scenes refer to the 1901 student strike.
- Drzymała's wagon was his protest against being refused a house.
- A 1908 description called it scenes from the lives of Poznań Poles in the fight against Germans.
- It heads the Polish Film Heritage List as the oldest surviving Polish fiction film.
Scenes
- Children are punished at the Września school.
- Drzymała's wagon stands in for the house he was denied.