The Dainty Commissioner Mandelbaum
Przemysław Pawlak
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
Abstract
Among all the surviving plays by Witkacy, Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes is most imbued with allusions to the Petrograd revolt. The story unfolding on stage seems at times to be a parody of the attack on the Winter Palace. The brave and uncompromising girl-soldier Sophia pushes and taunts the group of Forty Mandelbaums beyond endurance to finally fall victim to their rage. In 1917, Bernard Mandelbaum (1888–1953), son of a Lublin merchant, a Polish philologist sympathizing with Communism, a journalist of Promień, and the ideological and literary manager of the People’s Theatre in Petrograd became one of two Bolshevik commissars of state museums and art collections in Petrograd and was additionally tasked with investigating the fate of the Women’s Battalion that defended the Winter Palace. Later, Stalin appointed Mandelbaum to the post of Education Commissioner of the Committee for the Kingdom of Poland. Witkacy might have got to know Mandelbaum though mutual acquaintances or might have seen him speak out at political rallies. Mandelbaum came back to the re-emerging Poland to campaign against the Soviet–Polish War, for which he got arrested. After his release, Mandelbaum landed a school teaching position, having assumed the name „Stefan Drzewiecki,” and later „Drzewieski.” He rose to prominence as a member of the State Council for Public Enlightenment. During the Second World War, he worked in General Sikorski’s government administration in London, and in 1945 he joined the diplomatic service of the People’s Republic of Poland. Finally, he decided to stay in the West and became a Chief of the Reconstruction Department of UNESCO. In that capacity, he greatly contributed to the foundation of the International Federation of Children’s Communities (FICE) whose first task was to establish a committee supporting directors of children’s communities for war orphans.
Keywords:
Witkacy, Polish drama 1918-1939, Polish history 1918-1956, biographyReferences
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Authors
Przemysław PawlakInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
Przemysław Pawlak - PhD candidate in the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences.
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