Galicia (Habsburg Austria)

The article presents the development of Planty Dietlowskie (named after the professor of Jagiellonian University, Józef Dietl) on the part of the old Vistula River that was reclaimed. Th e Vistula cut-off  formed a natural frontier between the city centre and the Kazimierz district, inhabited by Jews, which had earlier been an independent suburban Jewish town. In the eyes of hygienists and modernizers, the old Vistula presented a signifi cant problem: it was becoming less and less passable, and people on its two banks used it to dispose of waste and sewage. Th e fi lling up of this part of the old Vistula was at the top of the list of objectives postulated by the municipal government. Th e project was implemented with fi nancial support from the National Department, and squares were arranged. As a result, the Christian and Jewish quarters found themselves next to each other. Th e author questions whether this physical closeness had any impact on the social integration of Kraków’s inhabitants.

Galicia was called by its 19th-century contemporaries 'an India of Europe' as it was the poorest province of the Habsburg Empire. This paper presents a global history of ideas and people that connects India's colonial experience with Eastern Europe. Although different in size, both countries were ruled by the imperial centres that considered them as 'backward' and in a need of the 'civilizing mission'. Vienna German-speaking centre stigmatized Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish Galicia periphery as 'barbaric East'. My aim is to show how some ideas of 'development', 'civilization' and 'barbarity' produced by the British to India were transferred and appropriated into Galicia. I will critically examine those ideas through the postcolonial prism. In this regard, I will demonstrate a Galician-Indian parallel in the biography and work of Stanisław Szczepanowski who held an ambivalent position that linked British colonial experience in India with attempts to 'civilize' Galicia.

In the early twentieth century, three provinces of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire enacted national compromises in their legislation that had elements of non-territorial autonomy provisions. Czech and German politicians in Moravia reached an agreement in 1905. In the heavily mixed Bukovina, Romanian, Ukrainian, German, Jewish and Polish representatives agreed on a new provincial constitution in 1909. Last but not least, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists compromised in spring 1914, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War vitiated the new provisions. Even though the provisions of these agreements varied substantially, new electoral laws introducing national registers were at their heart. These were designed to ensure a fairer representation of national groups in the provincial assemblies and to keep national agitation out of electoral campaigns. The earliest compromise in Moravia went furthest in consociational power sharing. However, the national bodies within the provincial assembly had no right to tax their respective national communities, and the provisions of the provincial constitutions kept the non-nationally defined nobility as an important counterbalance. The compromises in Bukovina and Galicia, even if they categorised all inhabitants nationally, contented themselves with even less autonomous agency for the national bodies in the provincial assemblies and rather emphasised the symbolic elements of national autonomy. The non-territorial approach in all three crownlands, however, was an instrument to reorganise multi-ethnic provinces that increasingly became the model for national compromises in other Austrian provinces.

This article takes a fresh look on the status of Galicia within the Habsburg Monarchy between the late 18 th and the early 20 th century, presenting the obstacles and opportunities of economic growth faced by imperial policy-makers. At the same time, an analysis is presented of the impact of the imperial experience on the process of forging national identities. The emphasis has been placed on how the increasing national fragmentation in a multi-cultural region affected economic prosperity.

An urban biography, Brody: A Galician Border City in the Long Nineteenth Century reconciles 150 years of the town's socioeconomic history with its cultural memory. The first comprehensive study of this city under Habsburg-Austrian rule, Börries Kuzmany advises against reading urban history solely through the national lens. Besides exploring Brody's extraordinary ethno-confessional structure—Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians—Kuzmany examines the interrelation between the city's geographical location at the imperial border, its standing as a key commercial hub in East-Central Europe, and its position as a major springboard for the dissemination of the Haskalah in Galicia and the Russian Empire. After delving into the contradictory perceptions of Brody in travelogues, fiction and memory books, Kuzmany uses contemporary and historical photographs to provide an illustrated walking tour of this now Ukrainian town.

The article deals with the issue of land and forest common rights (servitutes praediorum) of the inhabitants of Leżajsk. The functioning and the difficult process of abolishing the rights of the municipality’s to collect wood from manor’s forests in the 19th century, reflected a general tendency in Galicia to appearance numerous disputes and conflicts during of the reform abolishing common rights. The Leżajsk example is one of the few cases in which the municipality until 1865 could collect construction timber from forests for the purpose of maintaining urban infrastructure - passenger and freight ferries, roads, pavements, canals, bridges and crossings, and signposts. The investigation conducted by the local commission of common rights conducted in the years 1865-1869 finally resulted in the abolition of rights through their redemption with compensation. After a few years of difficult negotiations and appeals to the Interior Ministry in Vienna, the magistrate received compensation from Alfred Potocki in the amount of 1977 guldens. The article, based on extremely valuable sources not used so far, focuses on unexplored subject, which, in the broader context of socio-economic changes, can shed a whole new light on the perception of modernization processes in Galicia.

The article deals with an issue not studied so far, in the subject literature mentioned only from a general or fragmentary point of view. On the example of the Kolbuszowa estate the article presents the forms of easement rights which originated from the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and were based on commonly accepted norms or unilateral acts. After 1772 the Austrians decided to keep the norms, which was most often accented in the socalled urbarial descriptions from 1789. Prior to economic reforms in Galicia easement rights were a source of numerous social antagonisms, as shown on the example of the conflict between Jerzy Tyszkiewicz and the Kolbuszowa townsmen, described in the article. The material content of the article mentions the issue of conflicts upon easement rights after the 1848 reforms. Lack of an immediate legal regulation of the easement rights for a long time as well as the process of their regulation and purchase led to mass disputes, particularly between the village and the manor. Complicated relations between the villagers and the Ruckis and Tyszkiewiczs as well as the disputes among the municipalities, presented in the article, are a by-the-book example of the real problem concerning the whole Galicia, which in some cases took decades to solve.

Center and periphery are popular concepts to describe geographical, political, or economic power relations. Both are mostly perceived as strict and mutually exclusive categories. This article examines a Galician border town whose history illustrates the complexities of conceptualizing center and periphery relations. At first glance, nineteenth-century Brody (in today's Ukraine) would seem to qualify as a peripheral town located on the Galician border between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. An analysis of this city under Habsburg rule (1772–1918), however, shows us that during that period it constituted both an important center and a declining periphery, not only consecutively, but also simultaneously. Its situation on the country's physical and political periphery did not harm Brody's central role in Europe's East-West trade until the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. Only in later decades did the city lose its place within a modernizing commercial system, and eventually it declined in importance. If we leave aside the economic aspect and take a closer look at Brody's mostly Jewish inhabitants, we see that for centuries this city functioned as an important center for Eastern and Central European Jewry. Even though the town's centrality for Jewish history also changed over time, Brody nevertheless kept its place on Jewish mental maps, whether as a center of religious learning, as a pioneering site of political emancipation, or as a safe haven for Jewish refugees.

"Galicyjski Eksodus" przedstawia zapominane doświadczenie uchodźstwa lat I wojny światowej. Autor dotarł do źródeł austriackich, czeskich, węgierskich, słoweńskich, ukraińskich i polskich, by ukazać sytuację od ucieczki i ewakuacji w poszczególnych latach wojny, poprzez pobyt na uchodźstwie, aż po kwestie powrotów czy pozostania w krajach sukcesyjnych po 1918 roku. To zarazem opowieść o relacji międzykulturowej mieszkańców tej samej monarchii, którym przyszło spotkać się dopiero w warunkach kryzysu wojennego, tuż przed agonią swojego państwa. Sytuacja ta pokazała, jak głęboko podzielone były światy trzech aktorów książki: uchodźców, ludności miejscowej oraz władzy, która musiała poradzić sobie z nieznanym dotychczas na taką skalę problemem. W książce opisano realia tego spotkania: próby gościnności czy sprawności aparatu biurokratycznego, chęć akceptacji, kwestie wykluczenia, tożsamości, samoorganizacji, a przede wszystkim – reakcje w konfrontacji każdej warstwy społecznej z azylantami.

"Choć wojna niejedno ma oblicze, pewnym jest, iż w bilansie wygranych i przegranych zawsze przeważają ci ostatni. Nie inaczej było w wypadku I wojny światowej. Wśród ofiar błędnych kalkulacji wojskowych i polityków znalazły się również masy najczęściej bezimiennych uchodźców, zmuszonych do opuszczenia rodzinnych stron i świata, który dobrze znali. W swej najnowszej książce Kamil Ruszała ze znawstwem, na bazie dogłębnych badań w kilkunastu archiwach Europy Środkowej, maluje szeroką panoramę losów kilkuset tysięcy Galicjan różnych wyznań i narodowości, którzy jesienią 1914 r., w obliczu rosyjskiej inwazji, a także w wyniku późniejszych ruchów wojsk, szukali azylu w głębi monarchii habsburskiej. Część z nich uciekała w popłochu i chaosie na własną rękę, część zaś objęto, nierzadko przymusową, ewakuacją. W głębi państwa uchodźcy – poza biedą, niedożywieniem, chorobami, stłoczeniem w obozach, tęsknotą za stronami ojczystymi – często zamiast współczucia i pomocy, napotykali na mur niechęci i obojętności, czasem otwartej wręcz wrogości ze strony miejscowej ludności".
- dr hab. Piotr Szlanta, prof. UW

https://www.universitas.com.pl/produkt/4074/Galicyjski-Eksodus-Uchodzcy-z-Galicji-podczas-I-wojny-swiatowej-w-monarchii-Habsburgow

Galizien war eine der ärmsten Regionen der Habsburgermonarchie und konnte im späten 19. Jahrhundert nur rudimentär an Industrialisierung und Wohlstandsteigerung anschließen. Die Ursachen für die gescheiterten Modernisierungsprojekte der imperialen Beamten und regionalen Eliten reichen bis in die Frühe Neuzeit zurück, als das spätere Galizien unter polnisch-litauischer Herrschaft zum Rohstofflieferanten Westeuropas abstieg. Die periphere Verflechtung mit überregionalen Märkten akzentuierte sich unter habsburgischer Ägide ab 1772 weiter: Die Wirtschaftspolitik des Wiener Hofs bevorzugte die böhmischen und österreichischen Zentren, geopolitische Umstände und regionale Interessenskonstellationen bremsten Entwicklungsimpulse.  Wirtschaftspolitische Reformdiskurse waren dabei eingebettet in kulturgeografische Zivilisierungsdiskurse der habsburgischen Verwaltung. Im späten 19. Jahrhundert eigneten sich die national definiertemn Modernisierungsprojekte der galizischen Regionaleliten diese Schemata für ihre eigenen Zwecke an. Allerdings konnten sie die periphere Position Galiziens nur sehr begrenzt verändern.
Das Buch zeigt insgesamt, wie die ungleichen überregionalen Verflechtungen im Zusammenspiel mit der imperialen Wirtschaftspolitik Galiziens Entwicklung zwischen 1772 und 1914 behinderten.

The article deals with the question of mobility in the context of the common rights of passage, carriage and cattle drive through properties belonging to estates. Till 1848 Galician peasants and townsmen enjoyed them on the basis of charters or custom law. In the second half of the 19th century rights were abolished or regulated. Archival research proved that in the whole century there were many conflicts regarding common rights, which is the main hypothesis put forward in the present article. The arrangement of the present text is conventionally structured, i.e. historical background, hypothesis and research questions; discussion of the source base, methodology and research tools; the main body, summary and general conclusions. The article originated on the basis of archival sources, mainly from the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv, which were utilised for the very first time. The sources were supplemented by cartographic materials prepared by means of QGIS software.

This article provides an overview of the political representation and integration of Galician Jews on the municipal, provincial, and central state level under Austrian rule. It demonstrates that political representation on the latter two levels started only after the revolution of 1848 and was rather modest considering the numeric and economic weight Jews enjoyed in Galicia. Even though representation in municipal councils started earlier, the position of Jews depended very much on local circumstances. After the turn of the century, the widening of the electorate to the lower classes led to a broader Jewish representation and participation not only in terms of numbers but also within the political spectrum. This is particularly true for the paper's second part. In this section, the text explores the reform of the electoral system for Galicia's provincial parliament and the attitude of Jewish politicians towards the compromise eventually found in 1914. The article argues that among Jews the positive or negative assessment of the new voting system depended largely on their position in the larger antagonism between Jewish nationalists and assimilationists. The former complained that the entire reform was on the backs of the Jews ignoring their numeric strength and their national rights. Assimilationists, on the other hand, were satisfied that, against all counter-claims of Zionists and Anti-Semites, the compromise legally established that Jews were Poles.

Te article examines the growth and decline of the one most important industrial enterprise in Podgórze, in the direct vicinity of Kraków, where during the second half of 19th century. Maurycy Baruch founded a fourmill, automatic bakery, as well as briquette and tile factories. Baruch managed his business complex until his death, when it was taken over by his offspring. Te history of the Baruch enterprises, in particular their modernization and marketing/promoting strategy, is presented in the context of contemporary Galician and Habsburg business competition. Te main sources include is the local press, mostly from Kraków.

This article investigates how Polish and Ukrainian political parties, state officials as well as religious leaders negotiated national-personal autonomy for the virtually unstudied Galician Compromise in 1914. My conclusion maintains that a compromise-friendly atmosphere in the Empire’s public opinion, careful interference from Vienna and increasing tensions with neighbouring Russia forced the Polish establishment to cede some power to Ukrainian parties.

This article focuses on the place that Galicia occupies in the writings of the Jewish author and essayist Yehoshua Radler-Feldman (Rebb Binyomin, 1880-1957), who was one of the main figures in the binational Zionist movements and advocated the rooting of Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine in the cultural and religious affinity between Judaism and Islam. The central role that RB attributed to Galicia suggests that his Galician life experience influenced the crystallization of his approach to multinationalism. As opposed to the Jewish perceptions of binationalism that were developed by RB's future companions in the binational movements in Palestine, who were members of the Prague circle, the Galician orientation of RB's writing is an orientation toward a different Jewish perception of multinational coexistence: one of Habsburgian origin that is based not on existential inbetweenness but on a framework of coexisting centers of identification. This perception is also manifested in the resulting esthetic forms that are characterized by traditional and popular comic storytelling that challenges the image of a unified subject and questions the very concept of authenticity.

Ukrainian translation of "Ukrainian Popular Science in Habsburg Galicia, 1900-14" by Diana Pavlys'ko

Уцій  статті викладено  хронологічну  послідовність ключових моментів  розвитку  ідеї«популярної  науки»в  українському  академічному дискурсізгідно зіснуючимипідходамидо «національної науки» (як «власне науки»).Зокрема,  зроблено особливий  акцент  на  введенні  регулярних наукових  лекцій  для громадськості  Габсбурзької  Галичини  на  початку  ХХстоліття.  Наукове  товариствоімені  Шевченка(НТШ)було  на  той  час основноюасоціацією науковцівв Україні. НТШ, в якому працювало більшість чоловіків, і яке все більше займалось вивченням українознавства, приділяло мало уваги популяризації наукових досліджень.У відповідь на  створення НТШбуло сформовано також і Товариство українських наукових викладів ім.Петра  Могили(ТУНВ  ім.  П.Могили). Його  метою  було  поглибленняобізнаностігромадськості  про  наукову  роботу,  і  тому  його  члени  почали організовувати регулярні публічні лекції по всій Галичині між 1909 і 1914 роками. У цій статті проаналізовано популяризацію науки, що пропагувалася ТУНВ ім. П.Могили, і досліджено коло слухачівлекцій з урахуванням їхнього місцяпроживання, гендерної приналежності та відповідних інтересів.

This article presents and analyses legal acts that influenced the situation of Jews in
Galicia and shaped the local co-existence of Jewish communities and municipalities. It
concentrates on subsidies provided to Jewish charities and welfare institutions by municipal
funds. The subsidizing policy of Krakow is compared with that of Lwów.

This article takes a fresh look on the status of Galicia within the Habsburg Monarchy between the late 18 th and the early 20 th century, presenting the obstacles and opportunities of economic growth faced by imperial policy-makers. At the same time, an analysis is presented of the impact of the imperial experience on the process of forging national identities. The emphasis has been placed on how the increasing national fragmentation in a multi-cultural region affected economic prosperity.

Moses and Gitla Ritter were accused of murdering the charwoman Franciszka Mnichówna. The accusation and trials which followed revoked the blood libel. In three circumstantial trials (1882–1886), despite the lack of evidence, the Ritters were found guilty and sentenced to death. Owing to the “ritual” nature attributed to the presumed murder, the trials became media events, followed by an international audience. The author discusses the course of the trials, considering whether and how the municipalities in which they took place exploited their unexpected popularity for promotional purposes. What importance did the urban elites attach to the trials? How can we interpret the three guilty verdicts, and what symbolic significance can be assigned to them?

The text describes Zofia Sheptytska, Metropolitan's mother, her education and life choices. The author pays special attention to the values she considered inportant and the way she brought up her sons. She seemed to have quite strong influence on the life and decisions of her sons even though her hous was tipical patrimonial one.

The article discusses the process of the introduction in Galicia of a new law regulating the relations between Jewish communities and the authorities of the territorial administration. Unlike in the Galician provinces, where the Josephine patent of 1789 continued to be applied, certain Jewish communities in the cities here had developed new statutes previously, leading to partial changes in the elections for community councils. The first was the Krakow community (1870), whose Orthodox rabbi Szymon Schreiber (Sofer) attempted to withdraw the implemented changes, designing his own version of the new statutes (1882). The struggle over the form of the new law ultimately culminated with the Viennese government’s issue of relevant regulations in 1890.

Kozińska-Witt, Hanna: Kraków Municipality and Jewish Denomination Church : Provisional Municipal Statute for the Royal Capital Kraków (1866) and its Effect The authoress describes and analyzes the implementation of the legal equality in the Municipal statute of the Galician statutory city of Kraków. The study focuses in detail on the sixth section of the Provisional Municipal Statute for the City of Kraków (1866), which regulated the approach of the municipality to the Jewish community, whereas above all those circumstances are of interest, which could possibly affect the content of the section. The Section VI of the Municipal statute of Kraków is compared with the coessential section of the Statute of Lviv (1870). Especially two aspects are pointed out: the fixation of the subsidization of the Jewish institutions and the establishment of the municipal council, which should minister the affairs of the Jewish inhabitants of the city and maintain contact of the municipality to the Jewish community. The authoress takes the view, that by virtue of the paragraphs of the section VI both the legal equality was introduced and the social status quo was preserved.

Summary
It is a well-known fact that Jews were active in Galician local municipal government. The stark imbalance between the large number of Jewish local government officials and the insignificant role attributed to their activities was the reason for the research that paved the way for this book.
In chronological terms, I concentrate on the nineteenth century and discuss the period from the publication of the Temporary Commune Statute for the City of Krakow (1866) to the publication of the Community Statute for the Royal Capital City of Krakow (1901). The sources upon which the book was based comprised publications and periodicals issued by the Krakow local government and an extensive press analysis: especially useful were the liberal Reforma (1882) and Nowa Reforma (1883-1928, in the book until 1901), edited by circles interested in developing civic attitudes, open to homines novi and interested in the work of local government, as manifested in numerous suggestions and criticism of shortcomings.
The book comprises four chapters and a concluding excursus. Chapter 1 discusses the legal situation of Jews in Galicia, emphasising the specific nature of the position of the Krakow religious community in this regard. I attempted to explain the status of the Krakow community, depicting it in a broader context and analysing the controversies between the Orthodox Jewry and Jewish liberals, which reached as far as distant Vienna. The polemical background of the Krakow discussions was made up by the desire to maintain the autonomy of Jewish communities and the contrasting direction of tendencies to subordinate the administration of religious communities to political organs.
Chapter 2 examines the position of Jews in the Krakow local government and presents the results of elections, underlining the procedural nature of communal politics. I analyse the activity of Jewish councillors and attempt to answer the question of whether they were indeed as dependent on non-Jewish politicians as has previously been suggested. I discuss the ceremonial and everyday presence of municipal authorities in the Jewish commune, as well as the anti-Semitic overtones of Municipal Council assemblies.
In Chapter 3, I investigate the effectiveness of Jewish local government officials’ interventions on the basis of the local government subsidies they obtained for institutions serving needy Jews. I consider the role of Jewish councillors in negotiating subsidies and their amount, and reflect on whether they were effective in this regard.
My focus in Chapter 4 is the process of integration between the quarter inhabited by Jews and the Christian-dominated City Centre district, as well as the local government modernisation programme for Kazimierz. I seek to ascertain whether and to what degree urban integration led to the integration of the various population groups into one city community.
The book concludes with an excursus presenting the trials of Gitla and Moses Ritter from Lutcza, accused of ritual murder: two of these trials took place in Krakow, and perhaps help to illustrate the position of the local urban (not intellectual) elite towards Jews.
Trans. from by Ben Koschalka

The article discusses the tendencies of the few works addressing the subject of the activity of Jews in the municipal self-government bodies in the Galicia period. The author explains unpopularity of this subject-matter pointing to the secondary role of self-government as well as the popularity of the culturalistic approach. Quoting the example of the work by Andrzej Zbikowski on the Cracow Jewish community the author indicates potential points of interface between both self-government bodies: the municipal and the confessional one - and suggests the necessity of re-examining certain issues, e.g. the activities of the orthodox self-government officials, the modernization preferences of the self-government, or  the impact the politization of Catholicism had on the communal politics in the late 19th century.

The theme of the paper is the tension in the inter-relations between national culture and life as led in the municipalities. This issue is examined, taking the presentation of the city Cracow at the General Provincial Exhibition of 1894 as an example, analysing both national rhetoric and local government in practice. Particular attention is paid to the efforts of the Cracow municipal administration to present a city dedicated to preserving tradition as a modern living space. The analysis of municipal presentation will be supplemented by an examination of the ceremonies which accompanied the Exhibition (visit of the Crown Prince) and events (meeting of the Municipal Conference). In the final section the author endeavours to assess the significance of the Exhibition for the process of modernisation in Galicia. The paper closes with a brief comparison with the “Exhibition of Municipalities”, during the 1929 General Provincial Exhibition held in Posen, in which the essential differences between the Lemberg and the Posen presentations with regard to the sense of national belonging and the level of civilisation are brought to light.

The process of social and economic changes that took place in the Central and Eastern Europe at the turn of 19th and the beginning of 20th century is usually described as modernization. Galicia, the province of the Habsburg empire, which was created from the Austrian partition of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , could be a good example of how religious and national relations were reshaped by this process. Irrespectively of the controversy having recently aroused around the modernization model  in the academic discussion, it seems to describe and explain well the metamorphosis of the society in Galicia at that time.
Finally the aims with which the three powers were initiating changes in Galicia after 1882 were only partly achieved. The Polish ruling elite in Galicia accomplished its goal of limiting Russophile fraction influence. However they didn’t manage to preserve an old traditional Polish-Ruthenian preindustrial relations. Ukrainian national movement broke the new era agreement and became a main power opposing a Polish domination in Galicia. Paradoxically, it gained its momentum thanks to the new era agreement. Vatican managed to reinforce its link with Greek-Catholic Church. However it changed its attitude towards the Greek-Catholic liturgical reform. Metropolitan of Lviv Andrei Sheptytskyi, the grandson of Aleksander Fredro and the Basilian monk brought up by Jesuits, became the strongest supporter of a new liturgical books based on the ancient Greek tradition. Such liturgical reform was actually prepared in Rome and books were published in 1940-1950. They returned to the tradition created before the Union of Brest. The third part, the Austrian government was eliminated by the I world war and became a great looser.
Eventually the 1882 tendency was reversed. The Ukrainian national integration progressed with the support of metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi and with the active participation of the Greek-Catholic clergy. The Church purified its rite keeping its original Ukrainian and Eastern character. The I and II world war proved that “the triune Russian nation” project didn’t find many adherents among Ukrainians.

Until now the history of Cracow was written mostly as a history of the cultural capital city of Poland (stolica duchowa). Researchers were usually focusing on the non-economic resources of this city perceived as a "realm of memory" and were pointing on the role played by the intellectual elites and inteligencja. The development of the city was almost exclusively connected to the non-economic impulses. "Jewish district" was described as a place of trade and the crafts and its Jewish inhabitants as merchants or artisans. In this narrative Cracow and Kazimierz, created two separated worlds. This conventional difference and gap between Christian and Jews and the districts they inhabited let to our project. We would like to ask again what role Jews played in the economic development of the city. Were the non-economic factors indeed predominant in the development of the city? Why are scholars not paying attention to the involvement of Jews in development of Cracovian municipality, to the taxes they paid, to their engagement in the city economics and to other initiatives which were started by them? As an object for our analyses we chose the group of important Jewish industrialists, who founded big enterprises and businesses. Although the names of some of those Jewish industrialists appear in the books on the local history, they don´t really belong to it. Not a lot is known about their biographies and their undertakings. By devoting our research to them to their professional achievements and to their businesses we hope to shed light on their role for development of the industrial districts (i.e. Podgórze, Płaszów and Borek Fałęcki) and the whole city. Because of the favorable model of taxation enterprises and factories were situated in the vicinity of Krakow. The city and its vicinities were formally separate but in fact they economically depended on one another and therefore created one economic unit. We would like to gain a profound knowledge on these businesses, their owners and the workers they employed: we are interested in beginnings, developments, crisis and personal inter-connection. Did existence of industries and productions influence the economic situation in old Kraków and in which way? The Jewish industrialists worked outside of Cracow but they engaged mostly in the professional and social life in the old city. We would like to find out more about their engagement and their favors for the municipality.