IDEA
REDAKCJA
NUMERY
WSKAZÓWKI
LISTA RECENZENTÓW
I PROCEDURA RECENZOWANIA
KONTAKT
|
Krystian Chyrkowski - Letters
from Wałcz region and Krajna till the end of the XVIII
century
from the resources of State Archives in Toruń
This article tries to familiarise the correspondence from
Wałcz region and Krajna to Toruń magistrate on the basis
of letters stored in the holding of State Archives in
Toruń.
75 catalogue descriptions of letters from 12 towns located
in the north-western territories next to the borders of
pre-partition Republic of Poland were presented. One
cannot exclude that there are more of them in Toruń
Archives, but only two sections chosen from so called
Catalogue II (Acts of Toruń) and Catalogue III (Craftsman
letters) were submitted in the query.
Chronological borders of the correspondence presented are
from 1402 to 1799; however, majority of the correspondence
come from the XVIII century. The authors are both private
persons and institutions (craftsman associations, city
councils, evangelical commune council). Among craftsmen
and city council letters one can find so called birth
certificates (Geburtsbrief), job certificates (Lehrbrief)
and recommending letters (Empfehlungsbrief). Court letters
concern cases similar to contemporary ones: inheritance
issues, suits for vendor cheating, legal proceeding in
case of murders and others. Private persons ask the city
council of Toruń to help them execute debts from Toruń
inhabitants. Evangelical commune from Łobżenica asks a few
times for financial help.
Material gathered in the article constitutes the excellent
source for research on chancery's functioning at that
time, both when it comes to senders and recipients of
letters. One can see some regularity in the forms of some
typical documents - just like craftsman letters mentioned
above - independently of the town they were issued. After
the first partition of Poland (1772), when the territories
under discussion were taken over by Prussia, there
appeared even printed forms of certificates of craftsmen
training. Court correspondence was ad hoc in nature, where
only polite forms of address were repeated. Later, letter
content was described and the recipient noted down the
date of their receipt. Only a few craftsman letters were
written on the parchment paper, rest of them were paper.
Thanks to that, one can find water marks next to common
samples; there are also watermarks hardly ever met in the
subject literature. With majority of letters there are
seals of senders, among others hanging wax seals,
shellac seals, paper-shellac seals and wafer seals.
The correspondence was mainly in German language due to
the neighbourhood of Brandenburg and later - Prussia.
Latin and Polish languages were used as well. The
condition of letters varies a lot - from excellent to
poor. Letters of Catalogue III are currently stored
separately while the letters of Catalogue III are stored
in sewn files.
|