53/968/0/-/716

A school exercise book of Albert Breyer (1889-1939), a teacher at the German school in Sompolno and a historian of the German settlements in central Poland, with a loose sheet of 1858 laid in it. It is kept in the State Archive in Poznań (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu) among his papers, under the archive’s title “Łazińsk [pow. słupecki, woj. poznańskie - notatki, statystyka] 1937”. The cover names Łazińsk and Emilienheim and, in Russian, a liquidation table. Breyer used the notebook in July 1935 and July 1936: in it he copied the Russian tables by which the peasants of three German colonies received their land in 1868, with their rights in the landowner’s forest, and wrote his own counts and notes. The holding is divided by content into thirteen documents, six of them tables: Breyer’s copies stand apart from his own notes, because a copy belongs to the time of what it copies.

Historical background

After the Russian ukase of 1864 on the peasants of the Kingdom of Poland, the land the peasants farmed became their own, and each village was given a liquidation table: the holdings, their extent, and the sum the former owner was to receive for them. The peasants also kept their servitudes, rights of pasture and of gathering wood in the landowner’s forest; these were later bought out or exchanged for land, a process called separation. Łazińsk lay on the Trąbczyn estate, where two Olęder colonies, later called Łazińskie Stare Olędry and Łazińskie Nowe Olędry, had been founded; the dispute of their settlers with the owner over pasture and wood in his forest is the subject of the summons of 1860, 53/968/0/-/783. Breyer went to these villages in 1935 and 1936 for his studies of the German settlements; his notebooks of July 1936 are 53/968/0/-/669.

Contents

The loose sheet is a Polish list, made out at Kopojno on 3/15 December 1858 by the wójt (village head) of the commune of Kopojno, of the hearth tax and barracks money that 29 householders of the colony of Emilienheim were to pay in two instalments, in March and September; most of them owe 1 złoty 50 groszy, and the whole comes to 40 złoty 50 groszy [1].

Breyer copied three liquidation tables. That of Emilienheim, “now Mikhalenov”, dated 28 March 1868, lists 35 holdings, 319 Morgen 250 rods in all, with 4,420 roubles 53 kopecks due to the landowner [2]; his notes add the survey of 1870 and the renaming of the village in 1892 after its local name, Michalinów [3]. That of the colony of Łazińsk, in the commune of Trąbczyn, dated at Słupca on 29 June 1868, is the longest: 91 holdings, the school farmstead, the cemetery, the common land and the roads, 1,691 Morgen 219 rods in all, and a liquidation sum of 10,055 roubles 70 kopecks for the former owner. Beside many holdings Breyer wrote in pencil who held them in 1875 [4]. The third is that of Orliny, of the landowner Count Albert Taczanowski: 57 holdings, 850 Morgen 272 rods, and 6,049 roubles 89 kopecks to be paid [11].

He copied the servitudes too. The Łazińsk Hollanders may graze their cattle in the forest “Studzianki” and gather fallen wood there twice a week, and have no other rights [5]. Every farmstead of Orliny may gather wood in half of the forest “Velskii Bor” on Saturdays, receives a tree a year for its buildings, and may graze cattle and rake litter there [13]. Breyer notes that the servitude in Orlin was 300 Morgen, and that the separation was carried out in Great Orlin and Czarny Bród sixty years before and in Białobłoty and Little Orlin two years before [12].

His figures for Łazińsk follow the farmers and their land from 1840 to 1935: 87 farmers on 1,368 Morgen in 1840, 91 on 1,691 in 1868, 112 on 2,044 in 1906, and 146 on 1,996 in 1935 [7]. For Orlin he lists the farmers of the Hauland of Biskupice with their Morgen [9], and the land of the village by classes in July 1936 [10].

His notes of July 1935 [8] and July 1936 [10] are on Huta Trąbczyńska, Orlin, Józefów and the villages around them: the number of farmers and of cattle, the first farmers of Józefów, houses, hymn books, dress, speech (Low German among the old people, Kashubian in Orlin in earlier days), customs, thieving and poverty, marriages, the Pentecostalists and Baptists who had come to Orlin, the young people going to the Poznań region, and relations with the Poles, who “all speak good German”.

Form and language

The tables and the servitudes are copied in Russian, in the spelling of before 1918; Breyer’s notes are in German, in Latin script and some in Kurrent, short and much abbreviated; the sheet of 1858 is in Polish. In the tables a figure such as “17-71” is 17 Morgen 71 rods, and on the sheet of 1858 “1-50” is 1 złoty 50 groszy. Breyer separates his notes with a short line and a small circle. The tables are given as tables, the entry’s number first and the name second.

Related holdings

Breyer’s notebooks of July 1936 on Łazińsk, Emilienheim and their neighbours: 53/968/0/-/669. The summons of 1860 against the colonists of the two Łazińska colonies, from the same papers: 53/968/0/-/783. Breyer’s copies on the parcelling of Zagórów and Trąbczyn in 1806: 53/968/0/-/801.

Images

The editor photographed the notebook in 2023, as camera raw files, IMG_5159 to IMG_5180. No raw converter was used: each file holds the camera’s full-size picture, and that picture was cut to the paper and, for the openings, at the fold, so that each page has its own image. IMG_5159 shows the archive’s title page beside the notebook and the sheet; only the title page is taken from it. IMG_5160 and IMG_5161 are the two sides of the loose sheet, IMG_5162 the cover. IMG_5168 repeats the opening of IMG_5169 and is not used; the blank inside front cover is left out. The folds were placed in session and approved by the editor.

Transcription

There was no transcription. An AI model (Claude) read the notebook and the sheet from the photographs, line by line, each page in three enlarged strips. Words not read are marked “[?]”; words read with doubt carry “?” inside square brackets; where only some letters were read, those letters are given. There were 68 such marks. The editor then read 17 of them, the ones a name, a place, a heading or the sense of a note rests on, on a sheet that shows each beside a picture of its line, and settled or changed 13 of them; on a second sheet they read 18 more and settled or changed 11. A comparison with the original table, found in 2026, settled two more and corrected figures and names misread in the table. The editor then read the last 28 on the second sheet and settled or changed 17; 35 marks remain. A word broken at the end of a line ends in “¬”. Breyer’s dividers between notes, a short line with a small circle, are kept. Words he struck out are left out, as everywhere in this edition. The Russian keeps its old spelling (ѣ, і, ъ). The editor has not checked the rest of the reading.

Division and dating

The holding is divided by content into thirteen documents, at the editor’s choice: the sheet of 1858; each of the three liquidation tables; Breyer’s copies of the servitudes of Łazińsk and of Orliny and his extracts on Emilienheim of 1870 and 1892; his counts of farmers and land; his table of farmers and Morgen; his list of the farmers of Orlin; and his notes of 1935 and 1936. A page that holds the end of one document and the start of the next stands under both. Breyer’s copies stand apart from his own notes because a copy takes the date and the era of what it copies, not of the notebook (the editor, 2026-10-14). So the sheet of 1858, the tables of 1868, the extracts dated by their first entry, 26 November 1870, and the copies of the servitudes belong to the years of Włodzimierz Miączyński; the copy of the Łazińsk servitudes is dated to 1868, the year of the table it follows, and the table and servitudes of Orliny have no date. Breyer’s own notes and figures belong to the twentieth century: the notes of 1935 and 1936 carry the month, the others are dated to 1936, the year in which he used the notebook, and the list of Orlin to July 1935, between his notes of that month and those of 1936.

Tables

Six documents are given as tables: the sheet of 1858, the three liquidation tables, the table of farmers and Morgen, and the list of Orlin. Each entry’s number stands first and its name second, as in every table of the edition, although on the sheet of 1858 the name comes first. Where the copyist wrote only the last figure of a number, it is given in full; the copyist’s dash after a name is left out; a heading repeated at the head of a page is given once. In the Łazińsk table Breyer wrote in pencil, between the lines, who held each holding in 1875: his pencil stands in the name cell after a dash. Where Breyer spelled a name otherwise than the original table of 1868 does (APŁ 39/98/0/-/6603), the name is given as the original writes it, at the editor’s word: Breyer wrote Мержъ for Мерцъ, Скипковскій for Саниковскій, Кнакфусъ for Кнафкусъ, Штирценбекеръ for Штирценбехеръ, Март. for Марцинъ, Шенфишъ for Шейнфишъ and Хиршъ for Гиршъ, and other forenames at nos. 43 and 60 (Эман., Дет.). The family written Цельмеръ is Zelmer, always with m. The original is also the authority for the figures: where his differed (nos. 12, 29 and 46, and the order of nos. 47 and 48), they are given as the original has them, whether the difference was his slip or a misreading.

Translation

The English was written by the AI model from the reading. In the tables only the names and the words are translated, and every figure stands in the same cell as in the original. Russian names are transliterated letter by letter, without the hard sign at the end of a word, so a German name written in Russian appears in its Russian form (Shults, Merts); German and Polish names written in Latin letters are kept as written. Morgen and Hufen are kept; “пр.” and “прут.” are rods.

Summary

The summaries were written in German from the reading and translated into English. Each of their 86 statements was then checked against the document, and 16 were weakened or cut: the first draft said of the liquidation tables what is known only from elsewhere, counted rows wrongly where numbers are skipped or doubled, and gave names in German forms that the English does not use. On one page the total Breyer wrote, 1,157.69 Morgen, is 6 Morgen more than his figures add up to; the photograph shows the figures as read, and the summary says so. Nothing in the summaries rests on a word read with doubt.