polish culture
DESCRIPTION
The people of Poland have alvays been hospitable to artists and talented people from abroad. Polish culture has been greatly influenced by its ties with neighbouring countreies, the Germanic, Latinate and other ethnic groups and minorities living in Poland like the Jews.TRANSCRIPT
q Władysław Szpilman (5 December 1911 – 6 July 2000) – was a Jewish pianist and composer. Szpilman studied the piano at the Chopin School of Music in Warsaw and at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where he composed his Piano Suite "The Life of Machines”.
q He returned to Warsaw and he joined Polish Radio in 1935. He wrote music for radio plays and films : ”I lost your heart” , ”There is no happiness without love” , ”If you are in love with a girl”, ”Heather”, score for the film ”Dr Murek”, that brought him popularity.
Władysław Szpilman
q Władysław Szpilman and his family were forced to move into a "Jewish District"— the Warsaw Ghetto — in 1940. His entire family was transported to Treblinka in 1942, where they were all murdered. Szpilman avoided capture and death by the Germans and their collaborators several times.
q Szpilman remained in the Warsaw Ghetto until it was abolished after the deportation of most of its inhabitants in April–May 1943 and went into hiding.
q Wit Stwosz (also Veit Stoss) (1448 in Horb am Neckarnear Stuttgartu - 1533 in Nurumberg) is one of the best sculptors and painters of the Middle Ages. He arrived from Germany to Cracow in 1477.
q Wit Stwosz is the author of the Altar of St. Mary's, the tomb of Casimir IV in Wawel Cathedral circa 1492, the marble tomb of Zbigniew Oleśnicki in Gniezno, Crucifix of circa 1491 and the altar of Saint Stanislaus.
Wit Stwosz
q The altarpiece “of unheard of proportions” that Veit Stoss constructed for St Mary’s Church in Cracow during the 1480’s is the largest of its kind in Europe.
q It is the largest Gothic altarpiece in the world.
q The altar was stolen by the Nazis during World War II, but in 1947 it was returned to the church to which it belongs.
The Altar of Wit Stwosz
Jan Matejkoq Jan Matejko was born in
1838 and died in 1893 in Cracow.
q His father, Franciszek Matejko who was a Czech from the village of Roudnice married the half-German, half-Polish Joanna Karolina Rossberg.
q He was a Polish painter known for paintings of notable historical Polish political and military events.
Jan Matejko, Self-portrait, 1892
The most famous paintings of Jan Matejko :
Battle of Grunwald
Stanczyk