Impressions from my boyhood

fot. Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich / Wydawnictwo PWN / Instytutu Judaistyki Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego

„My contemporaries have not placed garlands on my head, and my descendants will not know more of me than I know of them,” wrote Ludwig Kalisch in his Impressions from my boyhood.

Born in Leszno in 1814, he spent the first years of his life in a traditional Jewish community. Next, he attended a school in Głogów, and from there went to Berlin, Mainz and London. He finally settled in Paris where he passed away in 1882. In France, Kalisch was in contact with many writers, artists and musicians, such as Heinrich Heine or Jacques Offenbach. He wrote about cancan long before Offenbach composed his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld. He translated the libretto into German—the premiere of the operetta in his translation was staged in Wrocław in 1859.

Impressions from my boyhood is a memoir of the Leszno Jewish community, yet it touches upon many universal issues. The narrative is akin to a tale of the land of childhood which commemorates specific places from the author’s hometown. Kalisch describes the condition of Jews in Leszno at the time, thus rendering his story both journalistic and ideological.

Impressions from my boyhood was published in German in 1872; since then it has never been reprinted or subjected to a literary analysis. Polish translation is the book’s second edition and it stands a chance of refuting the author’s theory of his work’s evanescence.

The book is published in a series Canon of the Memoir Literature by Polish Jews run by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, PWN [Polish Scientific Publishers] Publishing House and the Institute of Judaic Studies at the University of Wrocław.