Oskar Halecki’s contribution to the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Rescue of Vienna in 1933

Abstract

Oskar Halecki, a professor of the University of Warsaw and a renowned expert on world and Polish history, contributed to the commemoration of the 250^th anniversary of the Rescue of Vienna as a Catholic intellectual. In a series of articles, published for the occasion, professor Halecki emphasized the significance of the participation of Poland in the victorious battle against the Turks, fought outside Vienna on 12 September 1683, which saved the Christian Europe and Western civilization. Halecki argued that the Polish troops under the command of King John III Sobieski played, not for the first time, a historical role of the bulwark of Christianity it had assumed since the 14^th century. This view was further presented by Halecki in a lecture, given in German, entitled „Liberation of Vienna and Its Significance for Austria, Poland and Europe” during an official Polish celebration commemorating the Battle of Vienna anniversary held in the Austrian capital, on 13 September 1933. Oskar Halecki’s vision of Poland’s full awareness of its historical mission to defend the Christian faith complied with the official position of the Catholic Church expressed by Primate August Hlond in official writings and addresses delivered on the occasion of the 250^th anniversary of the victorious Battle of Vienna. In an article „On the Anniversary of the Rescue of Vienna” opening a special issue of „Miesięcznik Heraldyczny”, a periodical edited by professor Halecki, the scholar compared the historical significance of the Battle of Vienna to the 1410 Battle of Grunwald. He claimed that in the thousand-year history of Poland these two victorious events could only be paralleled by the 1920 Battle of Warsaw that saved Poland and Europe from the advance of Bolshevism. According to Halecki, the Battle of Vienna, similarly to Grunwald, was „the act of anticipatory political thought.” In both cases, he argued, it was „a fight for a noble cause” to „protect the nation’s right to independence against the foreign invaders”. Halecki rejected the view, expressed by some journalists, that Polish participation in the Rescue of Vienna and the act of saving Austria was actually a political mistake, as, a century later, Austria took part in the Partitions of Poland. He claimed that such reasoning was indeed anachronistic, as it explicated the events from 1683 not in view of the then political situation, determined by the previous centuries, but by means of later events which bore no causal relation to the Battle of Vienna.