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Background history
The variety of interests, professions and Weltanschauungs that existed among prisoners-of-war transformed into a driving force leading to formation of scientific circles which were active in camps. They associated people sharing similar interests. Apart from teachers or lawyers, who were represented in large numbers in oflags, there were also representatives of less frequently encountered professions, among others, architects. They also established professional and scientific circles which provided courses, prepared speeches and talks, or ran lectures on the old and contemporary architecture. In some camps, architects organized practical classes, taught designing, or even doing complicated calculations. One of the participants of the courses which were held in the oflags: II A Prenzlau and II D Gross-Born (Borne Sulinowo) was Lieutenant Aleksander Juszkiewicz. He came from Vilnius and had taken part in the battle of Kock during the Polish Campaign in 1939. He was taken captive by the Wehrmacht on 6 October 1939. Initially, he was directed to Oflag IVC Colditz, where he was registered under number “7”. That was a penal and repressive camp, designed to accommodate disobedient officers – ones who caused trouble. In May 1940, Lieutenant Juszkiewicz was transferred to Oflag II A Prenzlau, where the POWs ran a very active cultural activity. It can be inferred from the numerous memorabilia which are in possession of the Museum that he also became an active participant of the cultural life. Among the items given over by Aleksander Juszkiewicz to the Museum there are visiting cards from occasional meetings, lottery tickets, subscription cards and invitations to artistic events (art exhibitions, theatrical performances). The largest part of the collection, though, are archival materials which explicitly define Lieutenant Juszkiewicz’s interests, that is manuscripts and notes from courses in which he took part. They contain, among others, notes and tasks to solve in the subjects of construction statistics, descriptive geometry, construction works, as well as carpentry and installation works, and drawings in history of architecture. The most interesting are architectural designs executed by him, among which the following deserve paying special attention to: a boathouse, a wooden house, a brick house and a villa. The last one, being presented on the exhibition, was made in black ink on tracing paper and presents a beautiful, two-story villa in a modernistic style, with arranged interiors and a garden. The body of the building is very modern. It has a flat roof, large windows and a terrace fronting a garden richly decorated with green plants. The design assumed a complete departure from historical styles, but also from excessive stylization. The modernistic architecture, by principle, was based on the creative method, deriving its form, function and construction of objects almost exclusively from the existing material conditionings. Staying among the grim and architectonically unaesthetic camp infrastructure, the work on the design of an elegant building surely allowed the author to free himself for a while from the saddening POW’s reality. All the notes, manuscripts and sketches presented to the Museum by Lieutenant Aleksander Juszkiewicz testify also to the fact that officers who were isolated in the Wehrmacht-run camps were preparing themselves for living a regular life after the war. They looked for an opportunity to acquire new skills, take care of their intellectual development and physical fitness. After the war, Aleksander Juszkiewicz went to live in Gdynia and worked in construction industry.
Prepared by: Beata Madej
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Design of a modernistic villa
Source of acquisition
The sketches were presented to the Museum by Aleksander Juszkiewicz in 1982.
Description of the item
Four sheets of tracing paper of 21cm x 30cm, each containing a sketch executed in black ink, present the following: first story, second story, two sides of the façade of the villa. On one of the sheets there is an additional note in pencil: Presented to me to be the model way of tracing in 1943. I carried it in the backpack from Gross Born to Sandbostel and Lubeck A. Juszkiewicz.
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