In the period that is the object of this study, 17 managers succeeded one another in
Wieliczka. Until 1867, they managed the Bochnia saltworks and other plants which were
temporarily subject to the Saltworks Board, also known under other names, which were
frequently changed: the sulphur plant in Swoszowice, the hard coal mines in the Jaworzno
district and the state forest inspectorate in the Jaworzno district. After 1867, only the Wieliczka
mine was subject to the Board until 1914 (changes of managers, which happened very
often between 1915 and 1918, are not possible to register in detail); there were 16 deputy
managers, 16 mine surveyors, 10 finance directors, 10 “materials managers”; 3 engineers
responsible for buildings and machines and 8 doctors. At that time in Bochnia, 20 managers
succeeded one another; until 1867, they were subordinate to the Board operating in Wieliczka.
Later, the saltworks in Bochnia was managed, on equal footing with Wieliczka, by the
Galician State Management of the Treasury in Lviv and, through its agency, by the Ministry
of Finance in Vienna; there were 13 deputy managers, 3 mine surveyors (for the majority
of the discussed period, there was a separate mine surveyor, i.e. a surveyor accepting
responsibility for the reliability of measurements by his signature, as well as correctness of
maps and proper placement of markings in the mine pits); 12 finance directors; 11 “materials
managers”; 2 doctors; a separate “machine” engineer worked here for a short time in the
years directly preceding WWI. It is impossible to trace by names or even specify the total
number of directors of individual “mounts” i.e. mining fields, operating in every field with
deputies and assistants in three or two-person teams; the composition of such teams would
change very often.
Polonization of the personnel of the above-mentioned managing positions began in the
middle of the 19th century. It was a result of co-existing processes; on the one hand, in some
families who came to the Cracow Saltworks right after the partition, the second and, at the
latest, the third generation began to identify with Polishness, adopting Polish as the native
language, and the Polish custom as the home custom and, more importantly, the Polish
manner of thinking and acting; on the other hand, the gap left behind families who in the
past came from various Austrian states and whose descendants decided to return to the
family places of their fathers or grandfathers were filled by representatives of Polish landowning
families (the first example is the Wieliczka “saltworks physician”, Feliks Gozdawa-
Boczkowski), who were permitted to do so on account of the necessity of maintaining employment
in the saltworks.
The moment when the saltworks clerks started to think and act “in Polish”, feeling that
they were the officials of the Austrian state more and more solely in a formal way, falls at
the end of the 1880’s and the beginning of the 1890’s. At that time, proposals of new names
for underground pits started to contain, almost exclusively, names of older colleagues with
whom people submitting the proposals used to work – and if they referred to higher rank
clerks, these were predominantly Poles who worked on the level of province authorities
(representation, state division, treasury directorate) – therefore, objectively, in the Polish
interest. At that time, a place of clearly Polish character started to be built in the Wieliczka
salt mine – the Chapel of St. Kinga (from the very beginning, its decoration was devoid of
“Austrian” elements, whereas the pulpit, executed in 1903, presents the symbol of the holiest
Polish national symbol: the Wawel Castle). In 1906, the 1st Convention of Polish Miners was
held in Cracow, partially co-organized by the Wieliczka Saltworks Board; it was combined
with a visit at the Wieliczka mine and a meeting for industry specialists from the Polish
lands under all three partitions. After 1910 and before 1914, the Wieliczka saltworks clerks
started to issue publications in the magazines in Warsaw and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie.
True engineers/ humanists were in this group. Among them, the person of Feliks
Piestrak, author of historical studies devoted to the maps of the Wieliczka mine prepared by
M. German, W. Hondius and J.G. Borlach and philological translation of the Latin poem of
A. Schröter of 1548 (describing the author’s impressions and remarks made during a visit to
the Wieliczka Salt Mine) is particularly important.
The group of clerks who, by way of promotion, worked in Wieliczka, Bochnia and in the
saltworks of Eastern Małopolska, i.e. the historical Russian Saltworks, includes two professors
from the first group teaching at the Cracovian Mining Academy, which started to operate
in the Independent Poland in 1919.
The merit of these people, and quite a significant one, was leading the saltworks away
from the reign of Austria to independent Poland. In Western Małopolska, it was possible to
perform it peacefully; in Eastern Małopolska, it also happened without greater losses and
maintaining continuity of people and institutions, in the conditions of civil war provoked by
Austria almost in the last days and hours of the partition.
