The origins of the Kalisz archive stretch back to the 13th century. In 1257, the town received its charter of town privileges and the municipal offices were established. Initially housed in the castle, when that noble edifice fell to rack and ruin, the registers were transferred to the town hall. The archive shared every tragic fate that befell Kalisz, afflicted by fire, acts of war and the reforms imposed by one alien ruling authority after another. The most serious losses were incurred in the great fires of 1537 and 1792, when the city went up in flames, taking a number of the oldest documents with it. The greater part of those which survived was transferred to Poznań. In 1793, with the Second Partition of Poland, Kalisz wound up in Prussian hands and yet more of the city’s archival treasures followed their predecessors to that same destination, though some were returned in 1799, when the capital of the province was established here.
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna moved Kalisz to the Russian Partition. It was at that time that the first network of historical archives was created and, in 1825, one such institution, the Historical Records Archive, was established in the city. It reported to the court authorities and was located in the Civil Tribunal building on Józefina Avenue. Today, that building houses the court and the street itself is now known as Wolności Avenue. The directors were J. Szreder (1825-1853) and Józef Gabriel Szaniawski (1853-1876). In 1876, the archive in Kalisz was closed down and over seven thousand registers and documents were moved to the Central Historical Records Archive in Warsaw. The municipal archive which continued to function was razed by the great fire engendered by the German army’s bombardment of the city in 1914. Of the documents which were saved, a number were transported deep into Russia.
Kalisz once again gained an archive in 1920, when a network of repositories was set up in the Second Republic of Poland. The State Archive in Kalisz was housed in the District Court and its director was Professor Leon Białkowski, Ph.D. (1920-1926). In the early years of that decade, some of the city’s historical records were returned from Poznań and Warsaw. The institution was to be no more than short-lived, though. It was shut down in 1926, the victim of an act of Parliament axing the costs of the state budget. Yet again, the records made their way to the archives of Poznań and Warsaw.
The map of Kalisz was then to remain bereft of a repository until 1950, when, by order of the Minister of Education, the Kalisz Branch of the District State Archive in Poznań was established. However, the difficulties the institution encountered in obtaining premises meant that it only became fully operational in March 1951, when, renamed the District State Archive in Kalisz, it was housed at No. 2, Marceli Nowotko Street, today known as Alfons Parczewski Street.
The first director and administrator was Władysław Michałek (1950-1959). The premises measured sixty square metres and the limitations of space were matched only by the restrictions imposed upon its activities. The archival materials it collected were first sorted and registered. They were then held in Kalisz for five years, after which, their transfer to the Voivodship State Archive in Poznań was obligatory. The consent of the latter institution was required before non-essential records could be destroyed, whilst its subordinate institutions were not only subject to inspections, but also issued with instructions, directions and numerous other tasks.
In 1958, after years of effort, the Kalisz archive finally succeeded in obtaining new premises within the former Jesuit College at No. 4, Kolegialna Street. The three hundred and fifty square metres were put to use for a number of purposes, including storage facilities, a reading room, a photographic workshop and a spacious corridor which also served as a space for many and varied exhibitions.
In 1959, the institution underwent a transformation, becoming a Regional Repository of the State Archive of the City of Poznań and the Poznań Voivodship. That same year saw the appointment of a new director, Roman Szczepaniak, an experienced archivist, formerly the director of the Voivodship Archive in Zielona Góra and the author of numerous works in the field. The status of the institution was also enhanced; it obtained the right to hold records in perpetuity and became an independent centre of regional research. At that time, its holdings ran to over one hundred and ninety linear metres.
1976 saw another transformation, this time from Regional Branch into the Voivodship State Archive in Kalisz. For the first month, Roman Szczepaniak held the post of acting director and then, in June 1976, Mirosława Lisiecka was appointed the director. The organisational structure included a Department of Archive Materials, which was headed by Mr Szczepaniak.
The holdings in the archive’s storage facilities began to swell as it received considerable numbers of records from the units reporting to it, along with the return of a part of the documents passed over to Poznań between 1951 and 1958. By late 1975, its resources measured seven hundred and eighty-nine linear metres and obtaining new storage facilities had become a matter of pressing necessity.
In 1984, the Voivodship State Archive in Kalisz was renamed the State Archive in Kalisz. However, neither its operational brief nor the area it served were changed. Endeavours to acquire new premises proved fruitless, though, and it was not until 1990 that an agreement was reached between the Head Office of the State Archives and the Voivod of Kalisz, as a result of which, No. 3 Złota Street was allocated to the archive. The move to the new premises, which measured over five hundred square metres in total, was finally completed in December 1992. There was both a reading room and a conservation workshop and there was shelf space for every single item in the archive’s holdings, making access and the conducting of searches far less problematic. On-site and touring exhibitions were also organised as part of its services.
In the late 1990s, the recurrent problem of space once again raised its head. The storage facilities were full to bursting point. By as early as 1992, the holdings had reached over one thousand, five hundred linear metres and, by the end of the decade, it was no longer possible to provide the requisite storage conditions; damp was rife and fungus was spreading over the walls. It was thanks to the efforts of the city and voivodship authorities that, in 2004, the archive was moved to its current home at No. 207, Poznańska Street. A former military building, it has an area of two thousand, one hundred square metres, of which nine hundred and eighty are given over to storage. The archive has a spacious reading room, an exhibition room and a conservation studio. The storage facilities are fitted with compact, modern shelving which permits the space to be used to the maximum. With an appropriate storage area at its disposal, the archive was now able to start receiving significant quantities of material and, by 2010, its holdings measured more than three thousand, two hundred linear metres.
In 2007, Grażyna Schlender, doctor of history and master of librarianship, became the director of the State Archive in Kalisz. In 2009, a new organisational structure was introduced and the institution now consists of Department 1: Archival Material Collection and Inventorying, Department 2: Archival Material Documentation and Access, the Archives Supervisor, the Department of Administration and Maintenance, the Financial Accountant, the IT Specialist and the Director’s Office. In total, it has eighteen members of staff in its employ.
Provided with the appropriate facilities, properly equipped and with a highly qualified personnel, the Archive carries out all its statutory tasks; it provides archival supervision for units creating records of historical value and collects, secures and stores archival material. It might be said that the summit of this entire process is the act of making the materials accessible. This occurs not only in the reading room and by means of conducting searches, but also takes the form of exhibitions, publications and a varied range of other activities aimed at bringing the history held within its walls to the wider notice of the people it serves.
