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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Global thinker, public intellectual and world-famous theorist of ‘liquid modernity’, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced migration, built a very successful academic career and, after retirement, became a prolific and popular writer and an intellectual talisman for young people everywhere. He was one of those rare scholars who, grey-haired and in his eighties, had his finger on the pulse of the youth.
This is the first comprehensive biography of Bauman’s life and work. Izabela Wagner returns to Bauman’s native Poland and recounts his childhood in an assimilated Polish Jewish family and the school experiences shaped by anti-Semitism. Bauman’s life trajectory is typical of his generation and social group: the escape from Nazi occupation and Soviet secondary education, communist engagement, enrolment in the Polish Army as a political officer, participation in the WW II and the support for the new political regime in the post-war Poland. Wagner sheds new light on the post-war period and Bauman’s activity as a KBW political officer. His eviction in 1953 from the military ranks and his academic career reflect the dynamic context of Poland in 1950s and 1960s. His professional career in Poland was abruptly halted in 1968 by the anti-Semitic purges. Bauman became a refugee again - leaving Poland for Israel, and then settling down in Leeds in the UK in 1971. His work would flourish in Leeds, and after his retirement in 1991 he entered a period of enormous productivity which propelled him onto the international stage as one of the most widely read and influential social thinkers of our time.
Wagner’s biography brings out the complex connections between Bauman’s life experiences and his work, showing how his trajectory as an ‘outsider’ forced into exile by the anti-Semitic purges in Poland has shaped his thinking over time. Her careful and thorough account will be the standard biography of Bauman’s life and work for years to come.
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Contents
Cover
Front Matter
Introduction
22 June 2013: Wrocław
Notes
1 A Happy Childhood ‘Under Such Circumstances’: Poznań (1925–1932)
A significant birth place, a critical time …
The family
Notes
2 A Pupil Like No Other: Poznań (1932–1939)
The world outside of the family – a solitary Jew
Zygmunt’s sister: Teofila – Tosia – Tova and her generation’s destiny
Gymnasium on the ghetto bench
Belonging – a szomer in Hashomer Hatzair
Notes
3 The Fate of a War Refugee (1939–1944): Poznań–Molodeczna
The outbreak of war
Journey through Soviet lands: November 1939 – June 1941, Mołodeczno
Mołodeczno – one student among many
School’s out – war’s back in
Notes
4 Russian Exodus, 1941–1943: Gorki and the Forest
Escape into the Russian interior
Kolkhoznik life: modest stability in a country at war
Becoming a university student – an outsider once again
Notes
5 ‘Holy War’: 1943–1945
Enrolment
Why the ‘Red’ and not the Anders Army?
4th Infantry Division
Officers’ cadet school
A political officer in Berling’s Army
When Polish soul needs a Polish name
A soldier’s life
New borders, new political order
Bringing the new ideology to everyone
The advance of the troops – Warsaw’s time of waiting
From Warsaw through the Pomeranian Fortification Wall to Kołobrzeg
Notes
6 Officer of the Internal Security Corps: 1945–1953
Was the war over?
KBW
Not so sweet home
Civil war or uprising?
The swell (martwa fala)
‘Comrade Bauman Zygmunt’
‘Comrade Semion’
KBW mission – tracing an ‘internal enemy’
KBW in action, by Julian Żurowicz
Is Bauman Słucki?
Szczytno – mission ‘to fix everything’
Notes
7 ‘A Man in a Socialist Society’: Warsaw 1947–1953
Warsaw in the late 1940s
An ordinary life in a specific workplace: Bauman’s career at the KBW
Believing in a better future
Student in the Academy of Political Science – 1947–1950
Janina Lewinson
Madame Janina Bauman
‘A dream of belonging’
Life under Stalinism
How Polish society loved Stalin
The calm before the storm …
Between the Army and the university
Notes
8 A Young Scholar: 1953–1957
Warsaw University – Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences
Master’s study under Stalinism
Leszek Kołakowski – younger by age, older by status
Rapid take-off of an academic career
Julian Hochfeld – a man in a trap
The ‘circle of Hochfeld’
The life of a young scholar
The ‘thaw’
A long story of the attribution of the doctorate
The rehabilitation of sociology at Warsaw University
Publishing ‘revisionist’ articles
Notes
9 Years of Hope: 1957–1967
Opening doors to the West
Visiting scholar at the London School of Economics
Habilitation and docent
Becoming an ‘extraordinary professor’
Teaching and mentoring students
Empirical research and publications
International travels
Correspondence with colleagues abroad
Familial travels abroad (1959–1967)
Some sunshine before the storm
Notes
10 Bad Romance with the Security Police
Bauman in the funhouse mirror
The discussion clubs and their charismatic leaders – DNA of the Polish opposition
The professional reviews by … the Bezpieka
The infiltrated milieu
The crackdown
Promotion under unfortunate circumstances
The struggle for autonomy and academic liberty
Becoming a Jew … again
Notes
11 The Year 1968
The revolutionary power of symbols
The 8 March protest
A university divided
‘The hate speech’
The state pogrom
‘At once!’ in ninety-six days …
Notes
12 Holy Land: 1968–1971
‘The Family’s Big Trip’
Forced Aliyah – ‘Strangers amongst Strangers’
The Baumans – olim hadaszim
‘Il n’y a qu’un soleil sur terre’ (There is only one sun on the earth)
An outsider in an outsider institution
‘It is not enough to leave, you have to arrive’: the new life of the Bauman family
‘Picnic on the volcano’
Notes
13 A British Professor
Starting from scratch – 1 Lawnswood Gardens, Leeds
The welcome at Leeds University
Department head at Leeds
Mentoring Ph.D. students – Bauman and Tester
Notes
14 An Intellectual at Work
Writing as a craft
Conversational collaborations
The main collaborator: Janina Bauman
Under the wings of Polity Press
Modus vivendi
Notes
15 Global Thinker
Non-liquid LOVE: janzygbau@
Unrequited love: Poland
The culprit
Condemned to absence
Homecoming!?
World recognition
Global Bauman
Global and famous and … the culprit again …
Legends: Jackboots and iron – deconstruction
Jasia …
Back to life
Following his Shadow …
Notes
Conclusion: Legacy
Notes
Appendix: Working on Bauman
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Ebook plates
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Contents
Begin Reading
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Bauman
A Biography
Izabela Wagner
polity
Copyright © Izabela Wagner 2020
The right of Izabela Wagner to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2689-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Wagner, Izabela, author.Title: Bauman : a biography / Izabela Wagner.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA, USA : Polity Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time”-- Provided by publisher.Identifiers: LCCN 2019051800 (print) | LCCN 2019051801 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509526864 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509526895 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Bauman, Zygmunt, 1925-2017 | Sociology.Classification: LCC HM479.B39 W34 2020 (print) | LCC HM479.B39 (ebook) | DDC 301--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051800LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051801
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
People in a state of exaltation crave not knowledge but legends; not the comparative distance of history, but the affirmation of their raison d’être, their beliefs by tradition. They want unambiguous explanations and uniting symbols.
(Jerzy Jedlicki, 1993: 163)
In memory of Keith Tester
Acknowledgements
Contrary to popular belief, even single-author book projects aren’t the product of a solitary worker (Becker, 1982), and many people formed links in the long chain of collaboration that led to this finished book.
I am deeply grateful to Arthur Allen, my friend of eight years and my closest collaborator, without whom I would not have been able to give English-speakers the pleasure of reading this book. Arthur is a successful writer, and author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver. As a writer and editor in the health and science section at Politico in Washington, DC, he is a very busy journalist, but found time for Bauman’s biography because he is also an enthusiastic historian. Since the beginning of our friendship, we have helped complete each other’s expertise, skills and knowledge. When we met in 2011, Arthur was working on his book The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl (2014), and I became his research assistant for Polish documents and his consultant on parts of Polish history. Thanks to my contribution to Arthur’s project, I learned a lot about World War II, postwar documents, the Institute of Remembrance (IPN) and other archives in Poland. This knowledge was critical to much of the documentation of the present book.
I am not an English native speaker, having taught myself the language after a formal Polish–French education. Arthur not only corrected my mistakes, detected false French cognates and polished my English, but also challenged my purposes and pushed me to be more accurate, sceptical and clear. He perfectly understood my jokes, personal style and emotional way of writing, which was crucial for maintaining my specific form of expression – the biggest challenge in ‘cultural translation’. Through his corrections, Arthur obtained an expression of what I wanted to say, but did not know yet know how to say!
His contribution was not only editorial but also historical. Arthur’s remarks, questions, advice and formal suggestions (such as separating chapters or reformulating titles) helped me shape my narration in clearer, yet scientifically pertinent, ways. I am deeply grateful for the hours, days and months Arthur devoted to correcting this manuscript (he also edited my previous book, Producing Excellence, Rutgers University Press, 2015), and for his enthusiastic feedback and tips. We worked on these three books together while exchanging only mutual trust and fascination in our work; if the latter is not rare, the former is exceptional. Our friendship and collaboration made the writing a less lonely and more pleasant activity.
I am grateful to the many people who trusted me and spent time recalling their experiences of Bauman as a teacher, colleague, friend or relation. This long list starts with Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, who made possible my two interviews with Zygmunt Bauman; she prepared our meetings, which were extremely rich in new data. I am also grateful for our interviews and discussions that took place after Zygmunt Bauman passed away. Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania also introduced me to Bauman’s daughters.
I am deeply grateful to Anna Sfard, Lydia Bauman and Irena Bauman for their trust, the enormous boost they gave my research, and the fascinating conversations we shared. They not only accorded me their time and responded to all the questions I asked, but also gave me free access to two unpublished manuscripts by their father. These unique texts (which I obtained in December 2017) confirmed my previous hypothesis and filled out the picture I drew from my interviews with Bauman. I wish also to thank the Bauman family for the rights to publish family pictures. I am particularly grateful to Lydia Bauman for her trust, and access to her private journal that described the family’s travel to Israel in 1968. She also agreed to the use of the portrait of her father that she painted.
I am immensely grateful to the thirty-nine other people living in different parts of the world whom I interviewed for the book. In Warsaw (in chronological order of our interviews), I met Karol Modzelewski, Barbara and Jerzy Szacki, Andrzej Werblan, Józef Hen, Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, Michał Komar, Stanisław Obirek, Marian Turski, Adam Michnik, Jerzy Wiatr, Tomasz Kitliński and his parents, and Adam Ostolski; in Pozna, Roman Kubicki and Tomasz Kowalski; in Geneva, Bronisław Baczko; in New York, Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Krystyna Fischer and Jan T. Gross; in Israel, Emmanuel Marx, Shalva Weil and Uri Ram; in the UK, Griselda Pollock, Tony Bryant, Janet Wolff, Keith Tester, John Thompson, Alan Warde and Monika Kostera. This last interview was conducted by Skype. I would also like to thank three individuals who did not want their names to be mentioned. I also spoke on the phone and/or exchanged letters with Adam Chmielewski, Leszek Kwiatkowski, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Włodek Goldkorn, Aleksander Perski, Elżbieta Kossewska, Barbara Toruńczyk and Peter Beilharz.
I wish to thank particularly Włodzimierz Holsztyński, for our correspondence and his lengthy and detailed account of the opposition activity at the University of Warsaw in the lead-up to March 1968. I am also deeply grateful to him for the permission to cite his poems. Holsztyński’s talent completed my narrative in moments when academic language was inadequate in comparison to poetic aesthetics. I would like to thank Barbara Netrepko-Herbert for her translations of Holsztyński’s pieces, as well as for the translation of Janina Bauman’s poems. I am thankful to Łukasz Gos for his translation of the Antoni Słonimski poem.
This book benefitted also from the talents of other artists – photographers Agata Szczypińska, Michele Monasta, Łukasz Cynalewski and Tomasz Kowalski. I wish also to thank art historian Dariusz Konstantynow for our discussion, and for allowing me to publish one piece from his collection of anti-Semitic caricatures.
I thank the Bauman family for permission to reproduce Zygmunt Bauman’s photographs and Janina Bauman’s poems, which I found in secret-service files at the IPN. I wish to acknowledge Beata Kowalczyk and Mariusz Finkielsztein for their help in my data collection and their work in the archives of the IPN, the University of Warsaw, the Polish Academy of Science and the New Archives (Archiwum Akt Nowych). Jarosław Kilias helped me with the Polish Sociological Society archives and Wanda Lacrampe assisted in scouring the PZPR Party Archives in Milanówek. I would also like to thank the writer Anna Kłys, who spontaneously offered her help with research in the Poznań City Archives. I wish also to thank Patryk Pleskot from the IPN for his help in studying former secret-service archives. In the final stage of my work, Dariusz Brzeziński from the Polish Academy of Science introduced me to colleagues from the Bauman Institute – Marc Davis and Tony Campbell. They invited me to give a lecture at Leeds University, where Griselda Pollock enabled me to consult documents at the Archives and the Special Collection’s Janina and Zygmunt Bauman Archive (hereafter the Bauman Archive). My research there would not have been successful (many documents were not yet catalogued) without the help of Jack Palmer, Timothy Procter and Carolyne Bolton. Jack also helped me with expert information about Leeds University and the British sociological milieu, and helped me access articles and books. Mariusz Finkielsztein, Andrzej Nowak, Pietro Ingalina and Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-Moskalewicz also did a great deal to help me find sources in Polish, English and French.
I drew constantly on the help and support of Beata Chmiel in several different ways. First, she helped me collect most of the press articles and Polish books cited in this volume, obtaining these materials quickly and efficiently. Moreover, for the last five years she has sent me everything she detected online about Zygmunt Bauman. (My home has limited access to the internet.) Beata showed me overwhelming support and enthusiasm for my work and opened numerous doors for me – interviews, exchanges of letters and discussions. She was an excellent guide and adviser in the process of book delivery. Other people gave me strong support through inspiring talks and discussions. I am indebted to my friends Alicja Badowska-Wójcik and Ryszard Wójcik, as well as to Claire Bernard and Paul Gradvohl, who advised me wisely when I needed it. I warmly acknowledge Lucyna Gebert for her support, connections and precious information.
One of the last and most crucial phases of book production is obtaining comment on the manuscript. I wish to thank deeply everyone who read and commented on my drafts and gave me encouragement. My first reader, Mariusz Finkielsztein, never hesitated to indicate my mistakes, such as overly long passages or confusing explanations. As a specialist in academic boredom, he was particularly attentive to the rhythm and speed of the narration. I wish to thank also Jean-Michel Chapoulie, Stanisław Obirek, Michał Komar, Beata Kowalczyk, Anna Rosińska, Beata Chmiel, Maciej Gdula, Adam Ostolski, Natalia Aleksiun, Włodek Goldkorn, Andrzej Nowak, Agata Czarnacka and Monika Kostera for their comments and questions on the manuscript.
I am particularly grateful for the very careful and expert reading of the whole manuscript by Jan Tomasz Gross, Agnieszka Wiercholska and Aleksander Perski – the summer of 2019 was animated by our discussions, joined also by Danuta and Henryk Kowalski; we spent hours talking about Polish history, communist engagements and 1968, as well as our own experiences of emigration. This was a perfect frame for the final touches to the book.
I wish also to thank my reviewer for motivating advice and pertinent questions that made the book shorter and more precise. I am grateful to John Thompson from Polity Press, for his patience, help and deep understanding of my working conditions. He was always encouraging, supportive and stimulating. It was a pleasure to know that my work mattered and was expected, but without unnecessary pressure. I would also like to thank the copy-editor Leigh Mueller for her patience and perfect eye, which detected some remaining mistakes. And I wish to thank everyone from Polity for their work and involvement in this project.
A long process of data gathering (started in November 2013) went into this book, with many travels, physical absence and mental unavailability. My family supported it with understanding; thankfully, each of us is passionate about our own work. I am grateful to my children Filip Saffray and Anna Saffray-Borowski, as well as their families, for their tolerance and comprehension, with deep excuses for my absence at moments very important for them. Because of my strong involvement in this project, Bauman’s life was frequently the first topic of discussion in our home for six years. I am deeply grateful to my husband, Philippe Saffray, for his infinite patience, incredible support and deep understanding of my work. He was my constant coach and the first partner for all discussions, helping me form all of my hypotheses and questions. Though his profession is different, Philippe shared my passion with enthusiasm and loyalty. When I had difficult moments of doubt and weariness, he made those moments shorter. Without his encouragement, support and fruitful discussions, this book would never have been finished.
A book project involving interviews conducted in different parts of the world requires financial support. I wish to thank Kościuszko Foundation for their support of my project focused on Polish scientists in America from the 1968 emigration. Thanks to this scholarship, I spent the spring semester of 2016 at the New School for Social Research in New York City and did several interviews with emigrants, including many who knew Bauman. I wish also to thank Griselda Pollock, Jack Palmer and the Bauman Institute for their invitations to Leeds, where I finished my process of data collection. I covered some limited travel expenses through research funds granted by the University of Warsaw, but most of these fees were covered by my family, including my parents. Without their encouragement, I would never have been able to finish my book.
Last but not least, I express my gratitude to Keith Tester, who provided great support in the preparation and writing of the second half of the book. He always provided me the best feedback, professionally stimulating discussions and inspiring exchanges. Our short but very intense intellectual relationship abruptly ended when he died, and this book is devoted to his memory.
Introduction
22 June 2013: Wrocław
The location is a 600-seat university lecture hall in Wrocław, a picturesque city built on twelve islands in the meandering Oder River that has fully recovered its glory after utter and almost complete destruction during World War II. The hall is packed beyond capacity with university students and faculty, with young people crowding the steps or standing along the walls next to TV cameras covering the lecture. The globally renowned intellectual Zygmunt Bauman is today’s distinguished speaker. This tall, slim 88-year-old sits on the stage between the organizer and the Wrocław Mayor, Rafał Dudkiewicz, with two bodyguards hired by the university standing nearby. The tension is high. Two months earlier, the French-German leftist politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit had cancelled a lecture here due to death threats. Again, today, the organizers fear disruption by xenophobic nationalistic groups.
Bauman is an excellent speaker. Several of his books (of the more than fifty he has published) are bestsellers, written in a style accessible to a wide public. His vision of the world is an inspiration to engaged youth and social movements. Bauman is the rare intellectual who has become a celebrity, and his talks attract thousands of people when he’s travelling, from Italy to Brazil and from Greece to Portugal. He also, of course, has a public in Poland. The topic of today’s lecture is the ideals of the Left, old and new, and the challenges faced by leftist movements in the current configuration of capitalism.1
As the mayor takes the microphone to say a few words, he is drowned out by people at the back of the lecture hall who have entered at the last minute, as well as others planted in the crowd – about 100 in total. They yell abuse, wave their arms, making fists and threatening those onstage. ‘Dudkiewicz, why did you invite him?’, they shout. ‘Communism out! Nuremberg for communists!’ ‘The communists will hang!’ Some of the protesters ‘raise their hands in the Nazi salute’, event organizer Adam Chmielewski will recall later.2 Bauman looks concerned – nervous, though not panicked. The astonished university public seems unable to believe what they see with their own eyes.
One of the slogans screamed by the protesters is ‘NSZ – National Armed Forces!’ They are referring to the radical nationalist military underground group that fought the Nazis and also the Polish Left during and after World War II.3 As a young man, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Bauman had been an officer in the KBW, an intelligence unit of the Polish Army that chased down the remnants of the NSZ. That story is old – more than sixty-five years old – but these right-wing radicals act as if it happened yesterday. They have reclaimed the mantle of the NSZ and its radical nationalist, xenophobic anti-Semitism. Some wear T-shirts with the acronym of the NOP (National Rebirth of Poland),4 the party that organized the protest with the ONR (National Radical Camp).5 Both groups use the symbol of the falanga which anti-Semitic and fascist groups employed on their flags in the interwar periods (Cała, 2012). They carry banderoles – narrow banners of the type used by groups that organized anti-Semitic riots at Polish universities in the 1930s.
After several minutes, the police arrive, to applause from the university audience. The aggressive group leaves the hall, promising to return. They leave Bauman sitting alone, completely folded upon himself. He will give his talk, but no one will remember it. They will only remember the thugs, who show that fascism still has the power to seduce young people, and that there are those who refuse to accept the right of people like Zygmunt Bauman to identify themselves as Poles.
In the remaining years of his life, Bauman would not comment publicly on the incident. But the slogans and symbols employed by the protesters were familiar to him from his childhood in Poznań, where he suffered from anti-Semitic bullying and racial laws that forced him and other Jews to sit on the ‘ghetto bench’ at school (Tomaszewski, 2016: 206–19). Perhaps he felt that his life had made a complete circle, or that the old forces were coming back again. The twentieth-century utopia he had hoped for – an end to wars, the disappearance of racial and ethnic conflicts and the possibility of an equal society – all these seemed to be gone. The world was confronting an old ghost, the xenophobe’s hate of the ‘other’.
Why was Bauman such a target of hate? Why did these young people want to put him in jail? What had he done that made him such a scapegoat for part of Polish society? And how could the same person be acclaimed and admired by millions of people and hated by others?
Who was Zygmunt Bauman?
Bauman, who died in 2017, was a sociologist, philosopher and public intellectual. He became known to other sociologists in the 1960s, when, as a young Polish scholar, he gave presentations at international conferences, and became well known among a wider academic community with the publication of Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). This book won awards and was recognized as an important contribution to understanding the Shoah, and as an important critique of modernity. Bauman, a remarkably disciplined scholar and writer who learned about communication on the front lines as a messiah of socialism to illiterate Polish soldiers, went on to become a key figure in the development of post-modernist theory; his eclecticism and humanist approach inspired Bauman’s colleagues to call him the ‘modern Simmel’ (after the eminent German sociologist Georg Simmel).
After his retirement, Bauman stepped out of the confines of academic writing and pursued a larger, younger audience. It was an unconventional step for a 75-year-old scholar, but a remarkably successful one. A retired British professor, a Polish Jew by birth, he was embraced by readers around the world following the publication of his groundbreaking book Liquid Modernity (2000), which became an almost overnight bestseller. The books that followed popularized Bauman’s vision further, and his analysis of contemporary Western societies struck a chord with millions of readers, making him one of the most prolific, widely read and influential intellectuals in the twenty-first century. Bauman presented his vision of the world in a way that spoke to people. He was cited by journalists, writers, activists, artists and also scholars and public intellectuals. He captured the speed and permanent modifications of the world and was seen as an oracle, although Bauman never pretended to predict the future. He would say that the world filled him with pessimism, but the remarkable creativity of humans provided some reserve of optimism. This was the voice of an elderly intellectual whose experiences of war and escape, discrimination and persecution made him particularly attentive to the processes that led to war and dictatorship.
Bauman was discreet about his private life. In our interviews for this book, he would often say that his biography was typical for his generation and had not particularly influenced his work.6 But, after learning the details of his life, I was convinced of the opposite – his work is deeply grounded in personal experience, especially the series of traumatic events that began in his childhood and lasted into his forties. In an unpublished manuscript (Bauman, 1986/7) addressed to his children and grandchildren, Bauman revealed the interstices of this life and, in the process, acknowledged as much.
Bauman sought to build a better world. In the different phases of his adult life, he was never a passive observer of society, but rather an activist who lived by his ideals. He was a witness to and a participant in many of the tragic events that fundamentally transformed our world – experiencing anti-Semitism as a youth in Poland, a flight from the Nazis, an exiled life in Soviet Russia, hunger, the soldier’s life of combat, the life of a communist propagandist in the implementation of a pro-Soviet regime in Poland, the collapse of Stalinism, and the interplay between authoritarianism and partial democratization in postwar Poland. Bauman was twice a refugee, in 1939–44 and in 1968. He did not choose a nomadic life, but it was thrust upon him. For most of his life, Bauman tried his best to be a good Pole, but Poland did not accept him as one. His Polish identity was contested by anti-Semitic rules, laws and persecution – Bauman’s perception of his identity was not accepted by those who controlled it from the outside.
The feeling of identity (Who am I?) and master status (How do others perceive me?) are two axes that cross in the book you are reading.
Here, I am thinking with Everett Hughes (Chicago’s leading sociologist), who presented in 1945 the concept of master status. With this term, he defines the social identity imposed by others.7 Contradiction of status occurs when someone tries to play a social role while lacking the necessary features expected by society. This situation occurs often when people from discriminated groups occupy prestigious positions, or try to.
Already, as a child, Bauman could not be accepted as first in his school class, despite his superior results, because he was a Jew, and the top spot was reserved for a non-Jewish Pole. Master status in this case was a major factor in determining and limiting his social roles. This continued through much of Bauman’s life in Poland: the tension between his self-identity – Pole – and the master status imposed by those around him – Jew. His experience was a common one in Poland. Bauman had many other roles: student, soldier, officer, scholar, academic, father, emigrant and immigrant. But the status that dominated was his ethnic-cultural origin, which imposed perceptions and strongly influenced his interactions with others.
On a personal level, he learned how the tribal behaviour of societies divides people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ – the ‘conflict’, as Bauman wrote, ‘about whose blood is redder’. Bauman wrote constantly about this issue, seeing it as the origin of humanity’s problems. Certainly, his own life would never be entirely free of the torments of tribalism.
In the first part of Bauman’s life, he was affected by extreme forces that stripped agency and the sense of empowerment from individuals. This dynamic probably shaped his conviction that life consists of hazardous situations, that a person’s control over his or her life was severely limited, and that individual character may enable possibilities for adjustment to a given situation, but the situation is determined by history and politics. This vision of human beings entrapped by a powerful world outside their control is contrary to the ideology popular in the second part of the twentieth century, which presents the individual as the shaper of his or her fate. While the neoliberal world was claiming ‘If you want you can get it’, Bauman stated the opposite. He described a society whose ideology leads its citizens to believe their agency is confirmed by consumption – an omnipresent illusion of the power of the individual.
His books, addressed to readers in Western society, stated that, while capitalism promised that happiness could be achieved through purchases and consumption, instead it destabilized everything that civilizations had created: social relations, love, rules, morality, values – in Bauman’s terms, it ‘liquified’ them. The once-solid processes and rules of the ‘modern’ era, with its sense of constant development and progress, were now liquid, characterized by a taste for the new, the next and best solutions, innovation for its own sake. The feeling of ‘liquidity’ – its temporality and lack of stability – characterized our times. The previous mode of life, perceived as solid, fixed and clear, was giving way to something new, not yet really established – a kind of work in progress. Our own times were an in-between period, during which each member of a developed society had to be flexible, because previous frameworks, rules and values were no longer available. Precarity was the consequence of our societies’ modifications.
In the Liquid World, everything changes so quickly that it brings the feeling that life is provisional. Liquid Times are defined by uncertainty. If, in previous generations, large numbers of people spent their whole lives in the same workplace, with the same occupation, and frequently the same partner and family living in the same house, residents of the Liquid World were obliged to change their workplace and occupation, adapting themselves to the dynamic environment. This contextual instability is related to a high degree of geographic mobility. The liquidity dynamic modified social relationships, which became fragile. Social ties became brittle, increasing people’s solitude. The persistent belief that buying the latest product in fashion would make us happy was a powerful illusion. This is the Baumanian deconstruction of our Western societies.
Bauman knew a lot about illusions, beliefs, belonging and engagement. He was a former missionary for socialism, who learned lessons from engagement in seeking to build a new society during the first part of his life, then spent the second part of his life telling people about the danger of inhuman engagements and beliefs. His transformation was different from that of colleagues who, criticizing their earlier belief systems, jumped headlong into new, opposing ones (from communism to capitalism). Bauman kept his values and dreams about social justice, but critically analysed the systems that were being produced, ostensibly to achieve noble goals.8
This book, the first extensive biography of Bauman, places his work in the context of his life, and hopefully will enable readers of his work to revisit his books with deeper insight into their messages, which emanate not only from Bauman’s voluminous scholarship and thought, but also from his iconic life experiences.
Notes
1.
The lecture had been organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, an intellectual branch of the German Social Democratic Party; the independent Ferdinand Lasalle Centre of Social Thought; and the Department of Social and Political Philosophy of the University of Wrocław (Chmielewski, 2015). It was described as a ‘fusion’ of Jewishness (Bauman and Ferdinand Lasalle were Jews – the latter buried in the Wrocław Jewish Cemetery) and Germanness – since the Ebert Stiftung is a German institution – and Leftness, since the speakers and organizers could be classified in that category. An analysis and detailed account of the event by its organizer, Professor Adam Chmielewski, can be read at
https://adamjchmielewski.blogspot.com/2015/07/academies-of-hatred.html
.
2.
Ibid.
3.
After Liberation, the NSZ units continued their anti-communist struggle and attacked groups tied to the new Soviet-style political system in Poland.
4.
Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (NOP: National Rebirth of Poland), Polish national radical and nationalist political party that uses the symbols of interwar fascist organizations. The National Radical Camp – ONR – was established in 1981, and in 1992 registered as a legal party (Cała, 2012; Rudnicki, 2018).
5.
This Polish right-wing nationalist organization refers to the movement with a name that existed during the Second Polish Republic. Since 2012, the group has been registered as an association (see Rudnicki, 1985, 2018).
6.
About the methodology employed in this book, see the
Appendix
.
7.
For more, see the
Appendix
.
8.
The content of Bauman’s work is only briefly and very partially discussed in this book, which gives a very detailed account of his life and career but leaves a detailed examination of his arguments to others. Most of his work after he took up a position at the University of Leeds is in English, so I decided to focus my account more on the lesser-known aspects of Bauman’s life.
1A Happy Childhood ‘Under Such Circumstances’
Poznań (1925–1932)
A significant birth place, a critical time …
Zygmunt Bauman was born on 19 November 1925 in Poznań in Poland. The morning edition of the most popular local newspaper, Kurjer Poznański, carried news that day direct from Rome. ‘Enthusiastic ovations in honour of Mussolini’, it reported. ‘Fantastic speech by the Prime Minister at the opening session of Parliament. Today’s session of the chamber of deputies began in an ambiance of extreme excitement, full of enthusiasm and cheerful guests in honor of Mussolini’ (Kurjer Poznański, R. 20, 19 November 1925; evening edition, p. 2).
The evening edition of the Kurjer contained Part Seven in a series of articles entitled ‘Society of Poznań District and Pomerania in Reconstructed Poland’,1 written by the well-known nationalist politician Roman Dmowski.2 The first part of the text was published on 12 November, the day after the seventh anniversary of the independence of the new Polish state, following 123 years of partition by Russia, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Dmowski underlined the importance of the nationalistic awareness of the masses. There was a matter of great importance, that of uniformly closing ranks against the Jews, a task in which Poznań could be said to lead (R. 20, 19 November 1925; evening edition, p. 2). This was the world into which Zygmunt Bauman was born.
It was a less than auspicious day for those who belonged to this ‘ethnic minority’ – a term that was not in use at the time. Jews had lived on Polish soil for over 1,000 years, but the majority considered them ‘outsiders’, ‘others’ – less than full members of Polish society. The situation of Polish Jews differed from that of Jews in France or Germany, where from the late eighteenth century there was a greater degree of assimilation. In Poland, Jewishness was not only a religious status; Jews were portrayed as distinct in many categories – culture, nationality, ethnicity – to demonstrate that, although they had lived for centuries on the same ground as Catholic Poles, they were a distinct people.
In a private essay addressed to his daughters years later,3 Bauman explained the situation of the Polish Jew in its historical context:
I cannot avoid history. History decreed that the state of ‘being Polish’ has been through centuries a question of decision, choice and action. It has been something one had to fight for, defend, consciously cultivate, vigilantly preserve. ‘Being Polish’ did not mean guarding the already well formed and marked frontiers, but rather drawing the yet-not-existing boundaries – making realities rather than expressing them. There was in Polishness a constant streak of uncertainty, ‘until-further-noticeness’ – a kind of precarious provisionality that other, more secure nations know little about.
Under such circumstances one could only expect that the besieged, incessantly threatened nation would obsessively test and re-test the loyalty of its ranks. It would develop an almost paranoiac fear of being swamped, diluted, overrun, disarmed. It would look askance and with suspicion at all newcomers with less-than-foolproof credentials. It would see itself surrounded by enemies, and it would fear more than anybody else the ‘enemy within’.
Under such circumstances one should also accept that the decision to be a Pole (particularly if it was not made for one by the ancestors so distant that the decision had time to petrify into rock-solid reality) was a decision to join in a struggle with no assured victory and no prospect that victory would ever be assured. For centuries, people did not define themselves as Poles for the want of easy life. Those who did define themselves as Poles could rarely be accused of opting for comfort and security. In most cases, they deserved unqualified moral praise and whole-hearted welcome.
That the same circumstances should lead to consequences pointing in opposite directions, clashing with each other and ultimately coming into conflict – is illogical. Well, blame the circumstances. (Bauman, 1986/7: 21–2)
Defining oneself as a Pole was an individual decision, but one that had to be confirmed by the host society. To speak of the ‘assimilation’ of Jews, or an identity that fused Polish and Jewish culture, was not only a matter of personal identification but one that inevitably involved Polish society as a whole. In this case, ‘the circumstances’ Bauman spoke of were different from those that enabled the assimilation of Jews in France and Germany before the arrival of Nazism. There was a saying, popular in the twentieth century – and still today – that, while one could be a French Jew or an American Jew, there was no such thing as a Polish Jew. You had to choose – one or the other!4
Bauman explained this specific case of the Polish identity from the longue durée perspective:5 ‘It is one of the mysteries of social psychology that groups that ground their identity in will and decision tend to deny the right of self-definition to others; by questioning and denigrating the validity of self-determination they wish perhaps to suppress and forget the frail foundation of their own existence. This is what happened in the inter-war Poland’ (Bauman, 1986/7: 21–2).
Historian Paweł Brykczyński in Ready for Violence: Murder, Anti-Semitism and Democracy in Interwar Poland, argues that anti-Semitic nationalism was a major force in culture and politics to a greater extent than some Polish historians are ready to admit:6 ‘Certainly, it was not a hegemonic force. Anti-Semitic nationalism faced strong competition, led by gifted and charismatic political leaders such as Piłsudski,7 created by strong socialist, radical, liberal and moderate conservative camps who gathered around him’ (Brykczyński, 2017: 28–9). Brykczyński suggests that the essence of the conflict between Dmowski and Piłsudski’s supporters – paraphrasing Benedict Anderson8 – involved different ways of constructing imaginary communities (Brykczyński, 2017: 36–7). While for Piłsudski Polish society included all Polish citizens, without regard to religion or ethnicity, for Dmowski, Polish status was reserved for Catholics. Thus, the problem of anti-Semitism played a key role in the conflict between supporters of Dmowski and of Piłsudski.
In interwar Poland, relationships between the two neighbouring communities were dynamic, with strong distinctions from region to region, based on which of the tripartite powers had ruled in each. Under partition, the rules of housing and access to the professions and occupations were different under the tsars and kaisers, and the demography of the Jewish populations also differed. Poznań – the capital city of the Wielkopolska region – in 1921 had 169,422 inhabitants, of whom only 1.2% were Jews.9 This demographical situation was exceptional for Poland’s larger cities, where, after the rebirth of the independent state (1918), Jews made up around a third of the population (1921 data showed Warsaw was 33.13% Jewish; Łódź, 34.6%; Kraków, 25%). It is apparently why Dmowski was so enthusiastic about Poznań, with its modest proportion of Jews and ‘patriotic attachment to the Polish nation’.10 The language of the period included a word zażydzenie (Jew-infestation, or Jewification).11 The Warsawian Dictionary from 1927 defines the term as ‘polluting by Jews … filling a territory with Jews, to overcrowd with Jews’. As an example of usage, the authors of the dictionary cite the novel Marzyciel (Dreamer), by Władysław Reymont, the 1924 Nobel Prize-winner, whose hero states: ‘I will die there and forget about this stinking, Jew-infested country.’ It was frequently noted in newspapers and magazines that Poznań was one of Poland’s less ‘Jew-infested’ cities.
In an earlier section of Dmowski’s Kurjer Poznański series, he refers to Poznań’s advance in the ‘process of civilization … Wielkopolska, as the oldest and most occidental part of Poland, was more civilized than the other parts. Before it had even more Germans and fewer Jews [than today]’ (R. 20, evening edition, 13 November 1925). Once again, the prevalence of Jews is associated directly with the progress of civilization. ‘Economic development’ was the scientific camouflage for well-developed, widespread anti-Semitism.
Anti-semitism was strong in Poznań in 1925, although the presence of Jews in the city was much lower than it had been only a decade before. In the late nineteenth century through to 1918, Jews were an important part of Poznań’s economic and political life. In those years, the Jewish population identified strongly with Germany and its situation was similar to that of other Jewish communities in Prussia. Three ethnic groups – Prussian Germans, Poles and Jews – co-existed in a city whose business language was German. Polish was spoken at home, but the Germanization policy imposed by Bismarck discriminated against the use of Polish in public places. Unsurprisingly, National Democrats looked back on this period with disgust:
In 1853, naturalized Jews were elected to the city council for the first time; their number exceeded the number of Polish delegates, worsening the far-from-perfect relationship with the Polish population … For Poles striving to regain their lost independence, Germanized Jews who flaunted their Prussian loyalty and servility became in some cases a more hostile group than the Germans themselves. Jews of Poznań would experience this hostility particularly poignantly after WWI. (From the official site of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews)12
At the end of World War I, Germans and Poles struggled for control of the territories around Poznań, culminating in the Wielkopolska Uprising of 1918–19. The strongly Germanized Jewish population of the region supported the Weimar Republic in this confrontation, believing that Poland’s newly independent state would not last. When Poland definitively took control of Wielkopolska, most Jewish families left the city for German-controlled territories – these were Jews who had ‘betrayed’ the Polish state by supporting Germans in Poznań. At the same time, the 1917 October Revolution brought ‘Eastern Jews’ – often bourgeois families fleeing the Soviet Union – to Poznań, where they supported the Polish state. Despite this, anti-Semitism increased, an artefact of Polish nationalistic muscleflexing in the interwar years. Poznań’s Polish-Catholic inhabitants tended not to distinguish among different Jewish groups, whether their traditions were linked to Germany or the Pale of Settlement. For Polish Catholics, they were all just Jews.
Historian Rafał Witkowski notes that, in 1922, German was still the official language employed in synagogue councils and associations, but by 1931 only 15 per cent of Poznań’s Jews were German Jews, in the sense of speaking German and identifying themselves as Germans (Witkowski, 2012). Clearly, the missing population had been ‘replaced’ by families coming from the East.13
The family
Zygmunt Bauman’s parents were also new inhabitants of the city in the 1920s. In the Poznań administrative registry list, we can read that Zygmunt’s father Maurycy had moved to 17 Prusa Street on 1 July 1923.14 The same document notes Maurycy’s date of birth as 20 February 1890, in the village of Słupca, about 50 kilometres east of Poznań. The Jewish community had settled in this town around 1870, and by 1900 Jews made up 20 per cent of the population – 25 per cent by the time Maurycy Bauman left for Poznań.15 Bauman’s mother, Zofia, was born on 10 February 1894 in Rypin, near Włocławek, which since 1620 had had a large Jewish community. Her maiden name is written in different ways in various documents – as Zofia Kon on the address registration and Zofia (Zywa) Cohn in other documents, mostly created after World War II. The third person mentioned on the Poznań registration card is Tauba, Zygmunt’s older sister, whose date of birth, in Słupca, is given as 28 January 1919. Zygmunt Bauman, the family’s second and last child, is also listed in the registration.
The biographical information in this document varies somewhat from that of official documents from later in the family’s life. Zygmunt Bauman himself provides slightly differing accounts of his family members and their histories in documents such as the thirteen-page Special Questionnaire from 1950 drawn up by the Polish secret political police (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). Many of the birthdates and spellings change from one document to another, a common situation for people who emerged from World War II:16 they often emerged from the tragedies of war, deportation and escape with new forenames, surnames, birthdates and birth places. The Baumans had changed their name from Baumann – ‘builder’ in German – to the more ‘Polish-looking’ Bauman, probably after Poland became an independent state in 1918.
Sometimes the changes were unintentional, the result of shifts in official language from people schooled in a variety of tongues – Polish, German, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew,17 which entailed three alphabets: Cyrillic, Hebrew and Latin (in addition, Polish contains many letter–accent variations that are not present in other Latin-alphabet languages). Bauman’s mother’s name, for example, was of Yiddish/Hebrew origin, and could be transliterated either as Kon, Kohn, Kahn, Con, Cehn or Cohn. In fact, several genealogy sources say that all those versions are variants of the name Cohen, a royal name in Jewish tradition – from Hebrew, it is translated as ‘priest’, referring to the priestly clan of biblical times who were keepers of the original Temple.
Surname changes could also be intentional, but surnames most often changed because the registrars used different languages or alphabets or came from different cultures. This was the case with Hebrew names written by Polish officials or Soviet soldiers schooled in the Cyrillic alphabet, who, during and after World War II, were charged with filling out official documents. Either the registrar or the person whose name was being changed might alter it with the purpose of asserting an identity, or the necessity of being perceived as a member of one group or another. Bauman’s sister was born Tauba (as registered in the Jewish community), then became Teofila, to conform to the Polish ‘version’ of Tauba. After moving to Palestine, she took on the Hebrew name Tova. In postwar documents, her birth place also was modified: according to her Poznanian registration card, she was born in Słupca, but in postwar documents the birth place becomes Włocławek, where her mother’s family lived. The two towns were 110 kilometres apart and belonged to different countries.
In January 1919, the month of Tauba’s birth, Włocławek was not a quiet place. A conflict between Communist Party members and their opponents led to a series of pogroms against the Jewish district, although, in contrast to Poznań, Włocławek’s Jewish community had supported the Polish Army and the new independent government. In the months that followed World War I, pogroms involving soldiers and civil populations were frequent in cities and towns with a Jewish population (Jastrząb, 2015). Włocławek’s January 1919 pogrom could be not explained by motives other than hatred of an ethnic minority that was in a good economic position. Włocławek’s Jews owned about 60 per cent of its businesses, and had been a mostly well-assimilated group for decades. The well-known Jewish landowners and personalities of the city included many Kohns. Zofia’s family owned a construction business and belonged to the local bourgeoisie.
Changes in birth year were perhaps the most frequent types of document modification in this period. For example, Zofia, Zygmunt’s mother, is listed in prewar documents as being born in 1894, but in postwar papers, in 1896. Many people took the opportunity of wartime and postwar bureaucratic chaos to rejuvenate themselves. In state-regulated societies with fixed retirement ages and negligible or symbolic retirement pensions, this was a good strategy for working longer.
Changes of occupation were often telling indicators of the shifting social pressures under which Bauman and his family lived in the twentieth century, and of the changing perceptions of what constituted ‘social capital’ or ‘social class’. In prewar documents, Maurycy Bauman’s occupation is listed as ‘trader’ (kupiec), while at the moment of Zygmunt’s birth his father owned (or co-owned) textile stores (sklep bławatny). In the early 1930s, after bankruptcies, the Great Depression and the boycott of Jewish shops by the Polish community (which was particularly well organized in Poznań), Maurycy became an accountant or bookkeeper (buchhalter) for a local company, Sławiński & Toczkała. In response to several administrative postwar questionnaires, Zygmunt Bauman gave two prewar occupations for his father: first, as a merchant or store owner; second, as an accountant. For example, in the document ‘Explanations of the CV’, from 3 January 1950, we read: ‘Up until 1939, after bankruptcy, my father worked as a bookkeeper and at the same time partially as a travelling salesman, first in the firm Toczkała, then in the Skowrońscy enterprise in Poznań.’18
These changes of information were aimed at characterizing Bauman’s origins in a way that diminished his ‘capitalistic’ pedigree. In postwar Poland, having a father who had owned a business or sold goods – by consequence, a bourgeois and capitalist – was a huge obstacle to career advancement, especially in the Army, the Communist Party and other important institutions. Being a travelling salesman or accounting employee was much better than being a capitalist. This was one of the ‘delicate’ issues in the biography of Zygmunt, from the perspective of his Polish hierarchy after the war. In the late 1940s, it was not so much his Jewish origin that was a problem, since some Jews were members of the institutions in which he served. His social and professional family history – his bourgeois origin – was much more serious.
Maurycy Bauman originated from an educated family. As Zygmunt wrote in his private essay:
My father’s father was a village shopkeeper – a smaller chip of a family stem which on its other branches (so I heard) carried also some learned rabbis and renowned tsadiks. He started his business in a small village of Zagorov, moving later to a minor regional centre of Slupca. As far as I know, my grandfather had no education but the one provided by the religious school (kheder).19 (Bauman, 1986/7: 3)
Zagórów was a small village near Słupca whose late-nineteenth-century population was less than 3,000, about one-fifth of them Jews. Zygmunt’s grandfather had moved to Słupca before the birth of Maurycy. Two of his other children were also merchants, while a third male was an engineer. All three emigrated – the oldest,20 before World War I, to Karlsruhe, Germany, and then Palestine; the second, Szymon, in 1905, to the United States where he ‘probably was the owner of a factory’ in Little Rock, Arkansas, as Zygmunt wrote in an ‘explanatory CV annex’ in 1950;21 and the third, Beniamin, in 1923, emigrated directly to Palestine, where he settled in Tel Aviv. Maurycy also had a sister, Zofia Izbicka, who was married to a salesman or commercial agent and emigrated to Lucerne, Switzerland in 1908. Such emigration patterns were not exceptional for people who lived in this part of Europe at the time.22 The industrialization of Western Europe and the USA attracted large numbers of youth, who left insecurity and poverty for promises of a better life. It is not clear whether any members of the family remained in Słupca in 1939.
In his private essay, Zygmunt sheds some light on the educational strategy in his father’s family – one typical of the social changes that occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe:
Grudgingly, the grandfather agreed to support only the secular education of his youngest son. My father was not the youngest, so like the rest of his brothers he had the village melamed for his only teacher. Yet all the sons, except for the eldest who stayed with the father in his shop, rebelled and left home one by one…. My father’s rebellion took another form and did not include changing places. He learned perfect German, decent Russian, bearable Polish and a smattering of English and French, and set about devouring books.23 (Bauman, 1986/7: pp. 4–5)
