State salvages historic Polish publishing house
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
31.10.2012 13:17
Poland's Ministry of Culture has purchased the name and trademark of a two-hundred-year-old publishing house that succumbed to bankruptcy this summer.
Bust of Jozef Ossolinski: photo - wikipedia
The Ossolineum publishing house, which was affiliated to the cultural foundation of the same name, counts some of Poland's most outstanding literary works in its catalogue.
“The name and the trademark have been saved,” Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski has told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Some 600,000 zloty (145,000 euro) have been spent by the ministry so as to acquire the rights.
Among the jewels of the publishing house is the so-called National Library series (Biblioteka Narodowa), which includes works by nineteenth century national bard Adam Mickiewicz as well as pre-war enfant terrible Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski.
“We have effectively taken over the rights of the National Library [series],” Zdrojewski confirmed.
The Ossolineum Institute was founded in Lwow (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1817 by Polish aristocrat Jozef Ossolinski.
Much of the collection was ultimately deposited in Wroclaw (formerly the German city of Breslau), after Poland's borders were pushed west following the Second World War.
The institute was reactivated and the library and publishing house became separate entities under the umbrella of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN).
A large proportion of the collections remained in Lviv, now forming part of a state-owned Ukrainian collection, which also continues to use the name Ossolineum. (nh)