Z podróży na Bałkany pastora Feliksa Gloeha – czarnomorska Bildungsreise

Abstract

"And even if we had not seen or had not experienced anything else than getting in touch with and getting to know the Bulgarian nation itself – then even that would have been a great goal of our trip, and at the same time its great effect" – in these words the pastor of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Feliks Teodor Gloeh, started a fascinating volume, yet one that is difficult to be described. In 1927, reverend Gloeh published a volume which was not too large – It numbered 115 pages – entitled Z podróży do Rumunji, Bułgarji i Turcji od 4.IV do 27.IV 1927 roku (From a Journey to Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey from April 4 to April 27, 1927; Warsaw 1927). It was a report from an official trip taken by Polish students from Mikołaj Rej's Junior High School in Warsaw to the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. It was extraordinary in itself: as emphasised by Gloeh, even before 1927 Polish teachers traveled to these countries, while only a few years after the Polish–Soviet War, less than a year after the May Coup d'État in 1926, a wellprepared expedition of Polish youth and teachers set off to the Balkans. They travelled by a special train with an official visit to countries they had not known. It is a kind of report from an educational journey, the stages of which include, among others: Veliko Tarnovo, Sofia, Varna and Istanbul.