Zelman Project

The blog of the ongoing research project “Zelman Wolfowicz and his rule in the Drohobych demesne in the mid-18th c.” realized at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw, Poland) and founded by National Science Centre (NCN, Krakow, Poland).The objective of the project is to construct a new model of functioning of local communities in the pre-partition Poland-Lithuania, transcending social divisions and religions, a model that combines a multidimensional analysis of microsocial and biographic data with a reflection on social and cultural phenomena on a macro scale and in a diachronic context.
The point of departure for the research is Zelman Wolfowicz, son of a Jewish furrier from Drohobych, who informally ruled the demesne of Drohobych for over a dozen years in the middle of the 18th century, reaping maximum rewards, intimidating some of the demesne inhabitants and corrupting others. When finally in 1755 he was arrested by order of the royal commissioners and sentenced to death, he was charged with a series of other crimes ranging from forcing starost’s subjects to get drunk, via the theft of a Torah, all the way to seducing the wife of the starost. According to a dark legend, he even changed into a vampire after his death and in the local folklore continued to frighten people well into the 19th century, arousing the interest of local historiographers. Nonetheless, Zelman remains a historical figure, and the accumulation of connections and emotions on his subject sets him apart from the remaining Jewish administrators – confidants of the Polish nobility in the 17th-18th centuries – which makes his story particularly important for an understanding of the social history of the Noble Republic.
As our prime research hypothesis, we assume that both Zelman Wolfowicz’s place in the network of social connections and the legends surrounding him reflect the interdenominational relations and social associations and conflicts that existed in the Commonwealth before the partitions.
The project sets itself two tasks: to place the story of Zelman in the context of social history and history of mentalities, and to develop and test research tools that permit a historical analysis of sources possessing a diverse nature and reconnaissance value.
The basis of the research will be a detailed perusal of archives on the subject of the demesne of Drohobych and of later historical and ethnographical publications on this subject (scientific publications and ones written for the general public). The search will, on the one hand, establish as broadly as possible the network of social connections in which Zelman functioned, and on the other hand, examine the manner in which this figure has been represented and the way in which the legend surrounding him has been created.
The interpretation phase shall consist in analysing the source data and various narratives about Zelman in a broad social and cultural context, covering the system of authority in local communities, the administration and the economy of royal estates, and the history of Polish Jews, as well as cultural phenomena such as the shaping of an anti-Semitic debate or beliefs in demons.

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