Jak Aleksander Przezdziecki nagrobek Anny Kazimierzówny w Mindelheim odkrył i sfotografować zlecił .......... 853

ON HOW ALEKSANDER PRZEZDZIECKI DISCOVERED THE TOMB OF ANNA OF POLAND, DUCHESS OF TECK, AT MINDELHEIM AND HAD IT PHOTOGRAPHED

In August 1868 the Polish historian Aleksander Przezdziecki (1814–1871) visited the town of Mindelheim in Bavaria in order to examine the tomb of Anna, Duchess of Teck (d. 1425), a daughter of King of Poland Casimir III the Great. On this occasion, he commissioned a photograph of the tomb, of which two photographic prints have survived (in the Princes Czartoryski Museum, and in the Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences, both in Cracow). The present paper attempts to reconstruct the circumstances of Przezdziecki’s ‘discovery’ of the tomb of Anna, Duchess of Teck, on the basis of an analysis of the above-mentioned photograph (whose authorship was impossible to establish) as well as other documentary evidence. It also discusses the role played by photography in the research of Przezdziecki who was among the earliest Polish scholars to have used this technique to record historic buildings, promote them among wide audiences and illustrate scholarly papers.