Małgorzata Szejnert

The Black Garden

Excerpt

"The Black Garden" is the vivid, dynamically written tale of a Katowice housing estate called Giszowiec and its residents. In the second half of the nineteenth century the German owners of a company called Gische (hence the name of the estate) developed large-scale industrial and mining activity in Upper Silesia. Demand was growing by the year for bituminous coal, which was in plentiful supply in the Katowice area, but it was harder and harder to find workers, until the managing director of Gische’s mines and foundries hit upon an excellent idea: they should build an estate full of small houses in the style of rural cottages, steeped in greenery, with a small garden and a shed for each one. The farmers who had only just re-trained as miners would work better and more productively if they were guaranteed decent living conditions. The first residents of this unique estate, unprecedented anywhere in the world, moved into their homes a hundred years ago. Małgorzata Sztejnert, who has sifted through hundreds of documents, diaries and chronicles, gives a colourful description of the daily life of the residents of Giszowiec and the neighbouring districts. On top of this tale about “good capitalists” and the hard-working, virtuous Silesians come stories that are less pleasant, about the eradication of the German and Polish elements before the First World War, the three armed uprisings that led to Poland regaining part of Upper Silesia in 1921, the nightmare of the Second World War, the birth of People’s Poland, and some subsequent social experiments that almost brought about the destruction of Giszowiec (part of the district was blown up in the 1970s to build skyscrapers). "The Black Garden" is a tale told by many voices, in which trivial issues blend in with major ones, and the fortunes of simple people cross paths with the life stories of Silesian-born political and cultural celebrities. Szejnert’s in-depth book is an outstanding achievement in the art of journalism, one of the most important publications on Silesian history to have appeared in the past few decades.

Małgorzata Sztejnert (born 1936), journalist and reporter, is a co-founder of Gazeta Wyborcza, where she has headed the features department for more than a decade. She has written or co-written several works of non-fiction.