Temporary Exhibition: Do not waste independence. National Defense Fund silverware. Silva rerum

The Fund was established on 9 April 1936 under a decree of the President of the Republic of Poland, with a view to financing weapons buildup of the nation’s armed forces, as the state’s existence was threatened by Nazi Germany. Funds were raised from endowments and bequests from private individuals, institutions and from public donations. The Poles contributed extremely generously,  whether in cash or in kind, which ranged from real estate and valuables to grain and slaughter animals.

Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, a proportion of unused in-kind donations were taken abroad. At the Polish embassy in Bucharest, they were divided into “silver” and “gold” stock. The 61 boxes of silver were transported from Romania to France, where they survived the Second World War, held initially in the vault of the Bank of France branch in Marseille, then in Castres, only to be relocated after the war to Toulouse.

Poland recovered its “silver” National Defence Fund in 1976. The following year (1977), the collection was put on display at the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, and subsequently shown at the Bureau for Art Exhibitions in Katowice, after which it was deposited at the National Museum in Poznań.

Between 1978 and 1988 a dedicated team at the National Museum in Poznań inventoried the collection, which comprised in excess of 18,000 pieces. In recognition of the effort, and by way of at least symbolic compensation for the wartime losses in the collection, the formal holder of the treasure, i.e. the Ministry of Culture and Art, granted 1,840 artefacts to the Museum. The items which the institution thus received were entered into the inventories of the Museum of Applied Arts, the Military Museum of Wielkopolska, the Museum of the History of the City of Poznań and the Numismatic Salon.

The remainder was locked in a secret vault in the basement of the Museum of Applied Arts in the Royal Castle in Poznan in 1997.

On January 23, 2023, the remaining more than 16,000 pieces of National Defense Fund silver were handed over to the National Museum in Poznan. On June 5, 2023, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage inaugurated the project, “Do not waste independence. National Defense Fund silverware.”

Its idea is to recall the history of the FON by simultaneously presenting objects from this ensemble in fifteen museums and cultural institutions across Poland. The project is coordinated by the National Museum in Poznań. A dedicated set of objects has been prepared for each participating institution, with the subject matter and quantity agreed upon with it, and archival materials relating to the collection and the foundation of specific military equipment by local communities, corporations or workplaces have been made available. In addition, part of the project is an album publication, which includes texts about the history of the FON and characterizing the resource, including brief characteristics of the most valuable objects or groups of objects. The illustration section includes archival photos from before 1939, photos from the return of the silverware in 1976 and, most importantly, photos of the objects.

Curators: Renata Sobczak-Jaskulska, Michał Błaszczyński
Visual identification: Raman Tratsiuk