How Poland Found Itself in the Mountains

In the decades before the First World War, Polish mountaineering became a form of nationalism for a lowland people.

Patrice M. Dabrowski | Published in History Today Volume 71 Issue 10 October 2021

Guide and Tourists in the Tatras (detail), by Walery Eljasz Radzikowski, 1878. National Museum of Kraków/Wikimedia/Creative Commons.

The Tatras are the most striking part of the Carpathian mountains that arc through Central and Eastern Europe. With over 60 peaks higher than 8,000 feet above sea level, they are a continuation of the Alps to the west. Whereas today they lie on the frontier of Poland and Slovakia, in the period before the First World War the mountains were divided between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of Austria Hungary.