Satirical magazines
Among the type of objects which are the most numerous in stocks of Polish digital libraries – magazines – we can find publications of a big diversity in subjects. Since now we have already recommended among others: motorization, literary, theatrical and cultural magazines. Most of tchem come from the breakthrough of 19th and 20th century, so contain many valuable information and materials for reasearches and historical or cultural interests. It is a great diagnosis of Polish reading expectations from more than hundred years. This time we would like to present a part of a sizeable set of satirical magazines – a few jokes included in it may seem totally absurd or old-fashioned for us, but it is a great motive to get to know the characteristics of our ancestors indeed.
Humoristic newspapers can be found in really many repositories belonging to the Digital Libraries Federation, whereas they are really hard to categorize or arrange, even more because all of them have more or less similar structure and thematics. So lets begin randomly, from the Digital Repository of the Scientific Institutes, which shares two-week periodic of art and literature Maski published by the Polish Literary Society, in this case it is a set of issues from 1918 and 1919. In content we can find music, literature and satire, longer articles and stories. In the same library we can also read Pocięgiel – weekly illustrated magazine touched by humor and satire – in this particular instance it is an addition – calendar for 1925 with funny drawings, poems, stories and anegdotes. However the National Digital Library POLONA presents quite a lot of issues of weekly humoristic and satirical magazine Kabaret with stories, jokes, comics and illustrations, and also a weekly periodic Satyr from 1919, containing proverbs, poems and tidbits. An interesting publication can be found in the e-library of the University of Warsaw: it is the Fly – satiric and political magazine (peculiar illustration at the chosen cover “Polish-German close-up. Peace pipe or too much fume in Berlin”), moreover during 1906-1907 and 1912 there was a censorship on it, so some one-day-stands and ephemeras appeared, for example Hare or Pheasant. Some interesting magazines can be also found in the Digital Library of Wielkopolska – for example the oldest newspaper we present – Cobblestone news – gossip and humoristic pamflet published in a low-cost way in the beginning of 19th century, and also an illustrated month periodic Bocian znad Gopła, Wisły, Warty i Odry (later became a Mosquito) from 1901. Single magazines are shared for example by: the Digital Library: Regionalia Ziemi Łódzkiej (weekly To i owo from 1917: a bunch of political thoughts, poems, humor, satire and ironic interpretations of current events in Poland); Jagiellońska Digital Library (frivolous leaflet Bocian from 20s, incluting quite crude sense of humor, great illustrations, immoral stories, mainly about male – female relationships) and the Digital Library of Małopolska (Djabeł from the end of 19th century, published two Times a month – reflective and irreverent magazine about current and abstract subjects, touching artistic and theatrical critics.
