“Notes from the Great Times” and “Memoirs from the Years 1916–1918”. Ludomil German and his notes from the First World War the Years 1916–1918”.

The article presents the last years of the life of Ludomił German (1851–1921), a Galician teacher and school inspector, playwright, translator and politician. He was an activist of the Democratic-National Party and Polish Democratic Party, member of the Austrian parliament in Vienna (1907–1918) and the National Parliament in Lviv (1912–1914), vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies and vice-president of the Polish Circle. During the World War I, he kept a diary in which he described his activities in the Supreme National Commitee (established on August 16th, 1914), the Polish Circle and the parliament, as well as the history of the Polish Legions, the struggle for their leadership and the efforts undertaken by the leaders of Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland to unificate the Polish lands and create a more or less independent Polish state. As a supporter of the trialist option (replacing the dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the trialistic Austro-Hungary-Poland, created as a result of the joining of the Russian Kingdom of Poland to Galicia), he saw the place of Poles at the side of the Habsburgs almost until the end of the war. He spent the end of his life in Lviv, where he also died. His diary, divided into two parts, is kept in the collections of manuscripts of the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow, Poland (number 8537 I, „Notes from great times”, original) and in the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv (Fond 5, number 6415, vol. I–III, „Memoirs of 1916–1918, copy).

In his article Bogdan Grzelonski, Polish ambassador to Canada between 1997 and 2000, discusses a book edited by author and historian Frank Costigliola Kennan diaries. He states that the masterfully selected and annotated diaries make for a fascinating reading about Kennan’s professional and personal life. He specifically brings to attention these parts, that are concerned with the Soviet Union, Europe and Poland. B. Grzeloński underline that Kennan raised in his diary issues which still ring clearly today.