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the majority of whom were women, had enjoyed a tour of the province, receiving instruction from a

group of academics whose expertise ranged from ethnography to the natural sciences (see Figure

6.3). The aim of the course was to help teachers “get to know the surroundings and the psychology of

the people,” and Hoffman ensured that it was a convivial, yet respectful, endeavor. Throughout the

five-week course, participants and lecturers shared meals together and traveled across the region on

buses, trains, boats, and foot, all the while supplementing theoretical knowledge of the province with

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practical experiences of the land and its people. Because the organizers wanted participants to
become acquainted with various parts of Volhynia, they chose to focus the course around two places

that represented the province’s geographical extremes—Kowel, in the swampy north, and

Krzemieniec, in the hilly south. During lectures and on excursions from these bases, scholars sought

to enlighten teachers, just as they themselves got to carry out further academic research. As part of a

three-day excursion to Luboml and the surrounding area, for instance, the group visited places of

worship that reflected the multi-religious character of the local populations, including Roman

Catholic and Orthodox churches and a synagogue. On the same trip, they also observed wedding

customs and took boats across the 3,000 hectares of Lake Świtaź.

Because there was no institution of higher education in Volhynia, the participating scholars

all came from beyond the province—more specifically, from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków,

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the oldest and most prestigious bastion of Polish learning. One such participant was the

demographic and economic geographer Wiktor Ormicki, who had already visited the kresy in 1926

with the famed geographer Ludomir Sawicki and completed his habilitacja (a professorial thesis

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above the level of a PhD) on the region in 1929. Ormicki was joined by the ethnographer and

50 “Tydzień na kursie regionalnym,” Przegląd Wołyński, July 18, 1929, 3-4.
51 Jakub Hoffman, “Sprawozdanie z Wołyńskiego Kursu Regjonalnego zorganizowanego przez Komisję Wołyńską
Zarządu Głównego Związku Polskiego Nauczycielstwa Szkół Powszechnych,” Polska Oświata Pozaszkolna
(January-February 1930), 45.
52 Wiktor Ormicki, Życie gospodarcze kresów wschodnich Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (Kraków, 1929); Antoni
Jackowski (ed.), Do końca wierny Polsce i geografii: Wiktor Rudolf Ormicki (1898-1941) (Kraków, 2011), 176-180.

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