Relationships between Vertical Temperature Gradients and PM10 Concentrations during Selected Weather Conditions in Upper Silesia (Southern Poland)

This paper studies surface air temperature inversions and their impact on air pollution under the background of meteorological conditions in southern Poland. The relationship of temperature gradients and air quality classes with weather conditions in the most urbanized and polluted part of Poland as represented by the Upper Silesia region (USR) within the administrative boundaries of the Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolis (GZM) is presented. Based on probability analysis this study hierarchized the role of the selected weather elements in the development of surface-based temperature inversion (SBI) and air quality (AQ). The thresholds of weather elements for a rapid increase in the probability of oppressive air pollution episodes were distinguished. Although most SBI occurred in summer winter SBIs were of great importance. In that season a bad air quality occurred during >70% of strong inversions and >50% of moderate inversions. Air temperature more strongly triggered AQ than SBI development. Wind speed was critical for SBI and significant for AQ development. A low cloudiness favored SBI occurrence altered air quality in winter and spring during SBI and favored very bad AQ5 (>180 µg/m3) occurrence. The probability of high air pollution enhanced by SBI rapidly increased in winter when the air temperature dropped below −6 °C the wind speed decreased below 1.5 m/s and the sky was cloudless. Changes in the relative humidity did not induce rapid changes in the occurrence of bad AQ events during SBI

A reply to: Chorzów Factory – intellectual property and the continuity of international law in investor-state dispute settlement

The case involving the nitrate factory at Chorzów, Upper Silesia has been the subject of much academic commentary. Last year the intellectual property aspects of the case were explored in this journal. In this reply, I express doubts about whether the case involved the expropriation of intellectual property rights (IPRs) for two reasons. First, there are grounds to question the existence of IPRs. Second, even if there were IPRs, the Permanent Court of International Justice does not appear to have found that IPRs were taken. Instead, the case serves as a reminder of the importance of identifying the legal status of an IPR in the relevant territory when seeking to protect it under international law. * My thanks to Martyna Mielniczuk-Skibicka and Kacper Górniak. All errors are my own.

Borderland Anxieties: Brexit, Upper Silesia and Irish Partitions in Recent Novels by Glenn Patterson and Szczepan Twardoch

Northern Ireland owes its existence to a partition of Ireland that took place a century ago. The knottiest problems involved in the UK’s recent divorce with the European Union can be traced back not only to the Belfast Agreement of 1998 but also to the establishment of a new border, and a new borderland, in the island of Ireland in 1922. The same year (1922) saw the coming into effect of a partition of Upper Silesia, which was triggered by the events and political decisions taken in 1921. The primary focus of this essay is on literary representations of crises and anxieties connected with the transformations of the geopolitical statuses of the two provinces (i.e. Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia) and selected historical, political and cultural parallels between them. Those anxieties are exemplified and illustrated by the leading characters of Glenn Patterson’s Where Are We Now? (2020) and Szczepan Twardoch’s Pokora (2020). Both novels yield to provincial readings that explore basic aporias of uprootedness, displacement, deterritorialization and identity crises, collectively identified here as borderland anxieties. In consequence, transnational and postnational perspectives that emerge from Patterson’s and Twardoch’s works count as proactive responses, encoded in literary texts, to current geopolitical crises in Europe.

Przekraczanie granic dialektu – przypadek śląski. Analiza funkcjonalna

Crossing the Boundaries of Dialect – the Case of Silesia: A Functional Analysis The article presents the results of a functional analysis of Silesian texts used in internet communication. The linguistic corpus consists of texts from portals and websites related to Upper Silesia, Opole Silesia and Cieszyn Silesia (including the Czech part). If the Silesian isolect is used as the main means of communication, all communication functions can be performed. Texts in the Silesian code particularly often fulfill metatextual and representational functions. For some functions, language stylization is used. As stylistic means in Silesian texts, lexical means from other codes are primarily used, i.e. from standard Polish, Czech, English, and German; lexemes with a clear slang character are included in the output codes. The commu­nicative functions of these stylistic means are primarily poetic and expressive. Przekraczanie granic dialektu – przypadek śląski. Analiza funkcjonalna W artykule przedstawiono wyniki analizy funkcjonalnej tekstów śląskich, wykorzysty­wanych w komunikacji internetowej. Korpus materiałowy pochodzi z portali i stron interneto­wych związanych z terenem Górnego Śląska, Śląska Opolskiego i Śląska Cieszyńskiego (łącznie z czeską częścią). W przypadku wykorzystania kodu śląskiego jako głównego środka komuni­kacji realizowane są wszystkie funkcje komunikacyjne. Teksty w kodzie śląskim szczególnie często realizują funkcję metatekstową i funkcję przedstawieniową. W wypadku niektórych funkcji sięga się po stylizację językową. W funkcji środków stylistycznych w tekstach śląskich wykorzystywane są przede wszystkim środki leksykalne z innych kodów: ogólnopolskiego, czeskiego, angielskiego, niemieckiego, w tym również leksemy o wyraźnym nacechowaniu slangowym w kodach wyjściowych. Funkcje komunikacyjne tych środków stylistycznych to przede wszystkim funkcja poetycka i funkcja ekspresywna.

Disease, Cataclysm, or Industrialisation? A Comment on the Existence and Disappearance of a Modern Period Settlement in the Vicinity of Trachy in Upper Silesia

An analysis of map charts of Upper Silesia from the second half of the 18th century allows us to identify at least a few lost settlements and hamlets. There is no doubt that one such lost settlement existed upon the Bierawka river, in the vicinity of the present-day villages of Trachy (Althammer) and Tworóg Mały (Quarghammer). Regrettably, the exact location of this settlement has never been identified. An archival query and test excavations demonstrated that the settlement actually came into existence and developed as late as the Modern Period. A fragment of a stone and brick foundation that was uncovered in the course of excavations was the vestige of a hut or of a more professional industrial workshop, such as a finery or forge. It was equipped with a waterwheel. Unfortunately, the reasons behind the disappearance of the village are unknown. It may have been caused by one of the epidemics which affected the inhabitants of Upper Silesia in the 19th century or by another cataclysm. It cannot be excluded, however, that the disappearance may have been due to the economic transformations of the 19th century.

Jewish community in Cieszowa in Upper Silesia (1737-1904) and the efforts of Fr. Karl Urban to save its material and spiritual heritage

When in 1908 in Cieszowa, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Upper Silesia, buildings of the dissolved Kehilla were put up for auction, Fr. Karl Urban (1864-1923), the priest of the parish of St. Joseph in Sadów, to which Cieszowa also belonged, purchased a synagogue with the surrounding outbuildings from his own resources, thus protecting them from inevitable liquidation. Cieszowa was one of four villages in Upper Silesia, in which Jews were ordered to reside during Prussian settlement bans, issued in the 1770s and 1780s. The article briefly describes the history of the Jewish community in Silesia, with the emphasis on the religious community set up by them in Cieszowa. In addition, the circumstances of the auctioning of local buildings in 1908 and their purchase by Fr. Karl Urban were described. The author focused on the activity of Fr. Urban, aimed at creating a religious and museum memorial site. Moreover, the author undermines the popular opinion involving the demolition of wooden monuments, allegedly after 1911, postponing the time of their destruction for the years after the death of Fr. Urban, i.e. after 1923.

The economy of the La Tène culture communities based on the example of research from Upper Silesia

The results of excavations show that the La Tène culture community which inhabited the microregion of the contemporary village of Samborowice (Upper Silesia, Poland) in the Iron Age did not differ from its brethren from the area of Moravia and the middle basin of the Danube. Our intention is to try to identify the most important features of local economy based on newly acquired archaeobotanical and archaeozoological sources. The results from Samborowice in the form of a set of cereals characteristic of La Tène culture settlements from Central Europe suggest that the set of remains being analysed comes from a period when changes to the selection of cereals had yet to occur. The population in this period of history applied a model of economy based on agriculture and livestock rearing, with cattle being the most important animals, followed by pigs and small ruminants interchangeably.

Johann Georg Triegler (Trigler): A Half-Forgotten Intellectual from the Turn of the Sixteenth Century, Former Owner of the Chansonnier Compiled for Beatrice of Aragon

The famous manuscript made in the late 1460s or early 1470s for Princess Beatrice of Aragon is nowadays known as the Mellon Chansonnier. Beatrice took this codex with her to Central Europe, where in 1476 she married the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus. After his death, in 1491, Beatrice married Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, but this second marriage was declared unlawful by the pope and in 1501 Beatrice returned to Naples. The codex evidently remained somewhere in Central Europe, because in 1609 the musician Matthaeus Roth, from Glatz, donated it to the scholar Johann Georg Triegler, who was active mainly in Moravia and Upper Silesia and in 1614 published his German translation of the medieval treatise De Sphera. Triegler died before 1622 and, besides the Mellon Chansonnier, four sixteenth-century prints from his estate are preserved in libraries in the Czech Republic. It is still not clear what happened to the Mellon Chansonnier after Triegler’s death, but the codex was later owned by the French collector Joseph Vitta (1860–1942). In 1939 it was bought at an auction in London by Paul Mellon, who donated it to the University of Yale.