At our home in Nikisz. Inside a Nikiszowiec flat

About the exhibition

The progressing industrialisation of Upper Silesia and the resulting influx of rural population coming to work at the coal mines or metallurgical plants, entailed the development of residential housing. Owners of large industrial plants, who were often in possession of the surrounding land, erected houses for workers and their families, creating the so-called company patronage housing estates. The popular ”familoki” buildings – multi-family houses for whole families – are still a hallmark of Upper Silesia.

Against the background of many such estates which were formed in almost every Upper-Silesian city, Nikiszowiec, which came into being owing to the modern vision of the privy councillor of the ”Giesche” coal mine, Anton Uthemann and was designed by German architects Emil and Georg Zillman, is an interesting place, unique with respect to its spatial layout and architecture.

A typical worker’s flat in Nikiszowiec comprised a kitchen entered from a mudroom and two rooms in enfilade. The total area of such lodgings amounted to 63 m². It has to be added that in the Nikiszowiec familoki houses there were also smaller flats, located on the ground floor. In each house, there were four flats on the upper floor. There was one toilet for each two flats, located on the landing of the staircase.

The dwellers of the flats in Nikiszowiec could use the attic and the cellar, as well as utility buildings located in the inner courtyards: pigsties and ”piekarniok” ovens for baking bread and cakes. The inhabitants kept animals: pigs, rabbits, goats, chickens and pigeons. They also farmed the fields which they leased outside the boundaries of the estate.

The exhibition is arranged in the space of the old laundry and mangle building. In three rooms  are adapted for the needs of the exposition, furnished as a kitchen, the first and the second room. The space and dimensions of particular interiors do not correspond to the Nikiszowiec multi-family buildings. Our exhibition does not perfectly reflect a typical Nikiszowiec flat. However, all the furniture, utensils, everyday items, vessels, decorations and devotional objects exhibited could be found in almost every worker’s flat in Upper Silesia between the 1930s and 1960s. The exhibition is an attempt at recreating the living conditions of the families of the miners employed at the ”Giesche” – later ”Wieczorek” – coal mine. It has been prepared with the use of the exhibits from the collection of the City Ethnology Department of  the Museum of Katowice History as well as many years’ donations of Nikiszowiec inhabitants to the ”Magiel Gallery” operating here.

Bożena Donnerstag

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