Chair

The chair was part of the furnishings of a private apartment of Janina Szczerska (born on 22 October 1897 in Stryj, died on 10 July 1981 in Szczecin), which was donated to the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin in a will drafted on 1 September 1976. Janina Szczerska, a teacher and educator , settled in Szczecin in the wake of World War II. There, she took up the task of establishing the first Polish school, which opened on 2 September 1945. In the beginning it was a co-educational institution with a four-grade middle school and a two-grade high school. After the opening of the men's middle and high school on Henryka Pobożnego Street (commonly referred to as Pobożniak), the first school in Szczecin was turned into an all-girls school. Under the management of Janina Szczerska, pre-war discipline was in force. Students were not allowed to date boys, wear make-up or have marcelled hair. School uniforms were obligatory and classes started with a prayer. All these rules led to the fact that the school was comonly referred to as a convent, and the students were dubbed “sisters.” Janina Szczerska worked as the school’s headmistress until 1951, when she was dismissed, most probably because of her involvement with the Home Army and her help for repressed schoolgirls. After her dismissal, she immediately left the city and took a job at a middle school in Pyskowice, later transferring to the Primary School and High School in Bielsko-Biała. She returned to Szczecin after seven years and returned to her post until her retirement in 1966. She died in 1981, aged 83.

Anna Lew-Machniak