The Lviv Academy of Commerce was the only university in Poland focused on the organisation of foreign trade and the economic service of diplomacy. Candidates for this school had to have passed the matura examination with a good grade and meet the same conditions as for university studies.

The origins of the Commercial Academy in Lwów

In 1875, a secondary school called the Academy of Commerce was separated from the structures of the Lviv Polytechnic School. In 1894 it was transformed into the four-year high school of the State Commercial Academy. After independence was regained, a three-year Higher School of Foreign Trade (WSHZ) was established on the basis of this institution in 1922. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, it was promoted to become the Academy of Foreign Trade. It was the fourth Lviv university with the right to confer master's degrees and the only Polish university educating professionals for the consular service.

Beginnings of the Polish School of Commerce in Lviv

The founder and first rector of the university in 1922-1930 was Antoni Pawłowski (1859-1942), professor of commercial and political arithmetic. In addition to its own full-time professors, the university employed scholars from the university and the polytechnic. WSHZ students learned general commercial knowledge and the principles of foreign trade and consular service, covering legal issues, world economic geography and commodity science.

In the first decade of its existence, the university was located in the building of the Higher School of Commerce at 5 Bourlarda Street (now Nyzhankivsky Street). In 1935, a new building was built at 10 Sakramentek Street (now Tuhan-Baranovsky Street). A year later, classes began in the new building.

Designer of the Commercial Academy building in Lviv

The architectural design of the academy building was made by Wawrzyniec Dajczak (1882-1968), a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture of the Lviv Polytechnic, and one of the most prolific architects of interwar Lviv. Before the outbreak of the First World War, he took an active part in the independence movement (among other things, in 1908, he founded Drużyny Bartoszowe - a well-known Lvov paramilitary organisation; he was also the editor and publisher of the organisation's magazine - "Dzwon"). He took part in the defence of Lwów and in the Polish-Soviet War, and left the army in 1921 with the rank of lieutenant. In the interwar years, he ran a private design office on Pełczyńska Street (now Witowski Street).

He specialised in sacral architecture (he designed about a hundred churches in the Lwów archdiocese and the Przemyśl diocese), in addition to designs for people's houses, falcon nests, schools, hospitals and residential houses. He was also the author of the monumental equestrian statue of Marshal Józef Piłsudski in Tarnopol, and finally, he was involved in the conservation of historical monuments. After the Second World War, he lived in Jarosław.

Dajczak underwent an interesting evolution in his work from traditional to modernist forms, but always tried to maintain an individual style. It has been written: "he underwent transformations in accordance with the trends present in Polish and world architecture, falling within the broad notion of modernism. He adapted various shades of it, from stylisations of certain historical forms in the 1920s to the Polish variety of functional architecture in the 1930s. However, he never became completely dependent on these changing trends".

The architecture of the commercial school building in Lviv

The Higher School of Foreign Trade is an edifice embedded in the current of functionalist architecture, and at the same time a very distinctive building. The architect was certainly not a fanatic of functionalism, and he avoided becoming enthralled with the form of white cubic volumes, which sometimes led to monotonous solutions devoid of individual expression.

The Lviv realisation is an asymmetrical arrangement of solids of different sizes, proportions and forms, creating a configuration subordinated to the divisions into parts and functional zones. The building as a whole is devoid of historical detail and styling, as Wawrzyniec Dajczak has achieved formal differentiation through a typically modernist juxtaposition of different materials and textures. The influence of Corbusier's five principles of modern architecture can be clearly seen: the ground floor of the central body is slightly set back and partly supported by pillars, and the architect has introduced an entrance zone here. The architect also introduced an entrance area here, while he arranged the window openings into horizontal strips using bands or other material in between the windows.

Further fate of the Polish university in Lviv

During the years of German occupation, the university conducted secret teaching. In turn, the Germans established a secondary commercial school with Polish as the language of instruction. After the Second World War, when the Germans left Lviv, the school resumed its activities, but as the Lviv Institute of Soviet Trade. Most of the Polish professors left Lviv in the autumn of 1945.

The building now houses the Lviv Academy of Commerce.