In the Baroque era, Augsburg was the leading centre of graphic art in Central Europe. It was here that prints were made for Polish recipients. Their subjects included portraits of Polish personalities, views of Polish cities and saints or depictions of miraculous images attesting to the cult of the Virgin Mary. Some were accompanied by dedications.

As part of the documentation of Polish heritage in Germany, in 2018 the POLONIKA Institute funded a project to research the Augsburg engraving centre in the context of its links with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Not only were new compositions created in Augsburg, but also foreign designs were processed and disseminated. For this reason, it is important to investigate the question of the significance for the Augsburg engraving centre of the production intended for the market of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and at the same time what role Polish subjects played in Augsburg.

Research for the project was conducted by Zbigniew Michalczyk, Ph.D., who was the first art historian from Poland to conduct systematic searches in all of the Augsburg collections mentioned above.

His queries at the Kunstsammlungen und Museen, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek in Augsburg and at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich enabled him to identify several dozen graphic works commissioned by Polish recipients. The nature of the preserved objects related to Polish culture is diverse: works created directly for Polish commissioners, works bearing dedications to Poles, portraits of Polish personalities, views of Polish cities, representations of Polish saints and miraculous images located in the Republic, or - unavailable in Polish collections - sources testifying to the veneration of miraculous images, such as the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa.

The research carried out in 2018 culminated in a book publication by Zbigniew Michalczyk, 'Forgotten Contexts. Augsburg as a centre of ritualism vis-à-vis the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th-18th centuries' published by the Polonica Institute in 2020. In the book, with its rich layout, the author takes a closer look at the history of the engraving centre in Augsburg, pointing out - importantly and new to the research - the multiple mechanisms that shaped it. The publication uncovers the wide-ranging - not only artistic, but also social, cultural, political and other - connections linking the Republic of Poland with the Augsburg engraving centre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries against the background of a European perspective.