In the article "Spór o Celę Konrada" ["The dispute over Konrad's cell"] in the periodical "Świat" ["The World"], 1928, no. 23, pp. 1-3 (public domain, reprinted from the Library of the Catholic University of Lublin), Eugeniusz M. Schummacher reports on the title dispute, which consisted in the difficulty of precisely locating the cell in the Basilian monastery. Due to the fact that the cell was associated with Adam Mickiewicz (he was imprisoned there between 23 October 1823 and 21 April 1824), there was a polemic in the press in the 1920s concerning the correct location of the cell. It was eventually determined that it was on the first floor of the south wing of the monastery. The article is illustrated with photographs of the former prison and a plan of the site with Konrad's Cell marked on it.

A modernised reading of the text.

The dispute over Konrad's cell.

For a number of years, the polemic over "Konrad's cell" has been taking place in the press and in special publications. At first, the subject of the discussion was to establish the location of the former cell, but later the matter took a different turn. Despite the fact that Prof. Kłos proved with mathematical precision the place where "obiit Gustavus - natus est Conradus" was located, the Belarusian Scientific Society, headed by its president at that time, A. Łuckiewicz, categorically opposed Prof. Kłos' discovery, arguing that neither the cell nor the place where it was supposed to be located actually existed.

The position of the Byelorussians can be all too clearly explained. In the post-Basilian walls, where the historical cell is located, an Orthodox seminary resides today, from which - as the main tenant - a number of rooms are rented by the Belarusian grammar school. The Belarusians simply fear that once the location of the cell has been definitely determined and it has been designated as a museum, they will be forced to vacate the premises.

A small-minded position indeed. The Orthodox seminary has been nationalised. Simply put, the government cannot evict it without providing it with other suitable premises. However, before the government allocates new premises for the seminary, it is already very easy to find a way out of this deplorable situation.

The all-Polish congress of conservators, which met in Warsaw last November, unanimously adopted a resolution that the post-Basilian walls in Vilnius are a first-class historical monument and that without any delay the cell in which the greatest national bard was imprisoned should be appropriately commemorated, as well as the neighbouring cells in which the Filarets, insurgents, emissaries, comrades Michał Wołłowicz and Szymon Konarski were kept for months.

The resolution of the conservation convention instructs the Vilnius delegation to take steps, in consultation with the government, to realise a museum of national memorabilia within the post-Basilian walls.

The Mickiewicz Society in Lviv, headed by Professor Bruchnalski, sent a letter to the governor of Vilnius in those days, asking him to speed up the matter of Konrad's cell.

The arduous and tedious search for the site of Konrad's cell/church lasted for many years.
One cannot hear from there, though who sings or [cries.
They think to talk loudly today, and want to sing [a lot;
In the city they'll think it's singing
[in church]. (sc. I, v. 17-20)
-they were looking for a rape of a cell -tapping into the walls of the Basilian church.

Prof. Pigoń thus established in 1921 that this cell was located at the very end of the right wing, on the first floor. Of the former speakers, Dr W. Zahorski also pointed to this cell, and furthermore quoted, as a testimony to the truth, a story by an old Basilian friar, Fr Lissowski, who died around 1885, who remembered the trial of the Filarettes, and about Mickiewicz at first, basing himself on the literal wording of a quotation from "Dziady":

"The farthest she is, she presses against the walls..."
- supposedly knew that he was housed in this very winged cell of the first floor.

To clarify the matter, it was necessary to resort to examining old plans. In the absence of plans of the monastery, it was necessary to use plans of the city of Vilnius from various years, on which, although on a very fine scale, the contours of the plans of individual buildings were marked.

On a number of these plans (1806, 1814, 1845 and 1864), the space occupied by the present extension was marked as undeveloped. All of these plans show the wing connecting the monastery with the Basilian church, which no longer exists today.

P. Luckiewicz in a brochure prematurely titled: "The truth about Konrad's cell") tries to prove that the finding of Konrad's cell so far (the penultimate cell on the first floor of the southern wing of the monastery) was erroneous, that it is wrong to look for it in this wing at all, because it was located completely elsewhere. According to Mr Luckiewicz, it was located on the first floor, above the connecting corridor between the church and the southern wing of the monastery, which had been demolished for years. However, the corridor has been demolished, the cell is gone, so everything is lost! Nec locus ubi Troja fuit! This is the conclusion of Mr Luckiewicz's brochure*).

Mr Luckiewicz's arguments were fundamentally and deliberately false. It can still be seen today, in the place where the demolished corridor (the basement of which has been preserved) touched the walls of the monastery, that it was only a single-storey corridor (traces of its roof over the ground floor of the monastery), and at the same time so narrow that it could accommodate neither the cells in general, nor - quite simply - the largest of them: the cell of Konrad. And since this corridor served as a passage for the monks from the monastery to the church, it could not have had any residential cells on the ground floor either.

Mr Studnicki, director of the Vilnius State Archive, managed to find the 'Inventory', a detailed description of the Basilian church and monastery, drawn up by Fr Cezary Kaminski, former Provincial of Lithuania... just on 5 May 1823, i.e. a few months before the Filarets were imprisoned there. This manuscript, neatly bound, on several hundred pages of intricately calligraphic writing, contains the most detailed description of each room in turn, listing not only the condition of the walls, floor and ceiling, windows, doors and cookers, but even the window caps and door bolts.

The matter was clarified and settled. Konrad's cell was indeed located at the end of the south wing of the monastery on the first floor; it was entered from the corridor. It had two windows, facing the garden, on the south side. The northern window overlooking the courtyard - where one of the assembled people, according to the instructions in scene 1 of Forefathers' Eve, watched the guards who were alerted at midnight and were scrambling to open the gate - was located, as it is today, in the corridor, and this is the only way the scene can be understood, that this observer had to stand guard in the corridor and observe the assembled people through the door open to the cell. However, it should be emphasised here that the gate is not visible from this window either, because it is obscured by the church. The reference in Dziady should therefore be regarded as a poetic simplification, as should the issue of the cell being close to the church walls.

I must also add that an insight into ancient plans also resolves the question of gates. In his search for an entrance that could be seen from the cell window, Prof. Kallenbach assumed that there used to be such a gate in the wall forming the eastern wall of the courtyard quadrangle, parallel to Ostrobramska Street. This supposition, contrary to the text of Forefathers' Eve, finally fails. The plans do not show such a gate; on the contrary, they prove that all the properties between the wall and Ostrobramska Street were already built up by the beginning of the 19th century. There was therefore no room for a gate. Nor did an examination of the wall in situ reveal the slightest trace of it.

Once the theoretical issue has been definitively resolved, i.e. the location of Konrad's cell has been established, it is high time to proceed with its practical consequence - the establishment of a national museum in the cell. This is all the more so as the title to the Basilian property is also now finally established: the several-year-long process between the Polish government and the Orthodox consistory, which claimed the title of owner as the 'legal heir to the union', has recently been settled in the Supreme Court in favour of the government. So now the state is the rightful owner of the entire post-Basilian walls, while the Orthodox seminary is only a tenant.