Ignacy J. Paderewski's private library

Until 1940 I.J. Paderewski's private library was located in the artist's Swiss residence, Riond-Bosson, on the outskirts of Morges (canton of Vaud). In September that year, when the artist left Switzerland and set off on his last journey to the United States, all the furniture and valuable house equipment, including objects of art and an excellent collection of silverware and porcelain, as well as the library had been deposited in the warehouse of Lavanchy Company in Lausanne, where all of the artist's belongings remained for the next few years. Paderewski died at the end of June 1941 just a few months after moving to the United States. Nevertheless, it took about 8 years before his last will and testament was discovered at Morgan's Bank in Paris. When the will was opened, it was found that the Jagiellonian University was the main beneficiary of Paderewski's estate.

In the middle of the 1950s, after the end of the protracted and complicated inheritance procedure, the Jagiellonian University received a significant amount of money that was spent on special scholarships for young Polish students, the purchase of valuable scientific equipment, and also on the expenses of the University. The remaining part was divided among the other schools designated in the testament (see the devise for Jagiellonian University in Kraków). In the course of the negotiations, the University also received the book legacy, which, in accordance with the artist's last will, belonged to the secretary Sylwin Strakacz and a fellow composer named Henryk Opieński. In October 1959, a small part of the book collection was transported from Switzerland to Kraków, and placed in the storeroom of the Jagiellonian Library. The other part of the collection temporarily remained in the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw, and later, in 1963 was transferred to the Jagiellonian Library. However, because of the political atmosphere in Poland at the time, which was unfavorable to the cultivation of the memory of the great Pole, the artist's private book collection disappeared for over 15 years, locked up in the storerooms of the Jagiellonian Library (among the proprietary collections, the so-called ‘resy'). In 1974, thanks to the efforts of Elżbieta Dziębowska and the decision of the then Rector of the Jagiellonian University, Professor Mieczysław Karaś, the collection of Paderewski's books was transferred from the Jagiellonian Library's storeroom to the newly founded Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Life and Works Documentation Centre (currently the Centre for the Documentation of 19th- and 20th-Century Polish Music, named after I.J. Paderewski).

Descriptions of the books from the collection belonging to I.J. Paderewski are continually introduced to the JU Libraries Online Catalogue, where a separate location was created: Instytut Muzykologii – Ośrodek Paderewskiego [Institute of Musicology – Paderewski Centre]. The collection content can be browsed in the catalogue, using two types of search. The first type is a search by words. Simply select ‘wszystko' [all] and type in ‘Księgozbiór Ignacego Jana Paderewskiego'. The second type is a search through the indexes by the call number (preceded by the phrase ‘Pad.' for books, and ‘OPn' for music prints). The collection is only available for research purposes at the Centre (at the Institute of Musicology at the Jagiellonian University).