Name: Narodna Torhovlia (People’s Trade)Type: Consumer cooperativeFounded by: Vasyl Nahirnyi and Appolon NychaiYears active: 1883-1944 The Ukrainian Cooperative Movement in Galicia addressed the economic plight of the Ukrainian people through the creation of financial, agricultural, and trade cooperatives that enabled Ukrainians to pool their resources, obtain less expensive loans and insurance, and pay less […]

I’ve combed through hundreds of old photographs of Lviv (Lemberg / Lwów) in search of hand-painted signs that are visible today as “ghost signs.” While I’ve only been able to find one such example – a photograph of a milkhouse, the search was not in vain: I came out with […]

Today probably few people know when they climb up the High Castle (Vysokyi Zamok) in Lviv, one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations, they are walking up a monument built in the late nineteenth century to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Union of Lublin – the pact which […]

‘The Eastern Gates of the Austrian Empire’ In 1772 the city of Brody became part of the Habsburg Monarchy as a border town of the crownland of Galicia and Lodomeria – first with the Commonwealth of Poland and from 1795 with the Russian Empire. The international border was about 6 […]

The biggest fair in the history of Lviv (Lwów), the General Regional Exhibition (Powszechna Wystawa Krajowa) drew nearly 1,150,000 visitors over a four-month period. The most distinguished guest was Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I himself. The exhibition was a platform to demonstrate Lviv’s and Galicia’s economic and cultural progress, and […]

The largest fair in the history of Lviv / Lwów / Lemberg, the General Regional Exhibition (Powszechna Wystawa Krajowa) was held in 1894, on the 100th year anniversary of the Kosciuszko Uprising. The aim of the exhibition was to promote Lviv as a modern metropolis and demonstrate Galicia’s economical and […]

After coming under Austrian rule, Peremyshl (Przemyśl) became a major Ukrainian political, cultural, religious, and education center. By the 1880s the city had become the second-largest center (after Lviv) for Ukrainian secondary education in Galicia. It was home to a number of vocational, elementary, and boarding schools as well as […]

To get a feeling of what Brody’s cityscape and residents looked like at the beginning of the twentieth century, we can glimpse through the postcards produced by Władysław Kocyan. Kocyan created one of the largest collections of postcards of the town and today they serve as invaluable documents of a […]

The small city of Przemyśl (Peremyshl in Ukrainian transliteration) now lies a few miles west of the Polish-Ukrainian border. Under the Austrian Empire, Przemyśl was one of the major Galician towns. Like nearby Lviv, the city’s population consisted of many nationalities, including Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Germans, and Czechs. According to […]

Presented below are photographs of eastern Galicia and its people from a Polish-language illustrated guidebook for the Austrian State Railways written by Adolf Inlender and published in Vienna in 1892. Adolf Władysław Inlender (Inlaender) (1854-1920) was a civic and political activist, journalist, and pharmacist in Galicia. Illustrated Guidebook for the Imperial-Royal […]