Adolf Arendt: the Protagonist from the Street of Crocodiles

Abstract

Adolf Arendt (1862-1932), a teacher of freehand drawing in Galician secondary schools, was long considered to have been Bruno Schulz's first art teacher in Drohobych Secondary School. However, in his article entitled Lekcja profesora Arendta [A Lesson Given by Professor Arendt], Professor Władysław Panas shows that Arendt could not have been Schulz's teacher. Panas also discusses why Bruno Schulz immortalised the figure of this art teacher from Drohobych in his Sklepy cynamonowe [Cinnamon The Street of Crocodiles]. Arendt is the only character from Schulz's prose who actually lived in Drohobych. The author of this article meticulously reconstructs the biography of the actual Adolf Arendt, basing it on detailed bibliographic and archival research. Reconstructing unknown facts from Arendt's life, at the same time he outlines the broader historical background of Schulz's oeuvre, which complements the previous findings concerning both Schulz's literary and visual works.