People

A collection of medals and medallions devoted to eminent personalities, as well as writers and poets, musicians, scientists and explorers, and even artists, is the largest among the collections of the Historical and Literary Society/Polish Library in Paris. These are mainly medals featuring images of the personalities in question, often with their attributes and with explanatory inscriptions. Thanks to them, many less famous or forgotten people are saved from oblivion, especially in the case of less distinguished emigrants.

The collection boasts many objects relating to Adam Mickiewicz and Fryderyk Chopin. These two men were and still are an inspiration for many nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists. It is worth mentioning here that the Polish Library in Paris houses museums dedicated to both. As far as science is concerned, there are medal recalling the role of Ignacy Domeyko or Pierre and Maria [Skłodowska] Curie, as well as Johannes Guttenberg, the inventor of printing press or astronomer Mikołaj Kopernik. Among political leaders, Napoleon is very often depicted on the medals and medallions, as well as Poles: Józef Piłsudski and Ignacy Paderewski. There are also plenty of images of the nineteenth-century Polish emigrants, French leaders of the First World War, as well as both Poles and French who fought with the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War, and the present-day leaders.