Toruń – a city bordering the cosmos ...

Figure: The golden donkey is a reminder of the former ‘penalty donkey’ or ‘Spanish donkey’ of Toruń, which negligent city guards and petty criminals had to straddle; the attribution to Spain is a reference not to the country but to the Spanish Inquisition.

Toruń and the world-mover Copernicus

The Polish city of Toruń, sitting beautifully on the Vistula River, boasts a well-preserved old town with plenty of brick Gothic architecture and teeming with history. In addition to being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also billed as one of the ‘Seven Wonders of Poland’. Originally declared a city by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century (the history of settlement goes back much further), Toruń is probably best known today as the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus. A Gothic building erected in the Hanseatic style on Kopernika Street (Annengasse in Copernicus' time) today houses a museum dedicated to the life and work of the famous astronomer and clergyman. As a literary accompaniment to the city, I would like to suggest a rarely read text by Copernicus (which I admit to having only partially absorbed): De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’

De revolutionibus  is considered the founding text of the Copernican revolution, the turning away from the geocentric world view in favour of the heliocentric one. A reminder: in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle argued that all bodies must be drawn towards the centre of the universe, which is why the Earth, built around this centre, would have a spherical shape. This assumption (and other related ideas) led to the development of the geocentric world-view, which has often been dismissed as a kind of Christian arrogance, as another example of humankind considering itself the cusp of evolution or creation. But this is a rather simplistic view. For one thing, the modern conception of the universe was not obvious for a long time. For another, the Christian concept of ‘heavenly spheres’ reflected a philosophical-religious world order more than it reflected nature. As such, it was an inventive view of the creation and the destiny of the souls therein. The Earth, at the centre of this universe, was the low point of creation. Here, humans existed in the chaotic flux of their destiny, as the helpless victims of disease and other misfortunes, only to die at some point – and to then hopefully ascend to the kingdom of heaven. Located in the orbits of the planets and stars, this was the home of the hosts of angels, of souls, of ‘better’ beings, it promised a benevolent order, peace, security, even happiness – things of which there was little in people's lives. It was an imaginative vision of the cosmos as a kind of ordered, blessed parental home. Humans had to use their time on Earth to prove themselves worthy of entering this realm (an idea that may have been similar in Christianity and Islam).

Depiction of an armillary sphere, here with the Earth in the centre. Such devices were used to determine the positions of the stars and to demonstrate the movements of the celestial bodies relative to the Earth. The instrument illustrates that further astronomical knowledge will still be based on observations with the Earth as an at least relative centre; humanity's perspective on observation remains geocentric, even if it is critical of this point. – die Beobachtungsperspektive der Menschheit ist weiterhin weitgehend geozentrisch.

Let there be order ...

Like the advocates of the geocentric world view, Copernicus assumed that everything in (perfect) Creation must move in (somehow perfect) circular orbits. In this respect, even before Copernicus there were observations that could only be fitted into the geocentric world view by detours. A brief quote from De revolutionibus,  Chapter 10: "According to Plato's followers, all the planets, being dark bodies otherwise, shine because they receive sunlight. If they were below the sun, therefore, they would undergo no great elongation from it, and hence they would be seen halved or at any rate less then sully round. For, the light which they receive would be reflected mostly upward, that is, toward the sun, as we see in the new or dying moon. In addition, they argue, the sun must sometimes be eclipsed by the interposition of these planets, and its light cut off in proportion to their size. Since this is never observed, these planets do not pass under the sun at all, according to those who follow Plato.” It is easy to see that Copernicus could successfully address such issues with the model of a heliocentric universe. The extensive discussion of his calculation methods is more difficult to understand, at least for me, so I skipped those sections. Note: Copernicus was not rebelling against the heavenly order. Rather, he wanted to describe it more precisely – not to the public, but to the educated or appointed few. “Astronomy is written for astronomers,” as he says in his work. And probably also for the Vatican. After all, there was good reason to describe the orbits in greater detail. The Holy See was interested in a calendar reform because the Julian edition used up to that point left something to be desired in the calculation of Christian holidays: a rather serious matter for devout Christians. So for Copernicus, studying the order of the stars was a pious endeavour.

The publication of the book in 1543, the year Nicolaus Copernicus died, did not immediately establish the heliocentric system. But his ideas and calculations attracted the interest of other astronomers, including Erasmus Reinhold, whose Prussian Tables of Celestial Motions, published in 1551, together with Copernicus's explanations, led to the Vatican introducing the Gregorian calendar. Despite this considerable success, De revolutionibus was placed on the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books in 1616, a good 70 years after Copernicus' death. It was the Roman Inquisition that deemed the idea of an Earth moving around a stationary Sun incompatible with the Holy Scripture. However, the Congregation of the Index, responsible for the matter, stated that it would be sufficient if Copernicus’ theories were clearly marked as hypotheses (so the book was not banned, but ‘suspended’). This ‘improvement’ was implemented in 1620 (the uncorrected version was not removed from the index until 1758). Around 1624, the Vatican encouraged Galileo Galilei to write about the ideas of Copernicus – whereby these should be considered and described as hypotheses; after all, thoughts are free. The result was the famous Dialogue by Galileo Galilei on the two important world systems, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican. This work also made it onto the Inquisition's index, although the Italian polymath had tried to make his views appear hypothetical, and he was forced to renounce his theories. The iconic phrase attributed to him (‘And yet it moves!’) is likely to be a later invention, but it certainly refers to Copernicus' ideas. Be that as it may: in 1633 the Vatican issued a decree banning the teaching that ‘the Earth moves and the Sun stands still’.

Facade of the Copernicus House and advertisement for the Piernika Museum (Gingerbread Museum)

A new world

Why did the Vatican so vehemently object to the idea of heliocentrism, and why so late? One reason is the threat posed to the existing world order (the omnipotence of Rome) by Protestantism. In 1557, Toruń (then part of the denominationally mixed Duchy of Prussia) had adopted the Reformation. In its fight against the dissolution of its power system, which may previously have been quite open to new ideas, the Vatican became extremely conservative; the defence of the tried and tested world view became a task that shaped its identity. Hence Galilei had to be ‘silenced’. But the dissolution of the supremacy of the old order was likely felt widely, at least by those with open eyes and minds. The development of the telescope and the observations of Galilei and Kepler made it clear that the stars were natural objects; apostles and angels alike failed to appear before the telescopes. This new void may have frightened many. In his play Troilus and Cressida , written around 1600, Shakespeare has Odysseus, representing the elite of a system threatened by upheaval, conjure up the ‘old order’:

The heavens itself, the planets and this Centre

Observe degree, priority and place

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office and custom, in all Line of order;

And therefor is the glorious planet Sol

In noble eminence enthroned and sphered

Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye

Corrects the Ill aspects of planes evil,

And posts, like the Commander of a king,

Sans Cheque to good and bad; but when the planes

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues and what portents! What mutiny!

(Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, Scene 3 „Der Himmel selbst, die Planeten und im Zentrum diese Erde/Gehorchen Rang, Vorrecht und Stellung/Stetigkeit, Bahn, Proportion, Jahreszeit, Form/Berufung und Brauch in guter Ordnung/Weswegen der segensreiche Sonnenplanet/Prächtig hervorgehoben und in hoher Sphäre/Wohltätig wirkt; sein heilreiches Auge/Wirkt den üblen Aspekten böser Ebenen entgegen/Und hält, wie eines Königs General/Gut und Bös‘ im Zaum; doch wenn die Sphären/In falscher Mischung außer Band geraten/Was kommen dann für Plagen! Böse Omen! Meutereien!“)

Despite resistance from organised religion, the heliocentric world view eventually prevailed – with some unexpected support. The French monarch Louis XIV (1638-1725), for example, called himself the ‘sun king’ because he saw himself at the centre of creation (thus adopting the hierarchical components of the ancient cosmological system for the new times). This use of the heliocentric world view for power politics may show that Europe's secular-aristocratic system of rule grew stronger while the Church’s power waned. More important, though, is another change. The somewhat cosy nature of divine order, into which humans even wanted to fit to ultimately be given the proverbial carrot of the blissful afterlife, became a cold machine people now tried to manipulate for their own purposes. It was this new perspective that demythologised the universe and contributed to the alienation of humankind from nature. It certainly also influenced the emergence of the Enlightenment and the corresponding counter-movements, including Romanticism, whose representatives sought their salvation in a personal, inner universe.

The 1633 ban of the assumption of an Earth in motion was lifted in 1757 because of the success of Isaac Newton's world-shaking and practical findings. Even the Inquisition realised in 1822 that it was fighting a losing battle. Faith was relatively powerless faced with new machines, calculations and other products of science. However, the days of the heliocentric world view were, in turn, also numbered; by 1919 at the latest (when Harlow Shapley in the USA determined the position of the solar system within the local galaxy), it was as clear as day that humans inhabit what is often described as a somewhat insignificant side arm of the Milky Way. But we can go back even further than Copernicus to see the first signs of a new cosmology. As early as 1440, Nicholas of Cusa wrote in his work De docta ignorata  (On Instructed Ignorance): “Thus the world machine has its centre everywhere, so to speak, and its periphery nowhere; for God, who is everywhere and nowhere, is its circumference and its centre.” The work of this philosopher and theologian (in which he even speculates about the existence of beings on other ‘stars’) was also met with hostility, but not ‘suspended’ – perhaps simply because the censorship authority of the Roman Inquisition (established in 1542) did not yet exist.

Rathaus von Toruń, davor die Kopernikus-Statue aus dem 19. Jhd.; der Standort hat eine eigentümliche Geschichte. Vor der Aufstellung des Ehrenmals soll sich hier der Pranger der Stadt befunden haben.

New works, new troubles, new acquisitions ...

De revolutionibus is certainly no typical holiday reading, and there’s no need to page through the whole thing. It is, however, worthwhile thinking about the work's history and the nature of speculation while nibbling on a pierniki (local gingerbread, also celebrated in a local museum) or visiting one of the beautiful churches during a tour of the city and the local Copernicus Museum. A statement by the mathematical historian Moritz Cantor from the preface to the 1878 German translation of the work may be appropriate here: ‘We ask our readers to answer the question for themselves as to whether a Kepler, a Galileo, a Laplace, a Gauss would have been possible without Copernicus?’ He also writes that a discovery ‘shows its true value precisely by the fact that it constantly makes possible new work, new efforts, new acquisitions’. In my opinion, this ‘new acquisition’ is not limited to the ‘men of strict science’, who Cantor identifies as readers of the ‘immortal work’, and astronomy (like any search for knowledge) is not just a matter exclusive to some illustrious group. So today we may well ask ourselves why Cantor assumes a world of science that is only open to men (which may appear to us as part of a patriarchy) and whether Copernicus would have been possible at all without the wealth of his family (see the Copernicus Museum) and the resulting advantages he enjoyed. Thinking people will always try shifting to new perspectives on what has been discovered and written before.

By the way: the title of the work alone is enough to spark a thought. “Don't you think that this book was responsible for the concept of a revolution as social upheaval,” my travel companion asked me when we visited the Copernicus House. An interesting approach, and a reference to something that Copernicus will hardly have intended. The relevant entry in the Centre for Digital Lexicography of the German Language states that the term ‘revolution’ has been used in German since the 15th century to mean ‘the movement of the stars’ (i.e. from the publication of De revolutionibus onwards), and from the 17th century it was also used in a political context. It is undisputed that today's usage usually is assumed to stem from the French Revolution; at least in England, however, the replacement of absolutism had already been referred to as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1689. The revolution of the stars eventually became the revolution of ideas and the (unfortunately, often violent) reorganisation of social conditions.

The ‘Copernicus bench’ in Olsztyn (Allenstein), installed in 2003. Copernicus served as a church canon in the city, made observations of the stars and organised the successful defence against the Teutonic Knights for the Prussian Union.

Who owns Copernicus?

De revolutionibus was written not in Toruń, but most likely in Olsztyn (then Allenstein) in Masuria and in Frombork (then Frauenburg) on the Polish Baltic coast. Still, Copernicus’ achievements are considered piece and parcel of the local heritage of the city discussed here. An interesting aspect is the national appropriation of the figure of Copernicus. As the figurehead of the Copernican revolution, he lends himself to the consolidation of national identity. As a projection surface, he offers a kind of strength or confirmation to those who feel a kinship with him. Thus, Copernicus was appropriated for nationalistic purposes as either a Polish or a German man of science. This became apparent in 1807 at the latest, when a bust of him was introduced into the Walhalla, a temple in the Bavarian town of Donaustauf that, with its assembly of thinkers ‘of the German tongue’, was to contribute to German nation-building. There are said to have been protests from the Polish side. In Toruń, where a mixture of people of Polish and German ‘tongue’ had lived together for centuries, the official celebrations of the 400th birthday of the city's famous son in 1873 were held separately by Poles and Germans – both celebrating an important part of ‘their’ history. A few quotations from the Thoruner Zeitung, which published a description of the celebratory gatherings of the educated, the beautiful and the administrative in several editions to celebrate Copernicus, may illustrate the spirit of the times: "Prorector Maginificius Dr Casparh spoke on behalf of the universities, saying that Copernicus had striven for truth, and because he had sought it so earnestly, he had also found truth and had elevated science in general. The cultivation of science now lay mainly with the universities, but they could only fulfil this task if they, above all, sought truth and were prepared to courageously take up any fight for its acquisition and recognition. Victory in such a fight would be theirs for sure." Further scholarly statements ensued, including a speech attributing Copernicus the genius explicitly not to any nation or gender, but to humanity. In addition to the usual cheers for the German emperor, the assumption was also mentioned ‘that from another side, the name of Copernicus was only used to incite exclusively national rallies.’ This is at least in this newspaper the only reference to a conflict. Otherwise, it reported on peaceful exchanges between the German and Polish representatives. More precisely, the German-speaking celebrants received a commemorative publication from the Poles, while the Polish group received a hot-off-the-press special edition of De revolutionibus from the German birthday bash. Later, mixed crowds and invited guests of both festivities may have admired the statue of Copernicus (erected in 1853 and lit by a flaming arch for the occasion), which still stands in front of the Old Town Hall (considered the model for the Berlin City Hall). The inscription (“Nicolaus Copernicus of Toruń, who set the Earth in motion and stopped the Sun and the Heavens”) was wisely written in Latin, no doubt to future-proof it. It might be interesting that Copernicus, who wrote his works in Latin or German (although he certainly also spoke Polish), registered as a Pole at the University of Padua – but as a member of the German nation at the University of Bologna. To put it bluntly: for a man of his stature, identity attributions are irrelevant, and Copernicus' work and the associated revolution have nothing to do with any of that. The man was born in Toruń and worked in Frombork, and that’s that.

How peaceful the coexistence of the different language communities in Toruń once was I cannot say. However, the effects of the new world order of the first part of the 20th century, expressed for example in the idea of the self-determination of nations (which sometimes led to a ‘cleansing’ of the previously mixed population), can be clearly seen in local history. Around 1900, about 18,000 residents of Toruń reportedly spoke Polish and 27,000 German as their mother tongue. In 1931, however, the numbers had changed to 50,000 Polish and 3,000 native German speakers. What had happened? It was the period after the First World War; under the 1920 Treaty of Versailles, Germany had ceded parts of its eastern territories to the Second Polish Republic, including Toruń; these territories had famously changed hands between Polish and German overlords throughout history, while the population had long been mixed. But the new times led to a large influx of Polish residents in the city and to an emigration of German-speaking residents. Whether this was as dramatic as the numbers suggest is questionable; some people who grew up speaking two languages may simply have changed their linguistic affiliation in order to better fit into the new order. The Polish side is not reported to have compelled anyone to leave at the time (having contractually guaranteed equal rights to minorities), nor was the emigration of German-speaking locals in the interest of the Weimar Republic (lest there would be a ‘de-Germanisation’ of a region considered culturally German). Nevertheless, it is possible to take a critical view of the policy of the right of nations or peoples to self-determination (the historian Götz Aly counted this ‘among the causes of the catastrophes of the 20th century’). The times of simple coexistence or togetherness were brutally ended just a few decades later. In 1939, Nazi Germany annexed Toruń. A new, purely German-speaking administration was set up, and the new rulers murdered Jewish and other Polish Toruń residents, as commemorated by a memorial in Fortress VII outside the old town. Visitors to the city should also know this sad and brutal chapter of the past. Faced with the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Copernicus would surely have chosen a Polish identity. Today, Toruń is fortunately a peaceful city where visitors can reflect on the universe and the value of its scientific observation: in the city's museums and also by studying the works and the impact of Copernicus.

Sources, links and more ...

Kopernikus, Nikolaus: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, (EN) https://kpbc.umk.pl/publication/40679

Shakespeare, William: Troilus and Cressida: https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Shakespeare/troilus_cressida/

Touristic view of Torun: https://www.poland.travel/en/medieval-town-of-torun/

Discussion of the concept of "self-determination of the nations", Jörg Fischer (DE): https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/problematisches-schlagwort-100.html

Nikolaus von Kues, De docta Ignorata (EN) http://www.hoye.de/cus/docign.pdf

Thoruner Zeitung; editions Nr. 43-48 discuss the „Copernicusfeier“ (DE): https://kpbc.umk.pl/dlibra/publication/91482/edition/96041#structure

Suggested stroll