The Conspiratorial and Sporting Role of the Greyhound Society in the Grand Duchy of Posen

Rola konspiracyjno-sportowa Towarzystwa Charciarskiego w Wielkim Księstwie Poznańskim

Abstract

Shortly after the Society for the Improvement of Horse, Cattle and Sheep Breeding in the Grand Duchy of Posen organized horse races in 1845 in Prussian-partitioned Poland, a Jockey Club was established by the Poles, later renamed the Greyhound Society. While the Society’s activities involved practicing hunting and shooting sports, its members were also engaged in underground pro-independence national activism. Given the scope of its activities and date of establishment, the Greyhound Society may be considered a pioneering organization. Other existing Polish organizations which combined the need for physical exercise with patriotic activism were founded later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, while some known earlier Polish associations focused only on sporting activities. Shooting exercises and military drills practiced by the Greyhound Society were evidence of the preparation of the organization’s members for revolutionary anti-Prussian actions, as confirmed by numerous accounts presented during the 1847 Berlin Kammergericht trial of Polish conspirators.