Interns at the Pilsudski Institute

Since I began work at the Pilsudski Institute the most common question I have been asked is “which objects do you enjoy working on most.” The breadth of the artefacts both stored and on display is a mixed blessing when answering, however there is one obvious choice for me personally. That is the Institute’s medal collection, encompassing Inter-War and Post-War Decorations with oddities such as Modern Commemorations and Noble Orders.

It sometimes surprises people to discover that medals are so exciting to work with, after all it is easy to think if one has seen a medal one has seen them all. However no two medals have ever been awarded for the same act, so while they are aesthetically similar, they are never the same. This makes them simultaneously fascinating and frustrating to work with; there is so much information behind each one that it is often impossible to uncover it fully.

In this way medals can be a gateway to people’s lives and a very effective window into history. An excellent example for the Institute is the Reiss medal collection. The collection featured a Second World War medal group with British and Polish awards including a Monte Cassino Commemorative Cross. As fascinating as this group was however it was the other medals that quickly took our attention as they were somewhat bizarrely formed and were unfamiliar to any of us. One in particular stood out; a circular medal fashioned to look like a veined eyeball with Saint Paul’s cathedral as the iris. The date for the medal was given as 1950 and the word “Ophthalmology” (the branch of medicine relating to the eye) was inscribed around the external border.

Further research uncovered the origin of this unusual object; it was a medal commemorating the 1950 Ophthalmology Conference in London. This seemed rather strange however the discovery of a citation booklet for the Monte Cassino Cross provided us with our answers. The cross was awarded to a Lt. Reiss M.O. (Medical Officer). It seems that after the war Lt. Reiss became Dr Reiss and acquired several medals corresponding with medical conferences around Europe.

Harry Blackett-Ord

2020-04-06

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