Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish romantic, poet, translator and journalist, was a migrant for most of his life. He also travelled to Berlin, Rome, Constantinople and other places for pleasure, scientific purposes and on political missions. These frequent changes of location show a mobile and transnational life story.
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After spending his childhood, school and university years in 
Nawagrudak
pol. Nowogródek, rus. Novogrudok, lit. Naugardukas, rus. Новогрудок, bel. Навагрудак, bel. Nawahradak, bel. Наваградак, bel. Navagrudak, bel. Navagradak

The city of Novogródek, in Belarusian: Nawahrudak, is located in the west of Belarus in the Hrodzenskaya Voblasts. With about 30,000 inhabitants, it is the largest town in the Navahrudak Rajon.

 (now Nawahrudak in Belarus) and
Vilnius
deu. Wilna, rus. Вильнюс, rus. Wilnjus, yid. ווילנע, yid. Wilne, bel. Вільня, bel. Wilnja, pol. Wilno

Vilnius is the capital and most populous city of Lithuania. It is located in the southeastern part of the country at the mouth of the eponymous Vilnia (also Vilnelė) into the Neris. Probably settled as early as the Stone Age, the first written record dates back to 1323; Vilnius received Magdeburg city rights in 1387. From 1569 to 1795 Vilnius was the capital of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy in the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic. It lost this function in the Russian Tsarist Empire with the third partition of Poland-Lithuania. It was not until the establishment of the First Lithuanian Republic in 1918 that Vilnius briefly became the capital again. Between 1922 and 1940 Vilnius belonged to the Republic of Poland, so Kaunas became the capital of Lithuania. After the Second World War, Vilnius was the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic until Lithuania regained its independence in 1990.

Already in the Middle Ages Vilnius was considered a center of tolerance. Jews in particular found refuge from persecution in Vilnius, so that Vilnius soon made a name for itself as the "Jerusalem of the North". Not least with the Goan of Vilnius, Elijah Ben Salomon Salman (1720-1797), Vilnius was one of the most important centers of Jewish education and culture. By the turn of the century, the largest population group was Jewish, while according to the first census in the Russian Tsarist Empire in 1897, only 2% belonged to the Lithuanian population group. From the 16th century onwards, numerous Baroque churches were built, which also earned the city the nickname "Rome of the East" and which still characterize the cityscape today, while the city's numerous synagogues were destroyed during the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1944 the city was under the so-called Reichskommissariat Ostland. During this period almost the entire Jewish population was murdered, only a few managed to escape.

Even today, the city bears witness to a "fantastic fusion of languages, religions and national traditions" (Tomas Venclova) and maintains its multicultural past and present.

, Mickiewicz was exiled to 
Russia
deu. Russland, rus. Rossija, rus. Россия

The Russian Federation is the largest territorial state in the world and is inhabited by about 145 million people. The capital and largest city is Moscow, with about 11.5 million inhabitants, followed by St. Petersburg with more than 5.3 million inhabitants. The majority of the population lives in the European part of Russia, which is much more densely populated than the Asian part.

Since 1992, the Russian Federation has been the successor state to the Russian Soviet Republic (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, RSFSR), by far the largest constituent state of the former Soviet Union. It is also the legal successor of the Soviet Union in the sense of international law.

 in 1824 because of his activities in the Philomath Philomath The Philomaths ("lovers of knowledge") was a secret student association active in Vilnius from the year 1817 until its ban in 1823. Initially a discussion group focused on their own work, from 1819 they also promoted the Polish-national idea of a struggle for independence. The Philomaths had significant influence on the student scene and also organized offshoots of their association, such as the Philarets or Philadelphists. In 1823, their activities became known to the Russian authorities and 20 Philomats and Philarets were sentenced to death. Society, a secret student organization at 
Vilnius
deu. Wilna, rus. Вильнюс, rus. Wilnjus, yid. ווילנע, yid. Wilne, bel. Вільня, bel. Wilnja, pol. Wilno

Vilnius is the capital and most populous city of Lithuania. It is located in the southeastern part of the country at the mouth of the eponymous Vilnia (also Vilnelė) into the Neris. Probably settled as early as the Stone Age, the first written record dates back to 1323; Vilnius received Magdeburg city rights in 1387. From 1569 to 1795 Vilnius was the capital of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy in the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic. It lost this function in the Russian Tsarist Empire with the third partition of Poland-Lithuania. It was not until the establishment of the First Lithuanian Republic in 1918 that Vilnius briefly became the capital again. Between 1922 and 1940 Vilnius belonged to the Republic of Poland, so Kaunas became the capital of Lithuania. After the Second World War, Vilnius was the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic until Lithuania regained its independence in 1990.

Already in the Middle Ages Vilnius was considered a center of tolerance. Jews in particular found refuge from persecution in Vilnius, so that Vilnius soon made a name for itself as the "Jerusalem of the North". Not least with the Goan of Vilnius, Elijah Ben Salomon Salman (1720-1797), Vilnius was one of the most important centers of Jewish education and culture. By the turn of the century, the largest population group was Jewish, while according to the first census in the Russian Tsarist Empire in 1897, only 2% belonged to the Lithuanian population group. From the 16th century onwards, numerous Baroque churches were built, which also earned the city the nickname "Rome of the East" and which still characterize the cityscape today, while the city's numerous synagogues were destroyed during the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1944 the city was under the so-called Reichskommissariat Ostland. During this period almost the entire Jewish population was murdered, only a few managed to escape.

Even today, the city bears witness to a "fantastic fusion of languages, religions and national traditions" (Tomas Venclova) and maintains its multicultural past and present.

 University. Thus began his path to emigration, which initially led him into exile in 
Sankt-Peterburg
rus. Leningrad, deu. Sankt Petersburg, eng. Saint Petersburg, rus. Ленингра́д, rus. Петрогра́д, rus. Petrograd

Saint Petersburg is a metropolis in the northeast of Russia. The city is home to 5.3 million people, which makes it the second largest in the country after Moscow. It is located at the mouth of the Neva River into the Baltic Sea in the Northwest Federal District of Russia. Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and was the capital of Russia from 1712 to 1918. From 1914-1924 the city bore the name Petrograd, from 1924-1991 the name Leningrad.

, from where he traveled to
Crimea
lat. Tauris, rus. Крым, rus. Krym, ukr. Крим, ukr. Krym, deu. Krim

Crimea is a peninsula separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. It is inhabited by nearly 2.3 million people. The capital is Sevastopol. The island is largely inhabited by Russian-speaking populations. Its status has been disputed under international law since 2014.

and 
Moskwa
eng. Moscow, deu. Moskau, rus. Москва́

Moscow (Russian Москва́) is the capital of Russia and also the largest city in the country. With about 12.5 million inhabitants, Moscow is the largest city on the European continent.

.
Escaping political exile, he embarked on a grand tour grand tour The Grand Tour is the name given to an educational journey undertaken by young noblemen and sons of the wealthy bourgeoisie from the time of the Renaissance on. A Grand Tour usually led a young man through continental Europe, sometimes as far as the Orient, and served to equip him with education, life experience and prestige in equal measure. , which took him to Berlin, Dresden, 
Praha
deu. Prag, eng. Prague, lat. Praga

Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic and is inhabited by about 1.3 million people, which also makes it the most populated city in the country. It is on the river Vltava in the center of the country in the historical part of Bohemia.

Mariánské Lázně
deu. Marienbad

Mariánské Lázně is a town of about 12,000 inhabitants in the Cheb district of the Karlovy Vary Region (Karlovarský kraj) in the western part of the Czech Republic. The well-known spa town, which has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List of Important Spa Towns in Europe since 2021, belongs to the so-called West Bohemian Spa Triangle.

, Weimar, Switzerland and Italy, where he spent some time in Rome and explored Pompeii. In Rome, Mickiewicz learned of the November Uprising in 
Congress Poland
eng. Kingdom of Poland, deu. Königreich Polen, deu. Kongresspolen, pol. Królestwo Polskie

Congress Poland is the name given to the Kingdom of Poland, which was under Russian suzerainty from 1815 to 1916. After the three partitions and the final dissolution of the old noble Republic of Poland-Lithuania (1772, 1793, 1795), no Polish state had existed until the Napoleonic satellite state of the Duchy of Warsaw was established in 1807-1815. During the Congress of Vienna (1815) a Polish kingdom was reestablished. However, the Polish king was the Russian tsar and emperor in personal union.

Subsequently, there were several unsuccessful uprisings of the Polish population and elite against the Russian overlordship (e.g. November Uprising 1830/1831, January Uprising 1863/1864), which, however, only led to increasing repression, massive waves of emigration and flight (Great Emigration/Wielka Emigracja) and finally to the also administrative incorporation into the Russian state.

The picture shows a map from a school atlas published in Brunswick in 1871. Highlighted are the Prussian province of Prussia and (pale red) Congress Poland (CC 1.0).

, but did not leave until April 1831 – first to Paris and then via Dresden to 
Wielkopolskie
eng. Greater Poland, deu. Großpolen

Wielkopolska is a voivodeship in the west of Poland. The capital of the voivodeship is Poznań. Wielkopolska is inhabited by 3.5 million people. Besides Poznań, the largest cities are Kalisz/Kalisch, Konin and Leszno.

 and back to Dresden, where he wrote the third part of his drama Dziady. He was able to avoid participating in the Polish November Uprising because of the long journey. Together with the refugees of the crushed Uprising, he finally arrived in Paris in 1832, where he lived until his death – though he briefly took up a professorship in Lausanne and also traveled to Rome. In 1855, he traveled to
İstanbul
deu. Konstantinopel, deu. Istanbul

Istanbul (population, 2022: 15,244,936), formerly Byzantium, later also Constantinople, is located on the Bosphorus, the strait that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara which marks the border between Europe and Asia.
Today's megacity developed from the colony city of Byzantium which was founded around 660 BCE by Doric Greeks on the southwestern shore of the Bosphorus. Emperor Constantine I expanded the city and made it to the new capital of the Roman Empire. After the division of the Empire in 395, Byzantium was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. After its conquest by the Ottomans in 1453, it became the capital of the Ottoman Empire, initially as Constantinople.
Throughout its eventful history, and due to its location between two seas and continents, the city has been home to people of Muslim, Christian and Jewish religions, and has also experienced some of the largest waves of expulsions, particularly of non-Muslims of Armenian and Greek descent in the 20th century. Today, Istanbul is Turkey's most populous city and one of the largest in the world.

, ostensibly for research purposes, but, in reality, at the request of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, for whom he was to establish political connections in Turkey. Mickiewicz died unexpectedly only two months after his arrival in Constantinople. Thus, his place of death was also in a foreign country.
Adam Mickiewicz's biography is not a neutral narrative of facts – its image in Polish literary history depends on the selection of information and how the meaning of his life, his decisions, and the places where he lived may be interpreted. For a long time, his was the story of a national poet who lived, wrote and died for the Polish nation.1 Another narrative describes the polyglot, educated citizen of the world who lived in Paris, but whose influence spread throughout the whole of Europe.2 In recent years, a (post-)migrant, multilingual portrayal of his life and work has been added. Here, the focus is especially on the time he spent in Paris.
1 The Cultural Life of the Polish Emigrant Community in Paris
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Paris became a destination for many Poles who had to flee from the Russian partition after the crushed November Uprising of 1831. As part of the Great Emigration Great Emigration Great Emigration (Wielka Emigracja) refers to the migration movement that saw many people leave divided Poland for political reasons between 1831 and 1862. The refugees were participants in the November Uprising (1830/31) and other uprisings. Among them were numerous nobles and intellectuals. they travelled to France via Saxony and southern Germany.3 In addition to the soldiers who fought in the Uprising were numerous nobles, intellectuals, and writers.4 The most important authors of Polish Romanticism, Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński belonged to the emigrant community.
The Polish veterans of the Uprising were more affected by the political measures of the French government than the Polish Romantics, intellectuals, and nobility in Paris. Acting as "terre d'accueil" (country of welcome)5, France accepted them as “réfugiés étrangers” (foreign refugees), but a life of poverty with many restrictions awaited them.6 The category of réfugiés étrangers was created in response to the emigration movement and allowed the French government to determine the emigrants' place of residence and thus also to provide them with assistance and residents’ rights. However, it was unclear who could be considered a réfugié étranger. 
The term réfugiés/refugees is, however, not to be understood in the modern sense. Colloquially as well as politically and legally, it is an unclear category that could refer to religious refugees, people without passports and foreigners in general.7 In this sense, Polish refugees were Poles without a passport in France, who, although financially supported, were also subject to state control.8
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Polish nobles and intellectuals who had good relations with Paris were able to settle there and felt little of the political restrictions.9 Mickiewicz belonged to the privileged, educated upper class that formed a political and cultural center for the Polish emigrant community in France.10 This group was by no means uniform:11 Politically, there were at least two groups with opposing political positions. The residence of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the Hôtel Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis, became a meeting place for the politically conservative, while those with progressive and revolutionary political leanings gathered at the Towarzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie, the Polish Democratic Society, which was also active in England.12 Cultural life was promoted by numerous Polish institutions in Paris. In 1832, the Towarzystwo Literackie Polskie (Polish Literary Society) was founded. Central to this was the Bibliothèque Polonaise à Paris, which still exists today and in which the books and writings of the society as well as other collections were and are kept.13 From the mid-19th century, the children of emigrants were able to attend a Polish school, l'École des Batignolles, in Paris.14 
The emigrants emigrants What do you call people in the 19th century who had to leave their place of origin for political or other reasons? Historical dictionaries show that the word émigrants is often used in French. In Polish, too, the words emigracya and emigrant are predominantly used, as a glance at Linde's Słownik języka polskiego reveals: "Emigracya [...] wywędrowanie, wynoszenie się z kraiu, emigration, emigrating [...] emigrant, [...] emigrancik, [...] który się z kraiu wynosi," (Linde 1807, 617). wrote and published a lot. As early as the 1830s, Aleksander Jełowicki opened a Polish print shop and bookstore (Drukarnia i Księgarnia Polska), where numerous works dealing with and resulting from emigration were published, including Księgi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego (Books of the Polish People and Polish Pilgrimage, 1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834) by Adam Mickiewicz. The Polish Library Catalogue for the year 1838 contains a long list of books by numerous emigrants such as Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Leonard Chodźko and Feliks Wrotnowski.15 In addition to publications in Polish, many emigrant writers and journalists also published in French. The French publisher Pinard also published Polish works.16 Numerous periodicals such as Le Polonais (1833-1838) or La Pologne Pittoresque (1835, 1836) reached a Polish, French, and international audience.17 Adam Mickiewicz began publishing the journal La Tribune des Peuples in 1849. Despite the restrictions they faced as foreigners in France, Polish emigrants took part in cultural and political life, which was characterized by multilingualism, interculturalism, and cultural transfer. These aspects of emigrant life can be clearly seen in the example of Mickiewicz, who lived and worked as an immigrant in Paris.
2 Mickiewicz as a migrant, Mickiewicz as a self-appointed pilgrim
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In Paris Adam Mickiewicz wrote as an emigrant, for emigrants and about emigration in Polish and in French. In his writings he explored various representations of a migrant identity for himself and others. In recent years, his multilingualism has increasingly become a focus of research.18 Mickiewicz's language biography shows that he was a polyglot, a cosmopolitically educated man who spoke Polish and French, mastered Latin and Greek, and learned German, English, Italian and Russian.19 He probably also understood Belarusian and Czech.20 At the end of his life, he even learned Turkish.21 In Paris, French became his second language in his day to day life and his writing.22 
For Mickiewicz, French is the language of everyday life, the language of correspondence as well as the working language for lectures, translating his own works and writing.23 The use of French has numerous functions for the emigrant Mickiewicz: It allowed him to earn a living for his family as a professor, first in Lausanne and then at the Collège de France. It also enabled him to integrate into French cultural and political life. Furthermore, it enabled a broader reception and reading of his works in translation. At the same time, it was a bridge to the integration of Polish language, literature and migrants into French society.
Mickiewicz spoke French to a French speaking audience in his lectures on Slavic language and literature at the Collège de France (1840-44). He wrote literary works – the dramas Les Confédérés de Bar and Jacques Jasinski (1836) – and journalistic texts in French for numerous newspapers. In these texts he also deals with emigration, but in a European context. In the program of the Tribune des Peuples, he characterized the migrated foreigners as spokespersons for the freedom of the people of Europe – he himself falls into this category.24 Mickiewicz's French writings reveal a universal and European understanding of migration.
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In addition to the figure of the European migrant, Mickiewicz creates the Polish pilgrim as a figure of identification for the emigrant; the pilgrim becomes a self-designation for Mickiewicz and Polish emigrants, in contrast to the foreign designation émigrant or étranger. In the Books of the Polish People and Polish Pilgrimage (Księgi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego) – published in Paris in 1832 – he addresses the Polish emigrant community and gives them a common goal of exile. The book is published anonymously, and its form is reminiscent of a prayer booklet.25 The genre mixes political writing with moral and religious literature. Stylistically, the language is based on the Bible and religious writings.26 The books deal with the divisions of Poland, the expulsion of Polish emigrants from their homeland, and the Messianic tasks and duties arising from the pilgrimage.
Mickiewicz's Polish interpretation of emigration as pilgrimage offers a national, religious reading of the exile situation, which is only one phase in the struggle for political freedom and national independence. This idea is continued in the journal Pielgrzym, which Mickiewicz edited.27 Here, however, the Polish pilgrims' struggle for freedom already turns into a universal idea.28 
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Polish pilgrims also take a European path: the Księgi in their French translation by Charles de Montalembert as Livre des pèlerins polonais (1833) were well received by a French and European audience and were quickly translated into other languages.29 Finally, the translation also reveals the modernity of the pilgrim migrant in a European rather than just a national context. In the preface of Montalembert's translation it says that there are perhaps more exiled people in modern society, more such pilgrims striving into a dark future.30 The homelessness of the modern subject is hinted at here.  
Mickiewicz was certainly one of the most visible Polish migrants in Paris. Because of his writings and his political work, the public became increasingly interested in the 'silent majority' of political refugees after the November Uprising. As Polish pilgrims, they are integrated into a French and European vision of the future.
4 Conclusion: Migrant national writer, European migrant
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Mickiewicz as a migrant, refugee, pilgrim, and stranger can be read as an interpretative narrative of his life, not in today's sense, but as a historical discourse. As a national author, Adam Mickiewicz is usually seen as a representative of a unified, national, Polish literature, which is ascribed to him, but which did not even exist during his lifetime. Mickiewicz spent his life in exile, travelling and as an emigrant. These circumstances affected his life and writing, which can only be told in the tension between nation and migration in a transcultural biography. Mickiewicz is – in life and in death – a European poet and global migrant at least as much as a 'national' writer.
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English translation: William Connor