She started everything: the tribute to prof. Eleonora Reicher on the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute of Rheumatology (Rheumatology 2011; 49: 315-320) – continued…

Five years have passed since the original article on the history of prof. Eleonora Reicher had been published. Lately the Reumatologia editor has been asked for a permission to link this article to the page dedicated to the history of the building at 37 Nowy Świat St., Warsaw and its tenants. And so the story of Professor Eleonora Reicher has been enriched by the new facts associated with the story of this house. As it has emerged, prof. Reicher was (along with her sisters Eugenia and Leontyna Reicher), from 1922, one of the co-owners of this building. The rent from the building provided her funds to finance some of her ventures. During the Second World War, these funds enabled prof. Reicher to remain in hiding with her few years old nephew, Piotr Karniol, and escape Nazi persecution. The history of the building itself has been described by the Nowy Świat 37 Foundation. The house was established in 1820 for the physician and botanist Professor Frederic Hoffmann. It was originally designed by Frederick Lessela and later expanded under the plans of Adam Oczkowski. The next owners included Jean Trouvé, earl George Skarbek. The building housed a small hotel Audlon, and – in subsequent years – the porcelain shop, Różycki shoe store, S. Strakam’s bookstore and shop with Helena Zaremba’s women’s hats. It is believed, that one of its tenants was Boleslaw Leśmian, although some researchers of his life and work doubt it. The glory days for the house at 37 Nowy Świat ended with the start of the Second World War. After the war had ended attorney Maurycy Karniol (the father of the little Piotr Karniol), with the combined effort of the whole family, rebuilt the house from the destruction suffered in the Warsaw Uprising. As the renovation was coming to an end, the building was nationalized under so called Bierut’s decree. Initially it was taken over by the “Las” cooperative, only to be transferred after just few weeks into the hands of the Ministry of Public Security (Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego). The current owner of the building is Joanna Karniol, attorney-at-law, the granddaughter of Maurycy Karniol. She is also behind the Nowy Świat 37 Foundation, which aims to preserve the history of the building itself, of its owners and tenants. This way, the memory of prof. Eleonora Reicher, of her work and life, is being preserved and remembered, building the history of the city she lived and worked in.