| Zusammenfassung: | Application of autobiographical documents in sociological and historical sciences has revealed an exceptionally large body of such documents in Poland. In world science this heritage has been referred to as "the Polish method," which was initiated by the classical five-volume work of Znaniecki and Thomas The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Between the first and second World Wars the schools of Znaniecki, Krzywicki, Chalasiński, and Grabski contributed significantly to this branch of scholarship. The school of diary analysis was revived in 1956 by W. Markiewicz, Z. Dulczewski and A. Kwilecki. In Warsaw sociologists focussed on the continuation of the "Young Generation of Peasants" centred round J. Chalasiński and J. Szczepański, whereas D. Galaj headed a group of scholars of industrialization processes and family transformations at the Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences. A new, dynamic centre associated with the workers' movement of 1980 was formed by M. Latoszek in Gdansk and by J. Leoński and T. Rzepa in Szczecin. The Polish and Polish Emigrants Autobiographical Documents Centre in Rudno near Warsaw began to serve as an archival, methodological and research centre on an international scale. The diary method included ontological, epistemological and methodological directives. The penetration and development of the ontological and epistemological aspects of this method refer to F. Znaniecki's "humanistic factor" and the materialistic dialectics of L. Krzywicki. Thanks to the rejection of K. Marx's deterministic fatalism, conscious factors could regain their central role in the structure and processes of social reality. In his inter-disciplinary verifications L. Krzywicki was able to show that diary documents are true reflections of the material conditions of life, objective social relationships and the dynamics of consciousness at all levels of society. The problems of diary methodology were discussed in inter-disciplinary fashion by the quarterly Pamiętnikarstwo Pohkie and its continuation, Pamiętnikoznawstwo Polskie. The Eastern European Diary Documentation and Oral History Centre and its journal, Autobiography and Society, were established in Rudno and Lvov.
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