# Rota (poem)

Rota ("The Oath") is an early 20th-century Polish poem, as well as a celebratory anthem, once proposed to be the Polish national anthem. Rota's lyrics were written in 1908 by activist for Polish independence, poet Maria Konopnicka as a protest against German Empire's policies of forced Germanization of Poles. Konopnicka wrote Rota in 1908 while staying in Cieszyn. The poem was published for the first time in Gwiazdka Cieszyńska newspaper on 7 November. The music was composed two years later by composer, conductor and concert organist, Feliks Nowowiejski.

## History

Konopnicka's poem came into being as a protest against the German Empire's oppression and suppression of Polish culture in German-annexed western Poland — lands that from years 1772 and 1793–95 (after the three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) to 1918 were under Prussian — and later, German — rule. During the Prussian and German rule, German political leaders like Otto von Bismarck, Eugen von Puttkammer and thinkers like Eduard von Hartmann campaigned for policy of ausrotten (literally "uprooting", i.e. extermination – the same term was decades later used by Nazi Germany in describing what must be done with Jews) of Poles and Rota was written as a reply to this campaign.
Rota was first sung publicly during a patriotic demonstration in Kraków on July 15, 1910, held to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Polish-Lithuanian victory over the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald. The anthem quickly became popular across partitioned Poland. Until 1918, Rota served as the anthem of the Polish Scouting movement. Between 1920 and 1922 the piece was chosen as state anthem of the Republic of Central Lithuania, a puppet state fully dependent on the Second Polish Republic (i.e. interwar Poland); while in Poland proper it was seriously considered as a possible national anthem too – among the other several different poems which the post-1926 government led by Józef Piłsudski thought over – as it was associated with anti-German struggles from the late 19th century. ("Rota" was promoted especially by political right which saw the proposed We Are the First Brigade of the Pilsudski legion as too partisan and was lackluster on Poland Is Not Yet Lost.) In the end, however, the last song was chosen (today's Polish anthem).
During the German occupation of Poland in World War II, on the eve of 11 November 1939 (Polish Independence Day), in Zielonka, a town at the outskirts of Warsaw, the scouts from the Polish Scouting Association put up posters with the text of the poem on the walls of the buildings. In reprisal, German occupying forces carried out an execution of 9 scouts and other inhabitants of the town. The Communists also retained the same national anthem as well as "Rota", making it the official anthem of the 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division.
At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s of the 20th century, this composition was considered as the anthem of proposed Polish National-Territorial Region within the Lithuanian SSR. After 1989 Rota became the official anthem of the Polish People's Party. Until 2003, the melody of the anthem was played by the Gdańsk carillon tower and served as the signature theme of the television stations TVP Poznań and TVP Gdańsk. In 2010 "Rota" and its author Konopnicka were honored by a special resolution of the Polish Sejm. Rota is also the official anthem of League of Polish Families political party.
From May 2024, an autograph score of the composition (prepared for publication in 1910) is presented at a permanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.