„Nasze śląskie Alpy”, a skały „jak ruiny Palmiry czy Persepolis” — albo różne optyki karkonoskich podróżopisarzy

The present article focuses on eighteenth-century German-language descriptions of the Giant Mountains and Izera Mountains included in selected eighteenth-century accounts of trips to the high est mountains of Silesia and Bohemia by travellers from various German-speaking countries. The analysed fragments refer primarily to sites on the Silesian side of these mountain ranges, although the Bohemian part is mentioned in one case. Differing in terms of their countries of origin, the authors of these works — who included Silesians, a German from Bohemia as well as a man from Berlin and a man from Saxony — liked to refer in their accounts to well-known Swiss models, primarily to the poetic works of Albrecht von Haller and scholarly works of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, comparing the Giant Mountains to the Alps and using in their descriptions of nature metaphors inspired by the famous Swiss authors, whose oeuvres were quite popular across the entire civilised Europe. The present article provides a detailed analysis of the descriptions of the various natural sites and phenomena, in which the authors use the vocabulary of the history of art and culture, comparing, for example, the view of valleys seen from a mountain top to miniature painting, a waterfall to a performance and music, and rock formations to architectural objects and ancient ruins.