Bohdan Pniewski

Bohdan Wiktor Kazimierz Pniewski (born 26 August 1897 in Warsaw, died 5 September 1965 in Warsaw) was a Polish modernist architect, professor at the Warsaw University of Technology and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He is mostly known as a designer of state buildings in pre-war and post-war Poland, though the working conditions of an architect, in these eras, palpably varied. Pniewski, popular amongst the Polish political interwar elite (he was the designer of the Brühl Palace, which was the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Józef Beck), remained prominent in Communist Poland. Surprisingly, “Beck’s of court architect” (nadworny architekt Becka), as he was called by his enemies after 1945 due to his role in designing the palace of the hated minister, constructed his most known buildings after the war - in the People’s Republic of Poland.

Bohdan Pniewski was born as the fourth child of a bank official Wiktor Pniewski (1849-1918) and his second wife Helena z Kieszkowskich (1876-1965). In 1906-1914 he attended a secondary school (Szkoła Realna im. Stanisława Staszica), where he joined a scout troop. His education was continued at the Department of Building Construction of Hipolit Wawelberg and Stanisław Rotwand Mechanical and Technical School. In 1915 he failed in his first attempt to join the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, but was accepted on his second application, two years later.

His studies were suspended due to the First World War, in which Pniewski was involved, first as a scout and then as a soldier of the Polish Military Organisation. In November 1918 he helped to peacefully disarm German soldiers, remaining in Poland after the end of the war. But Bohdan Pniewski’s war did not end in 1918, because like many young Poles his age, he decided to defend his country from the newly born Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He joined the Legions of Marshal Józef Piłsudski and this move soon turned out to be helpful in his career, because of the position of the former soldiers in the Second Republic. During the Polish-Soviet War, in 1920, he was wounded, which he proudly emphasized in the following years. During the treatment of his leg he met his future wife Elżbieta Dąbrowska (1900-1980) and was granted the Polish Cross of Valour for his bravery on the battlefield. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology “with honours at the beginning of 1923, submitting as his thesis an architectural project for the Stock Exchange, supervised by Prof. Czesław Przybylski”.

...
Wikipedia