Józef Wybicki

Józef Rufin Wybicki (Polish pronunciation: [juˈzɛf vɨˈbʲit͡skʲi]; 29 September 1747 – 19 March 1822) was a Polish jurist, poet, political and military activist. He is best remembered as the author of Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurka), which in 1927 was adopted as the Polish national anthem.

Wybicki was born in Będomin, in the region of Pomerania in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. His family was Pomeranian nobility.

He finished a Jesuit school, and in his youth was a junior court official. Wybicki was elected a deputy to the Repnin Sejm, the session of Polish parliament in 1767, on the eve of the First Partition of Poland. Subsequently he joined the insurgency known as the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772), aimed at opposing the Russian influence and king Stanisław August Poniatowski. He was one of the advisors (konsyliarz) of the Confederacy, acting as a diplomat. After the failure of the uprising, he spent some time in the Netherlands, studying law at Leiden University.

Returning to Poland, in the 1770s and 1780s he was associated with the Commission of National Education. He supported King Stanisław August Poniatowski and his proposed reforms. He helped draft the liberal Zamoyski Codex of laws of the late 1770s. He was a Patriotic Party activist during the Great Sejm (1788–92) – though he was not one of its first deputies, during much of that time staying at his estate, writing and staging operas. He did, however, participate in the Great Sejm's deliberations, beginning in 1791. In 1792, in the aftermath of the Polish–Russian War of 1792, like many of Poniatowski's supporters, he joined the Targowica Confederation.

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