Maurycy Mochnacki

Maurycy Mochnacki (born 13 September 1803 in Bojaniec near Żółkiew – died on 20 December 1834 in Auxerre) was a Polish literary, theatre and music critic, publicist, journalist, pianist, historian and independence activist. One of the main theorists of Polish Romanticism. He joined the November Uprising in 1830 taking part in several battles for example at , Ostrołęka, Grochów and Wawer. For that activity he was promoted to officer rank and awarded the War Order of Virtuti Militari, which is the highest Polish military decoration.

Maurycy Mochnacki was born in a part of Poland annexed by Russian, where people were tired with everyday brutality, censorship, arrests and imprisonments. They dreamed of a free independent country and cultivated their own tradition, customs and the inner spiritual life. Mochnacki came from a patriotic and political active family. Mochnacki's father - lawyer, land-owner and participant of the Kościuszko Insurrecton in 1794, wanted to give his children the best education. At the beginning, Maurycy learned classical and contemporary literature, history and foreign languages at home. In 1815, the family moved to Lviv, where he took music classes and also played the piano and the violin. In 1819, the family settled down in the town of Czersk near Warsaw. First, Maurycy studied in a prestigious high school in Warsaw then, he started law studies at Warsaw University, but was expelled very soon for striking a policeman who requested him to extinguish his pipe. In a further blow to the family's reputation, he was sentenced to 14 days hard labour, working with criminal offenders in the Belvedere Park. At the end of 1823, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Carmelite Convent for belonging to a secret organization called ‘the Union of Free Polish Brothers’. To get the freedom, he had to write a memorial in which he accused the education system in the Congress Kingdom of early political education for young people and disastrous liberalism. Shortly after his release, he was forced to work at censorship office but lost the job after six months. Those episodes would have a profound influence on his future life.

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