Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz | |
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Dołęga-Mostowicz in interwar Poland
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Born | 10 August 1898 Okuniewo, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire |
Died | 20 September 1939 Kuty (killed in battle) |
(aged 41)
Resting place | Powązki Cemetery |
Language | Polish |
Nationality | Polish |
Citizenship | Second Polish Republic |
Education | Law studies |
Alma mater | University of Kiev |
Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz pronounced [taˈdɛuʂ dɔˈwɛŋɡa mɔˈstɔvit͡ʂ] (10 August 1898 – 20 September 1939) was a Polish writer, journalist and author of over a dozen popular novels. One of his best known works, which in Poland became a byword for fortuitous careerism, was The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma (Polish: Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy, 1932). Literary historians believe that the book inspired the 1971 novel Being There by Jerzy Kosiński who sparked considerable controversy in the West.
Tadeusz Mostowicz, the son of a wealthy Polish lawyer in the age of partitions, was born on 10 August 1898 at his family's village of Okuniewo near Vitebsk in the Russian Empire (now Belarus). After graduating from gimnazjum (high school) in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), then also in the Russian Empire, in 1915 Tadeusz embarked upon law studies at the University of Kiev while the First World War raged on in Central Europe. He befriended numerous fellow members of the Polish diaspora and became involved in a local underground group of the Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military Organization, abbreviated "POW" in Polish).
After the Russian Revolution, Okuniewo was seized by Bolshevik Russia, and Mostowicz's family moved back to newly reborn Poland, where they bought a small village. Also in 1918, Tadeusz moved to Warsaw, where he joined the Polish Army. He fought as a volunteer in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–21, and was demobilized in 1922.