Zygmunt Wojciechowski

Zygmunt Wojciechowski
Zygmunt Wojciechowski
Born	(1900-03-27)March 27, 1900 Stryj, Austro-Hungarian Galicia.
Died	October 14, 1955(1955-10-14) (aged 55) Poznań, Poland
Nationality	Polish
Occupation	Politician, historian
Known for	Co-initiator of the Polish "Western thought"

Zygmunt Wojciechowski (27 April 1900 – 14 October 1955) was a Polish historian and nationalist politician. Born in 1900 in then-Austria, he obtained a doctorate from medieval history at Lviv University. In 1925 he moved to Poznań, where he became a full professor in 1929. In 1934-1939 he became politically involved with the nationalist party Endecja. During occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany he worked in Polish underground opposing German genocide of Poles by providing underground teaching, which was banned by German state and worked on future concept of Polish borders that would provide Poland with safety against any further German aggression. He supported an alliance with Soviet Union and after the war he continued to work as historian in People's Republic of Poland and headed Western Institute that studied former Polish territories recovered from Germany and history of Polish-German relations. He was a recipient of Commander's Cross and Officer's Cross of Order of Polonia Restituta.

Wojciechowski was born in Stryj near Lviv (Stryi, Ukraine), then Austro-Hungarian Galicia. In World War I he volunteered Piłsudski’s Legion but was not deployed anymore.

In 1921, Wojciechowski began studying at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów, which had then just been re-incorporated in the re-created Polish state (now Lviv in Ukraine). In 1924, he obtained a doctorate in medieval history, social sciences, and economics, and became assistant professor at the Institute for Auxiliary Sciences of History. In 1924 he published his first concept of the "motherland territories" of Poland. His definition of "Polish motherland" was the areas as acquired by 10th-century Piast Poland in the era of Mieszko I and Boleslaw Krzywousty (Greater Poland, Silesia, Pomerania, Neumark, West Prussia). In 1925, he moved to Poznań, where he first was the deputy holder of the chair for the history of the political system and Ancient Polish law at Adam Mickiewicz University (UAM). The same year, he completed his habilitation with a thesis on the territorial administration of medieval settlements. He became extraordinary (non-tenured) professor in 1929, and full professor in January 1937. From 1939, he was the dean of the university's Department of Law and Economics.