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Józef Wybicki

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Józef Wybicki
Coat of arms

Rogala
Known forAuthor of the Polish national anthem "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego"
Born(1747-09-29)29 September 1747
Będomin, Pomerania, Poland
Died10 March 1822(1822-03-10) (aged 74)
Manieczki, Prussia (now Poland)
BuriedChurch of St. Adalbert, Poznań
Noble familyWybicki herbu (coat of arms) Rogala
Spouse(s)1. Kunegunda Wybicka, née Drwęska (1773–1775)
2. Estera Wybicka, née Wierusz-Kowalska (1780)
FatherPiotr Wybicki
MotherKonstancja Wybicka, née z Lniskich

Józef Rufin Wybicki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjuzɛv vɨˈbit͡skʲi]; 29 September 1747 – 10 March 1822) was a Polish nobleman, jurist, poet, political and military activist of Kashubian descent.[1] He is best remembered as the author of "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (English: "Dąbrowski's Mazurka"), which was adopted as the Polish national anthem in 1927.

Life

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Manor house (dwór) of Józef Wybicki in the village of Będomin

Wybicki was born in Będomin, in the region of Pomerania in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.[2] His family was Pomeranian nobility.[3]

He finished a Jesuit school, and in his youth was a junior court official.[3] In 1767, he worked at the Crown Tribunal in Bydgoszcz.[4] 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.[2] Subsequently, he joined the insurgency known as the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772), aimed at opposing the Russian influence and king Stanisław August Poniatowski.[2][3] He was one of the advisors (konsyliarz) of the Confederacy, acting as a diplomat.[5] After the failure of the uprising, he spent some time in the Netherlands, studying law at Leiden University.[3]

Jan Henryk Dąbrowski and Wybicki met Napoleon in Berlin in 1806

Returning to Poland, in the 1770s and 1780s he was associated with the Commission of National Education.[2] He supported King Stanisław August Poniatowski and his proposed reforms.[2][3] He helped draft the liberal Zamoyski Codex of laws of the late 1770s.[6] 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.[2][3] He did, however, participate in the Great Sejm's deliberations, beginning in 1791.[6] In 1792, in the aftermath of the Polish–Russian War of 1792, like many of Poniatowski's supporters, he joined the Targowica Confederation.[7]

He participated in the Kościuszko Uprising (1794)[2] and was a member of the Military Section of the Provisional Council of the Duchy of Masovia.[8] During the uprising, he co-organized the Polish administration in the liberated city of Bydgoszcz.[4] After the failure of this insurrection he moved to France.[3]

Józef Wybicki

He was a close friend of both Tadeusz Kościuszko and Jan Henryk Dąbrowski.[9] With Dąbrowski he organized the Polish Legions in Italy, serving under Napoleon Bonaparte.[2] In 1797, while in Reggio Emilia, Italy, he wrote Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurek).[2] In 1806 he helped Dąbrowski organize the Greater Poland Uprising.[3]

After the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, he held a number of positions in its Department of Justice, and continued working for it after the Duchy's transformation into Congress Poland.[3] In 1817 he became president of the Supreme Court of Congress Poland.[10]

He died on 10 March 1822 in Manieczki, then part of the Grand Duchy of Posen in the Prussian Partition of Poland.[2]

Works

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Wybicki was a writer, journalist and a poet.[2] He wrote political-themed poems, plays and political treaties advocating reforms in Poland in the 1770s and 1780s.[2][3] His works of that time analyzed the Polish political system, the concepts of liberty, and advocated for more rights for the peasantry.[11] He would also publish more political brochures in the 1800s, advocating for liberal reforms in the Duchy of Warsaw.[3]

Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurka) remains Wybicki's most famous creation.[3] It has been regarded as an unofficial national anthem since the November Uprising of 1831.[2] In 1927 the Mazurka was officially adopted as the Polish national anthem by the Polish parliament (Sejm).[3][12]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "JÓZEF WYBICKI". www.jozefwybicki.pl. Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Muzeum Hymnu Narodowego. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bolesław Oleksowicz. "Józef WYBICKI". VIRTUAL LIBRARY OF POLISH LITERATURE. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Omer Bartov (2007). Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-day Ukraine. Princeton University Press. pp. 121–122. ISBN 978-0-691-13121-4.
  4. ^ a b Krzysztof Drozdowski. "Rocznica śmierci Józefa Wybickiego. Razem z generałem Dąbrowskim wyzwalał Bydgoszcz". Tygodnik Bydgoski (in Polish). Retrieved 12 March 2023.
  5. ^ Mariana B. Michalika (1994). Kronika powstań polskich: 1794 – 1944 (in Polish). "Kronika"-Marian B. Michalik. p. 10. ISBN 978-83-86079-02-5.
  6. ^ a b Richard Butterwick (1 December 2011). The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788–1792: A Political History. Oxford University Press. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-19-925033-2.
  7. ^ Władysław Zajewski (1989). Józef Wybicki (in Polish). Książka i Wiedza. p. 10. ISBN 978-83-05-11947-4.
  8. ^ Aleksander Kociszewski (1982). Pieśnią i szablą: rzecz o twórcy hymnu narodowego (in Polish). Iskry. p. 93. ISBN 978-83-207-0478-5.
  9. ^ Agnieszka Barbara Nance (2008). Literary and Cultural Images of a Nation Without a State: The Case of Nineteenth-century Poland. Peter Lang. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-8204-7866-1.
  10. ^ Jadwiga Lechicka (1962). Józef Wybicki (in Polish). Państw. Wyd. nauk. p. 167.
  11. ^ Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz (17 August 2012). Queen Liberty: The Concept of Freedom in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. BRILL. pp. 126–127. ISBN 978-90-04-23121-4.
  12. ^ (in Polish) Dziennik Urzędowy Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych. 1927, nr 1 i 2
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