HOPFINGER Maryla

Born on 1 February 1942 in Borysław (now Ukraine); daughter of the civil servant Wilhelm Hopfinger and Berta, née Szechter, who was murdered in a German concentration camp. She and her family were repatriated, to use the terminology of the day, as part of population transfers from the Eastern Borderlands of interwar Poland and settled in Gliwice. She attended primary school in the city from 1948 and then went to the W. Wróblewski Grammar School. After completing her advanced secondary education in 1959, she studied Polish philology at the University of Warsaw (UW). She has lived in Warsaw since. She was a member of the Union of Socialist Youth (ZMS) from 1958 to 1964, also serving as secretary of the University Committee at UW, and then of the Polish Students' Association from 1959 to 1964. Between 1964 and 1968, she was a member of the ruling Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). She graduated with a master's degree in 1964. She wrote her dissertation on Wybrane zagadnienia adaptacji filmowej utworu literackiego w polskim filmie powojennym (Selected Aspects of Film Adaptations of Literary Works in Postwar Polish Cinema). It was supervised by Prof. Stefan Żółkiewski. She was a research assistant for a year in 1964/65 at the Chair of Literary Theory at UW before commencing her doctoral studies. She explored the connections between film and literature and literary culture, as well as the emergence of contemporary audiovisual culture. She made her debut with the article O popularyzację kultury filmowej (On the Popularization of Film Culture), which appeared in 1965 in "Polonistyka" (no. 4). From the mid-1960s she collaborated with the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences ( IS PAN), where she participated in seminars led by Prof. Aleksander Jackiewicz and in conferences on film theory. Between 1966 and 1968, she published in the quarterly "Kultura i Społeczeństwo". Following the anti-Semitic events around March 1968, she was expelled from the Institute for political reasons and for several years she was unable to secure a permanent post. She was employed in various part-time posts and as a technician, including working from October 1968 in the Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies at PAN and then, following the institution's reorganization, at the Centre for Social Forecasting at the PAN's Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (IFiS). She left in August 1971 and the following month, thanks to the efforts of Prof. Stefan Żółkiewski, could join the Department of Literary Culture at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN). In the early 1970s, she published articles and reviews in the monthly "Kino". During this period she was co-editor alongside Alicja Helman of an edited volume exploring film and artistic culture and another volume, edited with Stefan Żółkiewski, on literary culture. In 1972, she was awarded a doctorate in the humanities for her dissertation Adaptacje filmowe utworów literackich. Problemy teorii i interpretacji (Film Adaptations of Literary Works: Theories and Interpretations), which was supervised by Prof. S. Żółkiewski. In 1974, she was appointed lecturer at IBL PAN. In 1972, she became a full member of the Polish Filmmakers Association (Stowarzyszenie Filmowców Polskich). She was linked to the democratic opposition in Poland and lent her support to many protests, including the December 1975 Letter of 59 that opposed changes to the constitution of the People's Republic of Poland. She was active in the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity (NSZZ Solidarność) from the beginning of its existence in 1980, remaining active in it until 1990. For a period during 1980/81 she taught a seminar on audiovisual culture at the Chair of Polish Culture at UW. She was interned for a short time during martial law in Poland. She was awarded a habilitation degree from IBL PAN in 1983 for her study Kultura współczesna – audiowizualność (Contemporary Culture and Audiovisuality) and was appointed senior lecture after the collapse of communism in 1989. She spent six months in Paris in 1986 together with her husband Prof. Stefan Amsterdamski, who had received an invitation to the René Thom Institute. During the 1987/88 academic year she left for West Berlin, where he husband was conducting research at the Wissenschaftskolleg. Following the dissolution of the Department of Literary Culture at the behest of the then director of IBL PAN Witold Nawrocki in 1987, Hopfinger was brought to the Department of Contemporary Literature by Prof. Alina Brodzka-Wald. At the invitation of the student council, she started teaching at the Institute of Polish Literature at UW in 1989. Between 1990 and 1991, she served as an advisor on cultural affairs to the Chairman of Polish Television (TVP) Andrzej Drawicz. She was in Vienna in 1992/93 as her husband had received an invitation from the Institute for Human Sciences. From 1993/94 (with a break in 2005) she has taught a seminar on new media in contemporary culture at the School of Social Sciences (SNS) at IFiS PAN. She 1995 was made state-appointed professor in 1995, while in April 1996 she was made professor at IBL PAN. Between 1995 and 2005, she lectured and taught a seminar at the Chair of Polish Culture at UW, which later became the Institute of Polish Culture. She taught at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Wyższa Szkoła Psychologii Społecznej), where she also served on the Senate. She also taught for several years at Collegium Civitas. From 2005 she taught social communication at the Bolesław Prus Warsaw University of Humanities. In 2005, she acted as reviewer of Andrzej Wajda's oeuvre in respect of UW Senate's application to award him an honorary doctorate. From the 1990s until 2014 she was a member of the Scientific Council of IBL PAN. She was a member of the PAN's Committee on Art between 1999 and 2002, as well as its Committee on Cultural Studies from 2004 to 2007. She was made a member of the Programme Council of the journal "Kultura Popularna" in 2003, while in 2006 she was appointed to the Editorial Board of the film quarterly "Kwartalnik Filmowy". She was a founding member of the Programmatic Council of "Przegląd Kulturoznawczy" from 2006. She returned to teach on the doctoral seminar at the School of Social Sciences in 2006. She married the sociologist Wiesław Łagodziński in 1964, divorcing in 1972. She married the philosopher of science Stefan Amsterdamski in 1977; he died in 2005. They had a son together, the sociologist Jacek (b. 1978). She lives in Warsaw.