HADACZEK Bolesław

Born on 19 January 1929 in Lachowce (now: Pidhiria, Ukraine) near Stanisławów (now: Ivano-Frankivsk); son of the landowner Antoni Hadaczek and Anastazja, née Nowicka. In 1945, he was subject to population transfer and "repatriated", to use the terminology of the day, to the Opole region. He studied at the specialist humanities Boys' State Secondary and Grammar School in Prudnik, completing his advanced secondary education in 1950. He subsequently studied Polish philology at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), graduating with a first-class degree in 1953, with pedagogy as his specialist subject. From that year until 1964 he was employed as a Polish teacher at a secondary school. It was during this period that he wrote his first pieces of literature. In 1957/58 he continued his Polish studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University (UAM) in Poznan and graduated with a master's degree in 1959. He made his debut in 1963 with the short story Wspomnienia (Memories), which was published in "Trybuna Opolska" (no. 242) and won the second prize in the competition Wiele przeszliśmy rzek (We Crossed Many Rivers). From 1964 he taught on a postgraduate teacher training programme (I Studium Nauczycielskie), at the Teacher Training College (Wyższa Szkoła Nauczycielska) and Higher School of Education in Szczecin (WSP; the latter name was adopted in 1974). In 1985, the institution became the University of Szczecin (US). He was awarded the Pomeranian Griffin Honour (Odznaka Honorowa Gryfa Pomorskiego) in 1967. His research initially focused on the relationship between literature, on the one hand, and pedagogy and teacher training, on the other. He later turned to questions relating to literary theory, particularly genre studies, while in the late 1980s he also studied the literature of Poland's prewar Eastern Borderlands (Kresy). He made his debut as a literary historian in 1970 with an essay titled O związku pedagogiki z literaturą dla dzieci i młodzieży w Polsce do roku 1939 (The Relationship between Pedagogy and Children's and Youth Literature in Poland before 1989), which was published in "Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Nauczycielskiej w Szczecinie" (no. 2; the journal was later renamed "Zeszyty Naukowe WSP w Szczecinie"; in vol. 1 of "Prace Wydziału Humanistycznego"). He continued to publish in the journal until 1974. He was awarded a doctorate from the Krakow Higher School of Education (now the Pedagogical University of Krakow) in 1971 for his dissertation Współzależność literatury dla dzieci i młodzieży i pedagogiki w Polsce międzywojennej (The Interdependence of Children's and Youth Literature and Pedagogy in Interwar Poland), which was supervised by Prof. Wincenty Danek. He was subsequently appointed lecturer at Szczecin WSP. Between 1971 and 1988, he was head of the District Commission of the Olympiad in Polish Literature and Language for secondary school pupils. Between 1975 and 1985, he was associate dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Szczecin WSP. He received the Minister of Education Prize, 3rd class, in 1978. He continued to publish works of literary criticism and scholarship, reviews and articles in periodicals including "Spojrzenia" (1971-72, 1974, 1977-78, 1980), "Głos Szczeciński" (1977-78), "Nowe Książki" (1977-78), "Ruch Literacki" (1986-87, 1989), and "Miesięcznik Literacki" (1988-89). He was director of the Postgraduate Programme for Teachers of Polish literature between 1985 and 1987. Between 1986 and 1989, he was deputy director of the Institute of Polish Philology at US, while from 1990 to 2000 he was director of the Department of Twentieth-Century Polish Literature at the same institute. He was awarded a habilitation degree in 1987 from WSP in Krakow for his study Polska powieść rozwojowa w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym (Polish Bildungsromane in the Interwar Period). He was appointed senior lecturer in 1988. He supervised Polish philology students at the Teacher Training College and State Higher Vocational School (Gorzowskie Kolegium Nauczycielskie and Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa), both in Gorzów Wielkopolski, between 1991 and 2000. He published essays and articles largely focused on the literature of the Eastern Borderlands in journals including "Ruch Literacki" (1991, 1997-98) and in "Zeszyty Naukowe US” (1991, 1993-2004) and "Kresy" (1992, 1995, 1997, 2001-02, 2004). Between 1993 and 2005, he was scientific editor of the yearbook series on Eastern Borderland literature, "Szczecińskie Prace Polonistyczne – Kresy w literaturze", nos 5-15). In 1990/91, he collaborated with the local Szczecin radio station Szczecińska Rozgłośnia Radiowa (Polish Radio 4), authoring sixteen essays on the subject of the Eastern Borderlands in contemporary Polish literature. He was made state-appointed professor in 1995, while in 1998 he was made full professor at US. He transferred his personal library of works on literary studies to the Main Library of the State Higher Vocational School in Gorzów Wielkopolski, while his collection of works on Eastern Borderlands literature and reviews of these works was donated to the Library of the Institute of the Republic's Borderlands (Instytut Kresów Rzeczypospolitej) in Warsaw. He was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit in 1973, the Medal of the Commission of National Education in 1983 and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1984. He married Janina Juszczak in 1963; they had a son Piotr (b. 1968), who became a geneticist at the University of California in San Francisco. Hadaczek died on 17 September 2014 in Szczecin, where he is buried at the Central Cemetery.