STEFANOWSKA Zofia

Born on 9 March 1926 in Warsaw; daughter of the doctor and army colonel (who was murdered at Katyn in 1940) Antoni Stefanowski, and the independence and social activist Maria Halina, née Ciąglińska. She attended the Wanda Czurukowa Private Comprehensive School in Warsaw, before joining the Jadwiga Kowalczykówna and Jadwiga Jawurkówna Private Girls' Grammar School in 1938. She remained in Warsaw during the German occupation. She continued her schooling by attending secret lessons offered by her school, completing her advanced secondary education in 1944. She joined the Pet youth organization for self-education in 1942. In spring 1943, she became involved in underground activities, initially as part of the Grey Ranks, the underground organization of the Polish Scouting Association, as a messenger for the 4th unit of the Storm Groups, before serving as a messenger and medical orderly for the Radosław group of the Home Army (AK). She was involved in the Warsaw Uprising as a medical orderly with the Sad (Orchard) platoon of the Rudy (Redhead) company of the Zośka Battalion. After the uprising was defeated, she spent a short period in the Ożarów transit camp. She managed to escape while being transported to the camp at Pruszków and stayed in the village of Olszanka near Żyrardów, where her family had a summer home. She worked at the Wola Hospital, which had been evacuated from Warsaw to Skierniewice. She returned to Warsaw in January 1945 and worked at the National Library as an administrative secretary until 1947. She studied Polish philology at the University of Warsaw (UW) from autumn 1945. She made her debut in 1946 with the article Norwid w naszym stuleciu (Norwid in our century), which she co-wrote with her schoolteacher Zofia Rothertowa; it was published in a catalogue accompanying an exhibition marking the 125th anniversary of the poet's birth. In 1948, she married her fellow student Stefan Treugutt, who went on to become a literary history and theatre critic. That year, she took up a post at the Seminar of the History of Polish Literature at UW (initially as a grant holder and then as a junior assistant). She graduated with a master's degree in 1950 and subsequently taught pro-seminars at UW. She took up a post at the Department of Romantic Literature of the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN) in 1953. Her research focused on the Romantic period, primarily the works of Adam Mickiewicz and Cyprian Norwid, while she was also involved in producing critical editions of their works, as well as giving lectures on the history and theory of scholarly editing. She started collaborating with the journal Pamiętnik Literacki in 1955, publishing reviews and articles there. From 1958 to 1970, she collaborated with the periodical "Nowe Książki" as a reviewer. She held a six-week research fellowship in Paris in 1959, enabling her to collect materials for her doctoral dissertation on Adam Mickiewicz's Księgi narodu i pielgrzymstwa polskiego (The Books and the Pilgrimage of the Polish Nation). She was supervised by Prof. Kazimierz Wyka↑, with her dissertation, published in 1962 under the title Historia i profecja (History and Prophecy), subsequently being accepted as the basis for her future habilitation thesis following an application by Prof. Stanisław Pigoń↑. She was awarded a doctoral degree in 1964 for her study Człowiek rozsądny i człowiek szalony w «Dziadach» pierwszych i czwartych (Reasonable People and Mad People in the first and fourth parts of Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve), which was supervised by Prof. Kazimierz Wyka. That year, she joined the editorial board of "Pamiętnik Literacki" and was appointed to the editorial committee of the critical edition of Adam Mickiewicz's complete works (Dzieła wszystkie). She was also a member of the editorial team of series four of Obraz literatury polskiej XIX i XX wieku (Images of 19th and 20th-century Polish Literature). She was awarded a habilitation degree in 1965 for her study Historia i profecja (History and Prophecy) and was subsequently appointed senior lecturer at IBL PAN. Between 1965 and 1968, she was a visiting lecturer and gave seminars in Polish philology at UW. In 1966, she joined the Committee on Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (KNoLP) (remaining a member until 1995) and the Scientific Council of IBL PAN. She was head of the Research Group for the Psychosociology of Literature at the Department of Contemporary Literature at IBL PAN. She was a member of the Editorial Committee working on Adam Mickiewicz's complete works (Dzieła wszystkie) under the editorship of Konrad Górski. She was made associate professor in 1976, becoming a member of the Board of the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society the same year. She was a signatory to the Memorandum of 101, a petition protesting proposed changes to the Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland. She joined the editorial board of the yearbook "Studia Norwidiana" in 1983, the year it was founded. She was involved in editing a critical edition of Norwid's works. In 1991, she was appointed head of the team working on a critical edition of Adam Mickiewicz's works (Dzieła) that was published by the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society. She was made full professor in 1994. She started lecturing at the Higher School of Agriculture and Education in Siedlce that year, remaining there until 1996. After retiring from IBL PAN in 1997, she gave a master's seminar at UW. She was deputy chair of the Polish Mickiewicz Committee and co-organizer of the celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1998. She was also a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Krakow and gave classes on editing at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University (UKSW) in Warsaw from 2000 to 2004. She was awarded a medal in recognition of her services to popularizing the works of Cyprian Norwid by the Lublin-based Norwid Foundation in 2006. She became a full member of the Scientific Society of the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), the Society for the Support and Propagation of Science, and the Warsaw Scientific Society. She received honours including the Cross of Valour (1989) and the Warsaw Uprising Cross for her role in the Warsaw Uprising, as well as the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis in 2007. She died on 27 April 2007 in Warsaw and is buried at the city's Powązki Cemetery.