STEMPOWSKI Jerzy

Born on 10 December 1893 in Krakow (the details in documents including his birth certificate – giving his date of birth as 23 March 1894 and birth place as Szebutyńce [now Shebutyntsi, Ukraine] – are erroneous); son of the columnist and social and political activist Stanisław Stempowski, and Maria nee Stempowska. He spent the first years of his life on the family estate Szabutyńce by the Dniester in the Podole region, where his father had been sent to spend three years' exile in the provinces as punishment for his socialist activism. They were under surveillance by the tsarist police. He lived in Warsaw from 1897. Suffering from asthma and Meniere's disease, he was treated in Ciechocinek and Bad Reichenhall (Bavaria). Between 1902 and 1905, he attended the Trade School of the City of Warsaw Traders' Association, which was run by Jerzy Ćwietkowski, a teacher of Ukrainian origin. After the tsarist authorities shut down the "Ogniwo" weekly that was published by his father, with his family then moving in 1906 to the family estate in Winikowce in Podole, he continued his education with private tutors and as a self-taught pupil, making use of a vast private library. From September 1907, he spent a year as a pupil at the private grammar school run by General Paweł Chrzanowski in Warsaw. Following a disagreement with Father Marcin Szkopowski, his father removed Jerzy Stempowski from the school and ensured that he received private tuition from the Classical philologist and translator Jan Opęchowski. He was briefly a pupil at a grammar school in Odesa, which enabled him to learn Russian. In spring 1911, he completed his advanced secondary education as an extramural pupil in Nemirów (Nemyriv) in Podole. In 1911/12, he studied history at the Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Krakow. He then continued his studies in medicine and Classical philology at the University of Munich. When World War I broke out, he was at a medical institution near Vevey, where he was receiving treatment following a nervous breakdown. From November 1914 until the end of the summer semester 1915, he studied at the Faculty of Humanities in Geneva, followed by a brief period at Zurich, before studying in Bern between 1917 and 1919. He produced a doctoral thesis, Antike und christliche Geschichtsphilosophie im I‒V Jahrhundert (Antiquity and Christian Philosophy of History in the 1st-5th centuries), but he did not submit it for examination. From 1917, he was employed as secretary to the envoy at the Turkish embassy in Bern. At that time, he was a member of the Muslim community as a catechumen. In 1919, he took up a post at the Polish embassy and in August 1919 was sent to Warsaw as a diplomatic courier. In 1920, he volunteered for the Polish army but did not see active service in the Polish-Soviet war. From October 1920, he was employed as an officer at Department D1 (General Department of the Directorate of Political Affairs) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He travelled to Germany, France and Switzerland, sending despatches to Poland on the situation in the Middle East. In autumn 1920, he was a secret observer at the Riga Peace Conference, acting as a journalist using the name Rajmund Nikolm, but was quickly unmasked. From 1921, he was in Paris, working for the Polish Telegraph Agency (PAT). He left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1923. From autumn 1923 to June 1925 he was PAT's Berlin correspondent. He also reported on the sessions of the League of Nations in Geneva. During this period, he started writing press articles, initially on political and economic affairs. He made his debut as a prose writer in 1923, publishing part of his travel diaries as Z notatek emigranta (From an Emigrant's Notebook), which appeared in the monthly "Droga" (no. 8; under the by-line: Kaz. Bień.). He published in this periodical until 1927 (likewise using the pseudonyms Jer. Kow., Serafin, GR.). He also collaborated with the weekly "Głos Prawdy" (1924‒26; publishing texts on literature using the pseudonyms: J.S., J. St., js, S., S-fin, S-n, Scepticus, Serafin) and the daily "Nasz Przegląd" (1925; correspondence published as: D.B.). In 1924, together with Henryk Józewski he established the publication series Biblioteka Pstrokońska (Pstrokoński Library), where apart from Stempowski's work Pielgrzym (Pilgrim; 1924, under the pen name B. Serafin) two short volumes featuring Józewski's lithographs appeared in 1925. Between 1924 and 1926, he published articles in the government weekly "Głos Prawdy", while in 1925 he contributed correspondence from Berlin (as: D.B.) in the Jewish daily "Nasz Przegląd". He returned to Warsaw in 1926, taking up a post at the Office of the Praesidium of the Council of Ministers, initially serving in the Press Office before moving on to posts including one as an expert on national minorities' affairs at a department headed by Henryk Józewski. From 1928, he was director of the office of the prime minister Kazimierz Bartel before resigning the following year. He then worked at the State Agricultural Bank until 1939, where he was responsible in particular for the issue of peasants' labour migration. During this period, he contributed articles to the periodicals "Rolnictwo" and "Polacy za Granicą". In 1928, he joined the free masons and was a member of the Polish National Grand Lodge (the Copernicus Lodge). He continued to publish column pieces, essays, and literary criticism, with numerous short texts, articles and reviews appearing, most notably, in the periodicals: "Tydzień" (1929‒30; using the pseudonyms: M.L., Mikołaj Lew..., ML), "Wiadomości Literackie" (1929, 1931‒36, and 1939), "Robotnik" (1931‒34; using the pseudonyms: Atticus, M.L., Mikołaj Lew...), "Głos Stolicy" (1932; including columns marked *** in the Bez tytułu (Untitled) section, as: est), "Epoka" (1933; as: J.S., Jerzy S., Orosius), "Kurier Wileński" (1935; columns), "Skarbona Wiejska" (1936‒38; including the regular column Listy Jana w Oleju Dobruty [The Letters of Jan w Oleju Dobruta]). He gave readings in cities including Bialystok, Krakow, Krzemieniec, Lwow and Warsaw, as well as on Polish Radio. From 1934, he took part in events of the Polish-Russian discussion club Domek w Kołomnie (Cottage in Kolomna), both as a participant and chair. The club was founded by Dmitro Filosofov*** and Rafał Marceli Blüth. From 1935, following an invitation from Leon Schiller, he was a lecturer in the history of artistic conventions at the Department of Directing at the State Theatre Institute (PIST) in Warsaw. He published articles and essays on theatre in periodicals including "Scena Polska" (1937‒38), "Teatr" (1937‒38), and "Comoedia" (1938‒39; also as: Orosius). At the outbreak of World War II, he was in Słoboda Rungurska (today Sloboda Runhurska) near Kołomyja (Kolomyya, today's Ukraine), staying with Stanisław Vincenz and caring for the terminally ill Ludwika Rettinger, for whom Stempowski had long-standing feelings. In October 1939, he assisted Stanisław Vincenz senior in ensuring his son (also named Stanisław) could cross the Polish-Hungarian border. On the return journey from the border, Stempowski fell heavily ill with pneumonia, subsequently spending several months with smugglers in the hills at Tiszaborkút (Kvasy) before being taken to the hospital in Aknaszlatin (today's Solotvyno, Ukraine). In 1940, he made his way to Budapest and then on to Switzerland via Belgrade, Zagreb, Trieste and Milan. In 1941, he settled in Muri near Bern. He worked with the Polish Embassy in Bern and with the department for communication between Poland and the exiled Polish government in London. He was also involved in securing the transfer of couriers across the French border. In 1942, he travelled to Bouquéron near Grenoble (in the unoccupied part of France), in order to visit the sick Bolesław Miciński↑. That year, he established contact with the London-based monthly "Nowa Polska", where he published an article titled Guglielmo Ferrero (no. 6; as: Jerzy Grahit). He was a lecturer at a Swiss-run university for interned Polish soldiers. In 1944/45, he was a lecturer in Polish language and culture at Neuchâtel University and also contributed to the edited volume Pologne 1919‒1939 (Neuchâtel, 1946). He remained in Switzerland after the war and continued to reside in Muri, near Bern. Facing financial difficulties, he earned additional income from odd jobs including making homemade polishing brushes. In 1951, he was awarded permanent residence in Switzerland, moving to Bern the same year. He then worked as a translator at the Argentinian embassy until 1954. He remained active as a columnist and writer, publishing (primarily as Paweł Hostowiec) essays, travel diaries, column pieces and reviews. From 1947, he collaborated regularly with the monthly "Kultura", which was founded by Jerzy Giedroyc in Rome and then from 1948 based in Paris (including in 1954‒69 the regular essay series Notatnik nieśpiesznego przechodnia [Diary of an Unhurried Pedestrian], as well as articles and reviews that also appeared under the pen names: Leon Furatyk, Jerzy Łysina, Cyryl Doroteusz Mordęga, P.H., ph). He also published in the London-based "Wiadomości" (from 1946). He travelled extensively, collecting materials for his essays. He spent time in Germany (1945, 1948/49, 1951, 1954, 1962, and 1963), Austria (1945 and 1962), Italy (1947/48 and 1963), the Netherlands (1962), and Yugoslavia (1965), while also regularly visiting the offices of "Kultura" in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris. He described many of these journeys in his diaries. Between 1957 and 1959, he prepared a selection of his essays for publication with the Czytelnik Publishing Cooperative in Poland. It never appeared in print owing to numerous interventions by censors. Taking up an offer from Jerzy Giedroyc, Stempowski became a translator for the series Biblioteka Kultury (Kultura's Library), working on Polish-language versions of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago in 1959, Felix Gross' Seizure of Political Power in 1960, and Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski's L'Accusé in 1964 (he did not complete the latter two works). Between 1961 and 1968, he collaborated with the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe as a reviewer of new books, primarily prose works, published in Poland. From 1963, these reviews appeared in print in the monthly "Na Antenie". For several years, he served as an unofficial advisor to the Kościelski Foundation in Geneva. He was the recipient of awards including the prize of the Polish Guard Units of the US Army in Europe (1950), of the Paris-based "Kultura" (1961 and 1967), the A. Godlewska Prize (Switzerland, 1963), and the New York-based A. Jurzykowski Foundation (1964). He died on 4 October 1969 in Bern; the urn containing his ashes was laid to rest in the cemetery in Bremgarten, before being transferred to the family grave at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw in 1994.