VINCENZ Stanisław

Born on 30 November 1888 in Słoboda Rungurska in the Pokuttya region of then Austrian-ruled Eastern Galicia (now Ukraine); son of the pioneering oil entrepreneur Feliks Vincenz, and the landowner's daughter Zofia Zuzanna, née Przybyłowska. As a child, he lived in Słoboda Rungurska and his grandfather, Stanisław Przybyłowski's estate in Krzyworównia (Kryvorivnya) on the Black Cheremosh River. He was initially home-schooled. During this period, he acquired fluent knowledge of Ukrainian. Between 1898 and 1904, he attended the Imperial and Royal Grammar School in Kolomyya before moving to Stryi for the 1904/05 school year where he was a member of a self-styled literary-patriotic-independent underground self-education group headed by Stefan Vrtel (later Vrtel-Wierczyński). While at the school in Stryi, he became friends with Wilam Horzyca and was also acquainted with Kazimierz Wierzyński. He subsequently returned to Kolomyya, where he completed his advanced secondary education in 1906. He then spent one semester as a student at the University of Lwow (Lviv), before moving to the University of Vienna, starting degrees in biology (1906/07), law (1907/08), Slavic philology, Sanskrit and psychiatry (1908/09), and philosophy (1909-11 and again from 1912, after completing his military service in Vienna). From autumn 1911 to July 1912, he attended the Reserve Officer's School of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Vienna, where he completed his officer's exams. He was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1914 for his dissertation Hegels Religionsphilosophie und der Ausgang aus ihren Beziehungen und Zausammenhängen (Hegel's philosophy of religion and the outcomes of its relations and contexts), which focused on the influence of Hegel's philosophy of religion on the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. He worked on a second book (habilitation thesis) titled Hegel w Polsce i w Rosji (Hegel in Poland and Russia), with his papers destroyed by a war-related fire at the estate in Krzyworównia. While at university, he deepened his knowledge of the Classics and also learned Russian. He made his debut in 1914 with the poem Zwycięży Lud! (The People will emerge victorious!), which appeared in the Krakow-based "Przyjaciel Ludu" (no. 28). During World War I, he served from June 1914 as an officer cadet in the Austrian army in the 24th Kolomyyan Regiment. He was involved in fighting on the front at Halych. He was demobilized in October 1914 owing to ill health and returned to Słoboda Rungurska. In 1915, he married Helena Loeventon, a Russian from Odesa, whom he met during his studies. They married in Yalta, Crimea, in an Orthodox ceremony but their vows were declared invalid by the archbishopric curia. He was redrafted in autumn 1915, serving as a second-lieutenant, lieutenant and captain in the Austrian army until autumn 1918. He was on the front in the Italian Dolomites, then from autumn 1916 was stationed in Lwow (Lviv) and then from in 1917/18 in Krakow. During this period, he also started translating, including in 1917 Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Polish: Sen śmiesznego człowieka). He also worked on a Polish translation of William James' book Human Immorality (the print draft disappeared in 1921 in the Ignis publishing house). In August 1919, he volunteered for the Polish army. He was initially a lecturer in Polish literature at the Cadet Corps in Modlin then from June 1920 an educational officer at the headquarters of the 6th Army as well as an editor of the weekly "Tygodnik VI Armii". In 1920, he fought in the Kyiv offensive and in the battles for Lwow in the Polish-Soviet War. He was demobilized in 1922 with the rang of captain and settled in Słoboda Rungurska. He remained active as a writer, publishing in 1921 translations of Walt Whitman's epic poems as well as an article on the writer, Religia Walta Whitmana (Walt Whitman's Faith) in "Naród" (no. 23). He joined the Polish PEN Club, becoming acquainted during this period with H.G. Wells and Romain Rolland, while he also hosted Thomas Mann in his home. In 1922/23, he was active in the Wyzwolenie (Liberation) Polish People's Party (PSL). He also took up journalism, editing in 1922 the Lwow-based syndicalist weekly "Nowe Czasy". In 1923, he started collaborating with the Warsaw-based Piłsudski-linked monthly "Droga", where until 1929 he published numerous articles on literature and the philosophy of religion. In 1927/28, he was editor of the periodical (in 1928, co-editor alongside Wilam Horzyca). In 1923, he married Irena Eisenmann and moved to Milanówek. They settled in Warsaw in 1926. He established a research relationship with the Austrian philosopher Rudolf M. Holzapfel and his school in 1925. Vincenz knew fourteen languages and thus read philosophical treatises in the original. In 1927, he established the Polmin oil cartel between his family's oil well Produkcja and the Polmin State Factory of Mineral Oils. A year later, he and his brother Kazimierz, alongside two others, were accused by directors of the company of embezzling one million zlotys. The case saw interventions by, among others, the Polish Sejm (parliament). As a result of the cartel's financial records going missing, an innocent verdict was passed in 1931. In 1928, Vincenz co-edited the weekly "Wiek XX" alongside Stanisław Baczyński. From 1930, living primarily in Słoboda Rungurska and Bystrec by the Chornohora mountain range, he worked on his book Na wysokiej połoninie (English translation, 1955: On the High Uplands). In February 1934, he founded the Kolomyya Branch of the Society of the Friends of the Hutsul Region. In 1934/35, alongside Ksawery Pruszyński, Piotr Dunin-Borkowski and Benedykt Liberman, he published the Warsaw-based periodical "Problemy", with four issues appearing. During this period, he travelled regularly, visiting countries including Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. He published articles on folk culture and the Hutsuls in periodicals including "Pion" (1934-36), "Ziemia" (1935) and "Złoty Szlak" (1938). In 1938, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and was also a recipient of the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature, awarded in recognition of his contributions to the promotion of Polish culture. Following the outbreak of World War II, he decided to escape to Hungary. On 18 September 1939, he crossed the Hungarian border at the Yablunytskyj Pass (Polish: Przełęcz Tatarska), alongside his eldest son Stanisław Aleksander, Jerzy Stempowski and Captain Adam Miłobędzki. In late October, he returned to collect the rest of his family but was arrested by the Soviet NKVD and imprisoned in Żabie (now: Verkhovyna) then in Stanisławów (now: Ivano-Frankivsk). In December 1939, he was released from prison thanks to inventions by the Ukrainian writers Ivan Le and Petro Panch. Vincenz spent the winter in the Hutsul region. In May 1940, he again reached Hungary, this time with his family. He remained there until the end of the war, initially in Budapest and then until May 1946 in Nógrádverőce. He earned a living from a salary awarded to writers by the Hungarian government. He was involved in Polish social and cultural life, serving as chair of the Education Commission of the Citizens' Committee Aiding Refugees from Poland (Komisja Oświatowa Komitetu Obywatelskiego Opieki nad Uchodźcami Polskimi), a literary advisor to the Biblioteka Polska publishing house, and as a contributor and journalist with the magazine "Tygodnik Polski" (1943-44), which was published by the Polish Institute in Budapest. He lecture on pre-Socratic and Socratic Greek philosophy. He continued his literary work, publishing prose pieces, articles and translations from Hungarian in the periodicals "Wieści Polskie" (1940/41, 1943, and 1944), "Nasza Świetlica-Materiały Obozowe" (1941), and "Rocznik Polski. Kalendarz Polaka na Węgrzech" (1941-43). In Hungary, he rescued and hid Jews, for which he was posthumously awarded the Righteous Among the Nations Medal from Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. In summer 1945, he and his family moved to Austria, initially staying in Vienna followed by Salzburg from June 1946. Thanks to assitance from Konstanty Jeleński, he left illegally for Quackenbrück in Germany, where is son Andrzej was stationed. There, he collaborated with the monthly of soldiers of the Salamander 1st Tank Division (1946-47; among his publications here was an exceprt of Powojenne perypetie Sokratesa [Socrates' Postwar Adventures]). After a year in Quackenbrück, he moved to the south of France, initially settling in Uriage-les-Bains and then from February 1949 in Grenoble. From 1950 he also often resided in a summer house, initially rented and then purchased, in La Combe de Lancey, where he was visited by Czesław Miłosz in 1951, marking the start of many years of friendship. Vincenz travelled around Switzerland and France. He began collaborating with the Paris-based "Kultura", where from 1947 he regularly contributed essays, articles, and memoir pieces. He also published in many émigré periodicals, including "Kronika" (Eppstein, 1946/47), "W drodze" (Paris, 1964/65), and the London-based "Wiadomości" (regularly from 1965, including in 1965 the cycle Dialogi z Sowietami na najniższym szczeblu [Dialogues with the Soviets on the Lowest Rung]). In November 1964, owing to his deteriorating rheumatic condition, he and his wife moved to Pully, near Lausanne, where there daughter Barbara lived. He worked on his memoirs from the period 1939-44 and from his Lwow-period, as well as on the English version of the essay cycle Kallirrhoe (Callirrhoe). He was awarded the A. Zabłocki Foundation prize, awarded by the Union of Polish Writers Abroad in 1960 in recognition of his achievements as a writer and translator. He was also the recipient of the prize of the New York-based Roy Publishers in 1964 and the New York-based A. Jurzykowski Foundation in 1966. He died on 28 January 1971 in Lausanne. In 1991, Vincenz's ashes together with those of his wife who died in Lausanne that year, were interred at the Salvator Cemetery in Krakow. He had a son, Stanisław Aleksander (1915-2003), from his marriage to Helena Loeventon, and a daughter Barbara (1920-2017) and a son Andrzej (1922-2014), from his marriage to Irena Eisenmann. In 1983, Irena Vincenz and his son Andrzej funded the Stanisław Vincenz Prize, which was awarded until 1986. In 1991, the University of Wroclaw (UWr) and the Ossolinski National Institute Library founded the Pro Vincenz Foundation, which was dedicated to caring for his literary estate.