Józef Wybicki
Józef Rufin Wybicki (29 September 1747 – 19 March 1822) was a Polish jurist, poet, political and military activist. He is best remembered as the author of Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurka), which in 1927 was adopted as the Polish national anthem.
Life[]
Wybicki was born in Będomin, in the region of Pomerania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[1] His family was Pomeranian nobility.[2]
He finished a Jesuit school, and in his youth was a junior court official.[2] Wybicki was elected a deputy to the Repnin Sejm, the session of Polish parliament in 1767, on the eve of the First Partition of Poland.[1] Subsequently he joined the insurgency known as the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772), aimed at opposing the Russian influence and king Stanisław August Poniatowski.[1][2] He was one of the advisors (konsyliarz) of the Confederacy, acting as a diplomat.[3] After the failure of the uprising, he spent some time in the Netherlands, studying law at Leiden University.[2]

Gen. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski and Józef Wybicki meet Emperor Napoleon in Berlin in 1806
Returning to Poland, in the 1770s and 1780s he was associated with the Commission of National Education.[1] He supported King Stanisław August Poniatowski and his proposed reforms.[1][2] He helped draft the liberal Zamoyski Codex of laws of the late 1770s.[4] He was a Patriotic Party activist during the Great Sejm (1788–92) – though he was not one of its first deputies, during much of that time staying at his estate, writing and staging operas.[1][2] He did, however, participate in the Great Sejm's deliberations, beginning in 1791.[4] In 1792, in the aftermath of the Polish-Russian War of 1792, like many of Poniatowski's supporters, he joined the Targowica Confederation.[5]
He participated in the Kościuszko Uprising (1794)[1] and was a member of the Military Section of the Provisional Council of the Duchy of Masovia.[6] After the failure of this insurrection he moved to France.[2]

Józef Wybicki
He was a close friend of both Tadeusz Kościuszko and Jan Henryk Dąbrowski.[7] With Dąbrowski he organized the Polish Legions in Italy, serving under Napoleon Bonaparte.[1] In 1797, while in Reggio Emilia, Italy, he wrote Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurek).[1] In 1806 he helped Dąbrowski organize the Greater Poland Uprising.[2]
After the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, he held a number of positions in its Department of Justice, and continued working for it after the Duchy's transformation into Congress Poland.[2] In 1817 he became president of the Supreme Court of Congress Poland.[8]
He died on 10 March 1822 in Manieczki, in Schrimm, then part of the Grand Duchy of Posen, Prussia.[1]
Works[]
Wybicki was a writer, journalist and a poet.[1] He wrote political-themed poems, plays and political treaties advocating reforms in Poland in the 1770s and 1780s.[1][2] His works of that time analyzed the Polish political system, the concepts of liberty, and advocated for more rights for the peasantry.[9] He would also publish more political brochures in the 1800s, advocating for liberal reforms in the Duchy of Warsaw.[2]
Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurka) remains Wybicki's most famous creation.[2] It has been regarded as an unofficial national anthem since the November Uprising of 1831.[1] In 1927 the Mazurka was officially adopted as the Polish national anthem by the Polish parliament (Sejm).[2][10]
See also[]
- Enlightenment in Poland
References[]
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Bolesław Oleksowicz. "Józef WYBICKI". VIRTUAL LIBRARY OF POLISH LITERATURE. http://literat.ug.edu.pl/autors/wybic.htm. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Omer Bartov (2007). Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-day Ukraine. Princeton University Press. pp. 121–122. ISBN 978-0-691-13121-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=CbofiWD2hL0C&pg=PA121. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>
tag; name "Bartov2007" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Mariana B. Michalika (1994) (in Polish). Kronika powstań polskich: 1794 – 1944. "Kronika"-Marian B. Michalik. p. 10. ISBN 978-83-86079-02-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=AAhpAAAAMAAJ.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Richard Butterwick (1 December 2011). The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788–1792: A Political History. Oxford University Press. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-19-925033-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=TlQQdbfi_v0C&pg=PA285.
- ↑ Władysław Zajewski (1989) (in Polish). Józef Wybicki. Książka i Wiedza. p. 10. ISBN 978-83-05-11947-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=xcRFAAAAIAAJ.
- ↑ Aleksander Kociszewski (1982) (in Polish). Pieśnią i szablą: rzecz o twórcy hymnu narodowego. Iskry. p. 93. ISBN 978-83-207-0478-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=mfJLAQAAIAAJ.
- ↑ Agnieszka Barbara Nance (2008). Literary and Cultural Images of a Nation Without a State: The Case of Nineteenth-century Poland. Peter Lang. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-8204-7866-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=I9S5g8mpgj0C&pg=PA141.
- ↑ Jadwiga Lechicka (1962) (in Polish). Józef Wybicki. Państw. Wyd. nauk. p. 167. http://books.google.com/books?id=YwIQAAAAIAAJ.
- ↑ Anna Grze?kowiak-Krwawicz (17 August 2012). Queen Liberty: The Concept of Freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. BRILL. pp. 126–127. ISBN 978-90-04-23121-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=Jh4T9Op5LZYC&pg=PA126.
- ↑ (Polish) Dziennik Urzędowy Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych. 1927, nr 1 i 2
External links[]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Józef Wybicki. |
- Biography at univ.gda.pl
- Memoirs of Józef Wybicki
- Free scores by Józef Wybicki at the International Music Score Library Project
The original article can be found at Józef Wybicki and the edit history here.