musicologist, classical philologist, literature historian; b. 30th March 1923 in Warsaw; d. 27h December 2016 in Warsaw. He studied classical philology at the secret University of Warsaw, and after 1945 at the University of Poznań. He obtained his master's degree in 1946 from the University of Łódź, where he also studied musicology with prof. Alice Simon. From 1945 he was an assistant at the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Łódź and in the years 1947-1953 he worked at the university library. He defended his doctorate in classical philology at the University of Warsaw in 1950. From 1953 he taught Ancient History at the University of Łódź. From 1965 he was the head of the Department of History of Culture at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Łódź, and in 1967-68 he was the director of the Institute of History of the same university. In the years 1967-1968, on the invitation of prof. Hieronim Feicht and prof. Zofia Lissa, he lectured on the history of Polish music culture of the nineteenth century at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Warsaw.

From mid-1968 to 1990 he lived in the United States. He lectured in the History of Polish Literature and Culture at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the New York University. He was the editor of “The Polish Review”, an active advisor to the Educational Commission of the Polish American Congress, a participant of conventions and co-creator of curricula for high school classes of Polish diaspora schools in the USA. He also cooperated with the Kościuszko Foundation and the Jurzykowski Foundation in the selection of candidates for prizes and American scholarships. He also lectured at several other American universities.

In 1990 he returned to Poland and started working at the University of Warsaw, and then for 10 years at the Aleksander Gieysztor School of Humanities in Pultusk. His numerous publications in the field of musicology were published in the country and abroad, among others: Polish and foreign conductors working in Poland in the 19th and 20th centuries (Krakow: PWM, 1964), Henryk Sienkiewicz in music (Warsaw: Typografika, 2000), Jews in the Music Culture of Polish territories in the 19th-20th Centuries. Biographical Dictionary (Warsaw: Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, 2014).

updated: 2020 (ac)