Olgierd Górka

Olgierd Aleksander Górka (born December 12, 1887 in Rawa Ruska , † November 26, 1955 in Warsaw ) was a Polish historian, publicist, politician and diplomat.

Olgierd Górka received his doctorate in Lemberg in 1911 with a thesis on the Leubus Monastery . Until 1930 he worked at the universities of Lviv and Krakow . In 1931 he was offered a position at the University of Warsaw , where he held the post of General Secretary (Vice Director) of the Eastern Institute (Instytut Wschodni) until 1939.

Since 1912 he was a member of the rifle club in Kraków, in August 1914 he joined the Polish legions as a simple soldier , which he left in 1917 as a rott master. Then Górka was adjutant at the Council of Regency of the Regency Kingdom of Poland . After the restoration of Poland, he remained in the military as a major and worked temporarily as a military attaché in Bucharest . From September 1939 Górka was in Romania, from 1940 in France and in London, where he headed the department (later department) for nationality issues (focus on Jewish issues) of the government in exile .

In December 1944, Górka announced his resignation because of Prime Minister Tomasz Arciszewski's Soviet policy . As President of the Council of Poles in Great Britain, he made contact with the communist government. In 1945 he returned to Poland and became Director of the Office for Jewish Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1946–1947) before moving to Jerusalem as Consul General. In June 1952 he returned to Warsaw and taught as a professor at the University of Warsaw.

As a historian, he dealt in several works with Poland's external relations with its southern and eastern neighbors (Danube principalities, Crimean Khanate, Ottoman Empire). Górka mastered a. a. rare languages ​​(Turkish, Tatar). In his works he verified national legends and thus sparked the first public debate about the history of Poland in the media (press, radio). Above all, the refutation of the representations (1934) in the historical novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz brought Górka not only media presence, but also harsh criticism, some of which got out of hand in the threats of (murder). His work on military history was also valuable, especially on the role of the Crimean chanate during the Cossack uprising under Chmielnicki . Górka accidentally discovered in the holdings of the British Library the Tatar chronicle of Kirimli Haci Mehmet Senai, presumably a secretary at the court of the Khan, which not only presents the Cossack uprising in a new light, but is also an important source for the history of the Khanate (the only censored translation in Polish appeared without negative passages about Russia). Górka also initiated research into the social composition of the Polish military in the 17th century. During the war years, Górka worked as a political publicist.

literature

• Olgierd Górka: About the beginnings of the Leubus Monastery , Breslau 1913.
• Zbigniew Romek: Olgierd Górka. Historyk w służbie myśli propaństwowej (1908–1955) , Warszawa [Olgierd Górka. A Historian at the Service of Pro-State Ideas]. ISBN 83-86951-29-X
• Olgierd Górka: Nieznana kronika tatarska z lat 1644-50 , Kwartalnik Historyczny 62 (1955), pp. 107-124 [unknown Tatar chronicle from the years 1644-50].
• Hadży Mehmed Senai z Krymu historia chana Islam Gereja III . Text turecki wydał, przełożył i opracował Zygmunt Abrahamowicz. Commentary Olgierd Górka i Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, Warszawa 1971 [Hadža Mehmed Senai's from the Crimean History of Chans Islam Gerej III. Translation, editing and editing of the Turkish text Zygmunt Abrahamowicz. Commentary: Olgierd Górka and Zygmunt Abrahamowicz].

Web links

Internet encyclopedia (Polish) about Olgierd Górka