Oskar Halecki

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Oskar Halecki (26 May 1891,

United States of America) was a Polish historian, social and Catholic activist. Doctor Honoris Causa of the Polish University Abroad (1973).[1][2]

Life and career

Halecki, whose first name is sometimes spelled Oscar in English-language sources, was born in Vienna to a Polish officer serving in the Austrian Army. His father, Oscar Chalecki-Halecki, achieved the rank of lieutenant field-marshal. His mother was Leopoldina deDellimanic.

After graduating with a doctorate from the

Warsaw University
in 1918, where he was appointed to a chair of East European history.

After the

Paris Peace Conference. Even though he had been appointed as dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian (1920), Halecki spent a decade in international service. In 1921, he was appointed as a member of the League of Nations Secretariat in Geneva, where he spent three years organising that body's Committee on Intellectual Co-operation.[3] He then spent a year in Paris as Chief of the University Section in the league's Institute on Intellectual Co-operation and then spent several years working on its various commissions. After a ten-year absence, Halecki returned to his professorship at the University of Warsaw until 1939 during which he also served as dean of the Faculty of Humanities (1930–1931). In 1938, he went to the United States as a visiting scholar of the Kosciuszko Foundation
, giving over forty lectures at colleges and universities.

Halecki was attending a conference in Fribourg when Germany

Polska Akademia Umiejętności. Bronisław Malinowski
was its first president, and Halecki became its president from 1952 to 1964.

Halecki became a professor of Eastern European history at

University of California at Los Angeles (1963–1964), and Good Counsel College
(1964–1967).

As a historian, Halecki was an expert on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which laid the foundation for his thesis that Eastern Europe, distinct from Russia was no less European than Western Europe and that they were both part of one great European community of people that shared the same spiritual ideals and cultural traditions. His work led to the gradual acceptance of the concept and name of East Central Europe. His magnum opus was a two-volume history of the Jagiellonian Union, published in 1919–1920. Much of his retirement was occupied with working on a biography of Jadwiga of Anjou that was published two decades after his death.

Halecki also served on the controversial "Committee of Ten" in Scarsdale, New York, which claimed communist influence in the public school curriculum in the 1950s.[4]

Among the many students he mentored were Thaddeus V. Gromada, Taras Hunczak, and Eugene Kusielewicz.

Halecki was married to Helen de Sulima-Szarlowska, who died in 1964.

Honors and recognition

Halecki received honorary doctorates from the

De Paul University, Fordham University, and Saint Peter's College. He was Papal Chamberlain and Knight of the Grand Cross, Order of Malta; Commander of the Order of Polonia Restituta; Commander of Saint Gregory; Commander, Hungarian Croix de Merite; and Chevalier, Légion d'honneur. Halecki received the Polish American Historical Association
's first Haiman Award (1966) for outstanding contributions to Polish American studies. In 1981, the Polish American Historical Association established the Halecki Prize, given to recognize an important book or monograph on the Polish experience in the United States.

Bibliography

Publications by Halecki:

  • Dzieje unii jagiellońskiej (2 vols., 1919-1920).
  • (fr) Un empereur de Byzance æ Rome : vingt ans de travail pour l'union des églises et pour la défense de l'empire d'orient : 1355 - 1375 (1930)
  • (fr) Rome et Byzance au temps du grand schisme d'occident (1937)
  • East Central Europe in postwar organization (1943)
  • The Crusade of Varna: A Discussion of Controversial Problems (1943)
  • Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe (1952) (
    ISBN 0-9665734-8-X
    )
  • History of Poland (
    ISBN 0-679-51087-7
    )
  • (fr) Histoire de Pologne (1945)
  • Imperialism in Slavic and East European History (1952)
  • Pius XII: Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of peace (1954)
  • From Florence to Brest 1439–1596 (1958)
  • The Limits and Divisions of European History (1962)
  • The Millennium of Europe (1963)
  • (posthumous) Jadwiga of Anjou and the rise of East Central Europe, edited by Thaddeus V. Gromada (1991)

Publications about Halecki:

  • The American Catholic Who's Who, Vol. 14: 1960 and 1961.
  • Thaddeus V. Gromada, "The Contributions of Oscar Halecki to American Historical Scholarship," Nationalities Papers, Vol. 4, no. 2 (1976): 89–97.
  • Thaddeus V. Gromada, "Oscar Halecki, 1891-1973," Slavic Review, Vol. 33, no. 1 (1974): 203-204 in JSTOR.
  • Oskar Halecki, "Oskar Halecki, Historian," in Walter Romig (ed.), The Book of Catholic Authors (Third Series): Informal Self-Portraits of Famous Modern Catholic Writers (Walter Romig & Co., 1945), 157–163.
  • Kenneth F. Lewalski, "Oscar Halecki," in Hans A. Schmitt (ed.), Historians of Modern Europe (Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 36–61.
  • Justine Wincek, "Oscar Halecki," Polish American Studies, Vol. 24, no. 2 (1967): 106-108 in JSTOR.
  • Thaddeus V. Gromada (ed.), Oskar Halecki 1891-1973: Eulogies and Reflections (Tatra Eagle Press, 2013).
  • Королёв Геннадий. Antemurale польской историографии: Оскар Халецкий о ягеллонской идее, федерализме и пограничье Запада // Ab Imperio. – 2015. – No. 2. – С. 363–382.

References

  1. ^ Doktorzy Honoris Causa // Polski Uniwersytet na Obczyźnie
  2. ^ J. Jasnowski PROF. DR OSKAR HALECKI. — P. 360.
  3. ^ Grandjean, Martin (2018). Les réseaux de la coopération intellectuelle. La Société des Nations comme actrice des échanges scientifiques et culturels dans l'entre-deux-guerres [The Networks of Intellectual Cooperation. The League of Nations as an Actor of the Scientific and Cultural Exchanges in the Inter-War Period] (phdthesis) (in French). Lausanne: Université de Lausanne.
  4. ^ A Sort of Utopia, Scarsdale, 1891-1981 by Carol A. O'Connor, Pp. 261-262

External links

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