Karol Szajnocha was a Polish writer, historian, and independence activist. Self-taught, he would nonetheless become a notable Polish historian of the partitions period.
Biography
Karol Szajnocha was born as on 20 November 1818 in Komarno, son of Polonized Czech Vaclav Scheinoha Vtelenský of Austrian origin, who signed himself as Scheinoha Wtelensky in Poland and Maria Łozińska. Karol attended schools in Sambor and Lwów; in that period Szajnocha adopted the polonized version of his name. In 1834 while in gymnasium he founded a secret society, "Societ of the Ancient Times", dedicated to collecting information on the historical monuments of the partitionedPolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and inspired by the Philomath Student Movement. The society was discovered and closed by the authorities and Szajnocha received a mild punishment. In 1835 he entered the University of Lwów, philosophical department. In 1836 he was found guilty of spreading pro-Polish and anti-government leaflets and poems ; he was imprisoned from January of that year till mid-1837 and for the first several months he was locked in a single cell without any light. For activism related to Polish pro-independence movement he was also expelled from university and forbidden to reenlist. He continued his education unofficially, concentrating first on linguistics, later on literature and history. Szajnocha became a private tutor as well as journalist and an editor of several important Polish publications in Lwów. In 1838 he joined a new secret organization, Sarmacja. While pro-Polish it was moderate in its views and argued against an armed struggle. In 1839 he first published his own literary works; he wrote poems, novels, dramas and historical essays as well as translate. Around 1847 his vision started to worsen and was advised by medical doctors to limit amount of writing and reading; he rejected their advise. By that time his fame had grown and twice he was offered a position at the Jagiellonian University, which he refused. Beginning in 1853, he worked in the Ossolineum Institute, which helped him to publish some of his works. In 1855 he married Joanna Bilińska. In 1860 he became completely blind but would not give upreading and writing – he would listen to a lector and dictate his works as well as write himself with the aid of a device he designed himself. On 10 January 1868 he died in Lwów and later buried in the Łyczakowski Cemetery. His funeral was well known and attended by many and seen as a Polish patriotic manifestation.
Works
He is remembered mostly for his contributions as a historian. Hist first academic work, Pogląd na ogół dziejów polskich, was published in 1847. He wrote many works, on Polish kingsBolesław Chrobry, Władysław Łokietek, Władysław Jagiełło and Queen Jadwiga of Poland, Kazimierz the Great, marshal, hetman, voivode, and magnate Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski and others, Dwa lata dziejow naszych, 1646 i1648. He was also one of the initiators of work on and the publisher of the Monumenta Poloniae Historica, a six-tome compilation of important primary sources related to history of Poland. He was recognized by his contemporaries, both Polish speaking and foreign, as a major historian of Poland. His works became known outside the academic circles, and were reportedly read, among others, by the futureNobel prize winning Polish authorHenryk Sienkiewicz. His most notable work "Jadwiga i Jagiełło, 1374—1413" was praised in Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 edition as a "great monograph, justly described as a pearl of historical literature... the result of twelve years of exhaustive study... our best authority on the first union between Poland and Lithuania."
