Szujski, Józef

Born June 16, 1835, in Tarnów; died Feb. 7, 1883, in Kraków. Polish political figure and historian.

Szujski was a member of an insurgent organization in Galicia in 1863; after the defeat of the Polish Uprising of 1863–64, he condemned the national liberation movement. One of the ideologists and leaders of the conservative party known as the Stańczyks, he became a deputy to the Galician sejm in 1867 and a member of the House of Lords of the Viennese Reichsrat in 1879.

Szujski became a professor of Polish history at the Jagiellonian University in 1869. In 1872 he was made secretary of the Academy of Sciences in Kraków. In his historical works Szujski was an apologist for strong monarchical authority and for the Catholic Church; he glorified the expansionist policy of the feudal Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.