Przegląd Zachodniopomorski (Jan 2020)
Piotr Zaremba (1910–1993). Biography to be unveiled
Abstract
Piotr Zaremba (1910–1993) was the first post-war president of Szczecin, an internationally renowned urban planner and planner, and the author of fascinating memories of the first post-war years. He was also the winner of several plebiscites, a specific game crowning the end of the previous century. The verdict of the participants was recognized as “Szczecin of the century” and “Pomerania of the century”. It is therefore astonishing that there is no extensive biography of the former rector of the Szczecin University of Technology and one of the co-founders of the University of Szczecin, although it would have been a study that would have given contemporary people considerable knowledge about the important problems of 20th century history. Not only regional, but also national and European history. By discussing selected threads: family, urban and political, the author of the article tries to show, on the one hand, the richness of source material connected with Piotr Zaremba’s biography and, on the other hand, the possibility of multi-faceted lighting of its individual fragments. He tries to multiply the questions more than to give final answers. For these to appear, an extensive biographical book is necessary. In the second part of the text, therefore, the aim of the text is to analyse the reasons why serious biographical reflection on Piotr Zaremba does not exist, despite the fact that he is an emblematic figure for Szczecin and Western Pomerania. The author also follows whether the case under examination is something exceptional for the West Pomeranian biography, characterising the state of biographical writing in relation to people relevant to the post-war history of the region. This seems to me to be a particularly justified question in a situation where biography – after years of neglect in this area – has for some time become an extremely popular genre of historical writing in Poland, giving historians the opportunity to go far beyond the circle set by academic circles with their message. The article is based on a wide range of archival queries, often referring to documentation that has not been in scientific circulation so far.
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