Jan Sztaudynger Plaque
Kraków Artists: Writers and Poets
A commemorative plaque in the Old Town dedicated to Jan Sztaudynger (1904-1970), poet, epigrammatist, satirist, theorist of puppetry and translator. He was born in Kraków and died here. He attended the Model Practice School at the Teachers' Seminary and the 2nd King Jan Sobieski Grammar School, and then studied Polish and German philology at the Jagiellonian University, where in 1924 he obtained a doctorate in philosophy.
History
Jan Sztaudynger was born on 28 April 1904 in Kraków. He first attended the Model Practice School attached to the Teachers' Seminary. During the First World War he left with his parents for Brno in Moravia, where he attended Polish secondary-school courses, and from 1915 he was educated at Kraków's King Jan Sobieski II Grammar School. After his school-leaving exams he studied Polish and German philology in parallel at the Jagiellonian University, and in 1924 he became a Doctor of Philosophy; his dissertations dealt with Garczyński.
The poet's life is linked to the townhouse at Długa Street 64 in Kleparz, where Sztaudynger lived from 1908 to 1929. After his studies he worked as a teacher: in Dębica he taught at a grammar school, and in Bydgoszcz and Poznań he lectured at teachers' seminaries. In 1925 his debut poetry collection "Dom mój" (My Home) was published by the St Wojciech Bookshop in Poznań, with a foreword by Karol Hubert Rostworowski. After the war he settled in Łódź, and in 1961 he moved from there to Zakopane.
He is known above all as a writer of fraszki (short humorous epigrams) and is regarded as the "renewer of the genre". His collections include "Piórka" (Little Feathers, 1954) and "Krakowskie piórka" (Kraków Feathers, first edition: Kraków 1956), and in 1961-1968 four volumes of his poems for children were also published. He was a satirist as well. He died on 12 September 1970 in Kraków, in a haematology clinic, and was laid to rest in Salwator Cemetery.
Did you know?
Sztaudynger was also a pioneer of research into puppet theatre. In 1935-1937 he travelled around Europe to learn about puppet theatre traditions and gathered his conclusions in the book "Marionetki" (Marionettes); the international association UNIMA later made him an honorary member.