Żywot Szczubla (1919–2013)

This article is a reminiscence of Józef Marcin Szczublewski, an actor, journalist, editor, museum professional, and lecturer, but most of all, he was a theatre historian and biographer. Theatre scholars often call him “Szczubel”, and he used this nickname himself in his numerous, and often funny, notes. In 1952 he started collaborating with the Theatre Section of the State Institute of Art. He studied archival materials and conducted parallel press archives research with zeal. He published his findings in Pamiętnik Teatralny, and was the quarterly’s Secretary of the Editorial Board in 1962–1964. He soon became, along with Jerzy Got, a renowned biographer of Helena Modrzejewska. Warsaw theatres of the 19th and 20th centuries were a second area of his studies. The Institute of Art awarded Szczublewski his doctoral degree in 1971 based on his dissertation Żywot Osterwy (The Life of Osterwa, published in 1971), completed under the supervision of Prof. Zbigniew Raszewski. The biography had the form of a chronicle that put wide-ranging archival documentation into order. This was the form (and title) that became the author’s favourite. He soon came back to his favourite object of study and heroine to publish Żywot Modrzejewskiej (The Life of Modrzejewska, 1975), and after almost two decades followed it with Żywot Sienkiewicza (The Life of Sienkiewicz, 1989).