Morcinek, Gustaw

Morcinek, Gustaw 

Born Aug. 25, 1891, in Karvina, Silesia; died Dec. 20, 1963, in Krakow. Polish writer.

A worker’s son and a miner by occupation, Morcinek graduated from a teachers’ training school in 1914 and was a school-teacher from 1920 to 1936. From 1939 to 1945 he was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau. In people’s Poland he was elected a deputy to the Sejm. Morcinek’s first works were published in 1920. He is the author of numerous prose works portraying the life of the Silesian miners and affirming the historical unity of Silesia with the Polish lands. He is best known for his novels The Mine Drift (parts 1–2, 1931–32), Stones Upturned (1931, published in 1939), and The Law of the Mine (published posthumously in 1964), his family chronicle Joanna’s Coal Seam (1950; State Prize of the Polish People’s Republic, 1951), and his historical novel Ondraszek (1953).

WORKS

Wybör pism, vols. 1–3. Katowice, 1956.
Miöd w sercu i inne nowele, 2nd ed. Katowice, 1971.
In Russian translation:
Sem’ udiviternykh istorii loakhima Rybki. Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCE

Nawrocki, W. O pisarstwie G. Morcinka. Katowice, 1972.

V. A. KHOREV