Wincenty Pol
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Wincenty Pol (20 April 1807 - 2 December 1872) was a Polish poet and geographer.
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[edit] Life
Born in Lublin (then in Galicia), to Franz Pohl (or Poll), a German in the Austrian service and his wife Eleonora Longchamps de Berier from a French family living in Poland, he fought in the Polish army in the 1830 November Uprising and participated in the 1848 revolution. In spite of his mixed family background, he considered himself a Pole, so much so that he changed his surname to Pol.
Although he had no formal education in geography, during his travels in Polish lands he wrote several books on this subject, and in 1849 was appointed professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.
He wrote a fine descriptive work, Obrazy z życia i podróży (Pictures of Life and Travel), and also a poem Pieśn o ziemi naszej (Song of our Land). In 1855 he published Mohort, a poem relating to the times of Stanisław August Poniatowski.
Pol introduced into Polish literature the term "Kresy" to describe the territories lying near the eastern frontiers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Pol is interred in Kraków's historic Skałka Church, a mini-pantheon of Polish scientists, writers and artists, especially of the Kraków area.
