Marian Brandys
Marian Brandys (25 January 1912 – 20 November 1998) was a Polish writer and screenwriter born in Wiesbaden into an assimilated Jewish family of the Polish intelligentsia. Brandys grew up in Łódź. His father owned a bank. Their prosperity allowed Marian, and his younger brother, Kazimierz, to attend the best private school for boys, sponsored by the city's merchants' club, Zgromadzenie Kupców Miasta Łodzi.[1]
During the Second Polish Republic Brandys graduated in Law from Warsaw University and worked in the courts before the 1939 invasion of Poland. He took part in the September Campaign as the commander of a mounted platoon of machine guns for the Independent Operational Group Polesie led by General Franciszek Kleeberg. Brandys spent the war years incarcerated in the German Woldenberg II-C prisoner of war camp for Polish officers near the town of Grünberg in Schlesien, present day Zielona Góra. He joined the Polish communist party upon the Soviet takeover of Poland and from 1949 worked as a reporter in Warsaw. Brandys published his first book during the Stalinist era, the propagandist Początek opowieści (The Beginning of a Story) about the factory workers of Nowa Huta. After the fall of Stalinism, he focused on writing historical novels[2] and children's books. He left the communist party in 1966.[1] He was the elder brother of the far more popular Polish writer, Kazimierz Brandys, author of the heart-wrenching Miasto niepokonane (Unconquered City) about the two Warsaw Uprisings during World War II.[1][3] He died in Warsaw in 1998.
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Janusz R. Kowalczyk (November 2013). "Marian Brandys". Culture.pl. Instytut Adama Mickiewicza. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
- ^ Marian Brandys, Koniec świata szwoleżerów, Tom 1, Czcigodni weterani, MG, Warszawa 2010. This the first in a hugely popular series, originally published by Iskra in 1972, about members of the light cavalry who had served in Napoleon's Russian campaign
- ^ Proszynski.pl (2011). "Kazimierz Brandys (1916-2000)". Miasto niepokonane by Kazimierz Brandys. Księgarnia Proszynski.pl. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
