Famous guys claimed by Poland and other nations

[Bonobo]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Siemienowicz



Claimed by Poland, Belarus and Lithuania

Kazimierz Siemienowicz (Latin: Casimirus Siemienowicz, Lithuanian: Kazimieras Simonavičius, Polish: Kazimierz Siemienowicz, born c. 1600 – c. 1651), was a Polish–Lithuanian general of artillery, gunsmith, military engineer, and pioneer of rocketry. Born in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he served the armies of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a ruler of the Netherlands. No portrait or detailed biography of him has survived and much of his life is a subject of dispute.

After contributing his expertise to several battles, Siemienowicz published Artis Magnae Artilleriae in 1650. This treatise, which discussed rocketry and pyrotechnics, remained a standard work in those fields for two centuries.


Lithuanian scientific school

The Lithuanian scientific school asserts that he was born near Raseiniai in Samogitia.[1][2] The family, which was relatively poor, bore the Ostoja Coat of Arms[3] with military service traditions in the Grand Duchy. In a book dedication, he refers to himself as an "Eques Lithuanus" (Lithuanian nobleman).[1][4][5] Siemenowicz was educated in the Academy of Vilnius.
Polish scientific school

The Polish school, instead of defining his ethnicity, describes his identity simply as member of the szlachta (i.e. the nobility within the Commonwealth) from Grand Duchy.[6][7] Through some sources do use the term "Polish",[8][9][10] others describe him as "Lithuanian".[11] Those terms should be understood in proper context: "Polish" means "of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth"; "Lithuanian" - from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a federal part of the Commonwealth. Polish historian Tadeusz Nowak described Siemienowicz as a Polonized Lithuanian nobleman.[3] Polish historians for the most part accept that he used the Ostoja Coat of Arms and that he was an alumnus of the Academy of Vilnius.
Belarusian scientific school

The Belarusian scientific school[12] asserts that he was born in the vicinity of Dubrowna in the Vitsyebsk land, to a family of minor Ruthenian princes (knyaz) of Siemienowicz,[13] who possessed the small tracts of land in that part of the Belarusian Dnieper-land (Падняпроўе) in the 14th—17th centuries. Some examples of lexicography used by K. Siemienowicz himself support this interpretation.[14]

It is pointed out that there are no records of families with surname Siemienowicz having the right to bear the Ostoja coat of arms, and that it is possible that Siemienowicz acquired the right to use the image of Ostoja in his book to facilitate its circulation. He himself, however, was quite vague in his autobiographical notes as to his position in the hierarchy of nobility, possibly because of that.[15] Also, the Belarusian scientific school of the 20th century tends to interpret the "Litvin/Lithuanian" denomination of the Medieval/Renaissance period as a politonym rather than ethnonym, and so it is pointed out that when Siemienowicz writes about himself as "Litvin or Lithuanian", he means just a citizen of Great Duchy of Lithuania, not ethnicity.[16] The identity of Siemienowicz and the magister of philosophy and liberal arts of same surname recorded in the acts of Vilnius academia of 1650 is disputed.[17]

[Bonobo]

Mickiewicz`s case is even more messed up.



Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ([mit͡sˈkʲɛvit͡ʂ] ( listen); 24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855) was a Polish[1][2] poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is counted one of Poland's "Three Bards" ("Trzej Wieszcze")[3] and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet.[4][5][6] He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic[7] and European[8] poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard".[9] A leading Romantic dramatist,[10] he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe.[9][10]

He is known chiefly for the poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) and the national epic poem Pan Tadeusz. His other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna. All these served as inspiration for uprisings against the three imperial powers that had partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth out of existence.

Adam Mickiewicz was born 24 December 1798, either at his paternal uncle's estate in Zaosie (now Zavosse) near Navahrudak (in Polish, Nowogródek) or in Navahrudak itself in what was then part of the Russian Empire and is now Belarus. The region was on the periphery of Lithuania proper and had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1795).[11][12] The area had earlier been inhabited by ethnic Lithuanians,[13] but by the time of his birth it was largely Belarusian-populated.[13] Its upper class, including Mickiewicz's family, were either Polish or Polonized.[11] The poet's father, Mikołaj Mickiewicz, a lawyer, was a member of the Polish[14] nobility (szlachta)[13] and bore the hereditary Poraj coat-of-arms;[15] Adam's mother was Barbara Mickiewicz, née Majewska. Adam was the second-born son in the family.[16]

Ethnicity

Adam Mickiewicz, whose works were written in the Polish language,[71] is generally known as a Polish poet.[71][72][73][74][75] He is described by some authors as "Polish-Lithuanian"[76][77] or Belarusian-Polish.[78][79] The Cambridge History of Russia describes him as Polish but sees his ethnic origins as "Lithuanian-Belarusian (and perhaps Jewish)."[80] According to the Belarusian historian Rybczonek, Mickiewicz's mother had Tatar roots.[81]

Some sources assert that Mickiewicz's mother was descended from a converted, Frankist Jewish family.[82][83][84] Others view this as improbable.[40][85][86][87] Polish historian Kazimierz Wyka, in his biographic entry in Polski Słownik Biograficzny (1975) writes that this hypothesis, based on the fact that his mother's maiden name, Majewska, was popular among Frankist Jews, has not been proven.[16] Wyka states that poet's mother was the daughter of a noble (szlachta) family of Starykoń coat of arms, living on an estate at Czombrów in Nowogródek Voivodeship (Navahrudak Voivodeship).[16]

The Lithuanian scholar of literature Juozapas Girdzijauskas (lt) writes that Mickiewicz's family was descended from an old Lithuanian noble family (Rimvydas) with origins predating Lithuania's Christianization.[88] The Lithuanian nobility in Mickiewicz's time was heavily Polonized and spoke Polish.[11] Mickiewicz had been brought up in the culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multicultural state that had encompassed most of what today are the separate countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. To Mickiewicz, a splitting of that multicultural state into separate entities, due to trends such as Lithuanian separatism, was undesirable,[11] if not outright unthinkable.[71] According to Romanucci-Ross, while Mickiewicz called himself a "Lithuanian", in his time the idea of a separate "Lithuanian identity", apart from a "Polish" one, did not exist.[75] This multicultural aspect is evident in his works; his most famous poetic work, Pan Tadeusz, begins with the Polish-language invocation, "O Lithuania, my country, thou art like good health ..." ("Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie ...". It is generally accepted, however, that Mickiewicz, when referring to Lithuania, meant a historical region rather than a linguistic and cultural entity, and he often applied the term "Lithuanian" to the Slavic inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[11]

[Bonobo]

The most famous case is Copernicus, shared by Germans and Poles.


There has been discussion of Copernicus's nationality and of whether, in fact, it is meaningful to ascribe to him a nationality in the modern sense. But there are some facts that should be considered when talking about Copernicus's nationality.

Nicolaus Copernicus was born and raised in Royal Prussia, a semiautonomous and polyglot region under rule by the Kingdom of Poland.[133][134] Copernicus was the child of German-speaking parents and grew up with German as his mother tongue.[135][136][137][138] His alma mater was the University of Kraków in Poland. When he later studied in Italy, at the University of Bologna Copernicus joined the "German Nation", the student organization for German-speakers of all allegiances (Germany would not become a nation-state until 1871).[139][140] His family stood against the Teutonic Order and actively supported the city of Toruń during the Thirteen Years' War. Copernicus' father lent money to King Casimir IV Jagiellon of Poland to finance the war against the Teutonic Knights,[141] but the inhabitants of Royal Prussia also resisted the Polish crown's efforts for greater control over the region.[133]

Encyclopædia Britannica,[142] Encyclopedia Americana,[143] The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia,[144] The Oxford World Encyclopedia,[145] and World Book Encyclopedia[146] refer to Copernicus as a "Polish astronomer". Sheila Rabin, writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, describes Copernicus as a "child of a German family [who] was a subject of the Polish crown",[10] while Martin Weissenbacher writes that Copernicus's father was a Germanized Pole.[147]

Historian Michael Burleigh describes the nationality debate as a "totally insignificant battle" between German and Polish scholars during the interwar period.[148] Polish astronomer Konrad Rudnicki calls the discussion a "fierce scholarly quarrel in ... times of nationalism" and describes Copernicus as an inhabitant of a German-speaking territory that belonged to Poland, himself being of mixed Polish-German extraction.[149]

Poet Czesław Miłosz describes the debate as an "absurd" projection of a modern understanding of nationality onto Renaissance people, who identified with their home territories rather than with a nation.[150]

Similarly, historian Norman Davies writes that Copernicus, as was common in his era, was "largely indifferent" to nationality, being a local patriot who considered himself "Prussian".[151]

Miłosz and Davies both write that Copernicus had a German-language cultural background, while his working language was Latin in accord with the usage of the time.[150][151] Additionally, according to Davies, "there is ample evidence that he knew the Polish language".[151] Davies concludes: "Taking everything into consideration, there is good reason to regard him both as a German and as a Pole: and yet, in the sense that modern nationalists understand it, he was neither."[151





During World War II, the Copernicus monument was the focus of a notable "minor-sabotage" operation by the Polish underground. Soon after the Nazi German occupation of Warsaw in 1939, the Germans effaced the Latin and Polish inscriptions and attached a plaque in German language: "To Nicolaus Copernicus [from] the German Nation".[5] On 11 February 1942 Maciej Aleksy Dawidowski removed the German plaque.[6] In response, on 21 February, the Germans moved Warsaw's statue of Jan Kiliński to the National Museum in Warsaw.[6] Dawidowski and his comrades retaliated by placing a large graffito on the Museum ("People of Warsaw—I am here. Jan Kiliński") and on 13 March adding a new plaque to the Copernicus monument: "For removal of the Kiliński statue, I am extending the winter by two months. Kopernik.






Poles have been more explicit: To Copernicus from compatriots