KLACZKO, JULIAN

KLACZKO, JULIAN (Judah ; 1825–1906), Polish author, critic, and historian. Klaczko was raised in the atmosphere of the Lithuanian Haskalah and displayed his precocious talent as a poet with Duda'im… (1842), a volume of Hebrew poems, mainly translations and pastiches. He also wrote Hebrew versions of two poems by *Mickiewicz, whose correspondence he later edited. In 1840 Klaczko moved to Germany and then settled in Paris, where he contributed to the Revue des deux mondes and conducted an increasingly violent anti-Prussian campaign in support of Polish nationalism. By this time Klaczko had converted to Catholicism. He remained in France from 1849 until 1869, when he accepted an official appointment in Vienna, later serving in the Galician and Imperial Austrian parliaments. There he advocated a Franco-Austrian alliance against Prussian expansionism. From 1888 Klaczko lived in Cracow, associating with the conservative writers and politicians. Although he edited the influential émigré periodical Wiadomości polskie in Paris (1858–60) and published a collection of his Polish works (1865), Klaczko wrote mainly in French. He is best remembered for three historical studies, Lex deux chanceliers: Gortschakoff et Bismarck (1876), Quatre causeries florentines (1880), and Rome et la Renaissance (1903).

bibliography:

S. Tarnowski, Julian Klaczko (Pol., 1908); R. Brandstaetter, Tragedja Juliana Klaczki (1933).

[Moshe Altbauer]