Eugeniusz Piasecki (13 November 1872 in Lwów – 14 July 1947 in the village of Ptaszyn near Cieplice Śląskie-Zdrój) was a Polish physician, promoter of sports and hygiene and boyscouting activist. He was the son of Wenanty Piasecki, a gym teacher at Lwów's schools and member of Gymnastic Society ''Sokol''. Eugeniusz studied medicine at the Jagiellonian University in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, and there he became familiar with ideas promoted by

Henryk Jordan Henryk Jordan (23 July 1842 in Przemyśl – 16 May 1907 in Kraków) was a Polish philanthropist, physician and pioneer of physical education. A professor of obstetrics from 1895 at Kraków's Jagiellonian University, Jordan became best known for o ...

. In 1896, after graduation, he returned to Lwów where became a gym teacher at the local 4th high school. Soon afterwards, he founded first sports teams for students and in 1904 he opened ''Sports-Gymnastic Club of the 4th High School'', which three years later took on the name

Pogoń Lwów LKS Pogoń Lwów is a former Polish professional sports club which was located in Lwów, Lwów Voivodeship (now Lviv in Ukraine), and existed from 1904 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It was the second oldest Polish football club beh ...

, becoming one of the most popular sports organizations in the history of Poland. Piasecki was the first director of the club, keeping the post until 1909, when he took up the job of a lecturer at the University of Jan Kazimierz. In 1912 Piasecki, together with Mieczyslaw Schreiber, published one of the first Polish handbooks of scouting titled ''Harce mlodziezy polskiej'' (''Games of Polish youth''). He wrote that a scout should cultivate national traditions together with emphasis on physical development. Piasecki made up several terms which are until today used in Polish scouting (''harcmistrz'', ''harcerz'', ''zastep''). During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

he moved to Kiev, where lectured hygiene in local Polish University Collegium. In 1919 he returned to Poland and settled in

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

, where became a professor of the Poznań University, teaching theory of physical education and school hygiene. Piasecki also was an expert diplomat, co-working with the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

. He died shortly after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. His son Stanisław Piasecki was a prominent pre-War Polish right-wing writer. Who was often criticized for holding anti-Semitic views despite being of partial Jewish descent (his mother, Gizela, being born Jewish but later converting to Catholicism when she married Eugeniusz). Stanisław Piasecki later recanted his antisemitic views before his own murder, alongside many other Polish Catholics and Jews, at the hands of the Germans. Stanisław was killed during the

Palmiry massacre The Palmiry massacre was a series of mass executions carried out by Nazi German forces, during World War II, near the village of Palmiry in the Kampinos Forest northwest of Warsaw. Massacres Between December 1939 and July 1941 more than 1700 ...

as part of the German

AB-Aktion , location = Palmiry Forest and similar locations in occupied Poland , date = Spring–summer 1940 , incident_type = Mass murder with automatic weapons , perpetrators = Wehrmacht, ''Einsatzgruppen'' , participants = , o ...

in 1941.

Books

* Harce mlodziezy polskiej, * Zasady Wychowania Fizycznego (1904) * Zabawy i gry ruchowe dzieci i mlodziezy, ze zrodel dziejowych i ludoznawczych przewaznie rodzinnych i z tradycji ustnej (1916) * Zarys teorii wychowania fizycznego (1925) * Dzieje wychowania fizycznego (1929)

Sources

* Stanislaw M. Brzozowski, Eugeniusz Piasecki, w: Polski Slownik Biograficzny, tom XXV, 1980 * Mala encyklopedia sportu, Warszawa 1987 {{DEFAULTSORT:Piasecki, Eugeniusz 1872 births 1947 deaths Physicians from Lviv Polish Austro-Hungarians Jagiellonian University alumni