1906–1987
○ Natural causes
A writer who joined Jewish and Catholic memory and organized public remembrance
Born Jewish and later baptized a Catholic, he called himself with the title of his best-known story: 'I am the Jew from the Wedding.'
Roman Brandstaetter was a Polish writer who composed poetry, fiction and drama in Polish and translated the Hebrew Bible and Shakespeare. Born into a Jewish family, he explored Zionism and assimilation, then converted to Catholicism in Rome while retaining Jewish tradition as a living tension in his literature. After the war he settled in Poznań, where he joined biblical imagination to historical memory in major works including the four-volume Jesus of Nazareth. In 1980 he chaired the Social Committee for Construction of the Monument to the Victims of Poznań June 1956, helping organize the workers’ uprising’s passage into public memorial form.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1926Literary debut with poetry and criticism
- 1929–1932Studied in Paris and earned a doctorate in philosophy on Adam Mickiewicz
- 1933–1935Directed the literary section of the Zionist Polish-language journal Opinia
- 1940–1946Worked for the Polish Telegraph Agency in Palestine
- 1947–1948Cultural attaché at the Polish embassy in Rome
- 1948–1950Literary director at the Polish Theatre and Grand Theatre in Poznań
- 1960–1987Worked as a full-time writer in Poznań, translating scripture and writing Jesus of Nazareth
- 1980Chaired the Social Committee for Construction of the Poznań June 1956 Monument
Related historical events
Jewish and Christian traditions in his postwar writing
Brandstaetter’s postwar writing did not treat Jewish and Christian traditions as mutually exclusive inheritances. He was baptized in Rome in 1947–1948, but did not abandon Jewish tradition, a point he repeatedly stressed himself. After settling in Poznań, he wrote biblical works that brought the two traditions into relation through individual experience. His four-part Jesus of Nazareth, published from 1967 to 1973, recounts Christ’s story in a biblical style and with an exegetical approach, reading the Gospels as continuing the tradition of the Old Testament. The crossing of Jewish tradition and Christian faith became a defining literary feature of his postwar work.