Oswald Marian Balzer was an Austro

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

-Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 historian of law and statehood, one of the most renowned Polish historians of his times.

In 1887 he became a professor at the University of Lwów. Between 1895 and 1896 he also briefly served as its rector

Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...

. Since 1891 until his death he was also the director of City Archives in Lwów. In 1888 he was offered a seat in the Polish Academy of Skills, as well as several other scientific societies, both in Poland and abroad. In 1901 he founded the Society for the Support of Polish Science in Lwów (Tow. dla Popierania Nauki Pol. we Lwowie), the first such society in the city, later to be renamed to Lwow Scientific Society

Lwów Scientific Society

Lwów Scientific Society was a Polish scientific society, founded in 1901 in Lwów by Oswald Balzer as Association of Support of Polish Sciences...

(1920).

Among the fields of his studies were the history of Polish statehood and Poland's historical law, as well as the early history of Slavic states.