Szymon Askenazy was a 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, diplomat and politician, founder of the Askenazy school

Askenazy school

The Askenazy school was an informal group of Polish historians formed in the early 20th century under the influence of Szymon Askenazy in the University of Lwow and Warsaw University.In the 19th century, most history studies in Poland were focused mainly...

.

Starting in 1902, he served as a professor at the University of Lwów. In 1909 he was inducted into the Polish Academy of Learning

Polish Academy of Learning

The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences or Polish Academy of Learning , headquartered in Kraków, is one of two institutions in contemporary Poland having the nature of an academy of sciences....

 (Polska Akademia Umiejętności). After Poland regained independence, Askenazy was chosen to be the first Polish representative at the League of Nations

League of Nations

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

 (1920-23), but was forced to resign because of an anti-Semitic campaign against him

In his studies, he focused chiefly on Poland's political and economic history in the 18th and 19th centuries and thus laid the foundations for the Lwów-Warsaw School of History (also known as the "Askenazy school"). He was the first historian to emphasize the Partitions

Partitions of Poland

The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...

period as crucially important to the creation of the modern Polish nation.

Askenazy's idea of describing a nation's history through its social and economic development as well as its international and diplomatic backdrop remains influential in modern Polish historical studies.

Works

• Ministeryum Wielhorskiego 1815-1816 : dodatek 1812-1813-1814 (1898)
• Wczasy historyczne Tom 1 (1902) Tom 2 (1904)
• Sto lat zarządu w Królestwie Polskiem : 1800-1900 (1903)
• Uniwersytet Warszawski (1905)
• Łukasiński Tom 1 (1908) Tom 2 (1908)
• Dwa stulecia : XVIII i XIX : badania i przyczynki Tom 1 (1901) Tom 2 (1910)
• Przymierze polsko-pruskie (1918)
• Nauka uniwersytecka a kolejność studjów w uniwersyteckiej nauce prawa (1921)
• Książę Józef Poniatowski 1763-1813 (1922)
• Gdańsk a Polska (1923)
• Uwagi (1924)
• Szkice i portrety (1937)