Jadwiga Maurer
Jadwiga Maurer, Professor Emerita of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas and long-time Lawrence resident, died on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 in Urbana, IL.
Jadwiga Maurer (née Graubard) was born in 1930 in the town of Kielce, Poland. She and her parents survived the Holocaust during World War II, by hiding under false identity papers that labeled them "Aryan." Moving frequently around Poland during the War, in the spring of 1944, she and her parents fled to Slovakia, where Jadwiga spent the last years of the war in a Franciscan convent school. After the war the family returned to Poland briefly and then emigrated to Munich, Germany in 1946. In Munich Jadwiga completed her education at the Ludwig-Maximilian University, defending her doctoral dissertation on Polish linguistics in 1955. She had already met her husband Warren Maurer in 1953, while he was studying in Germany on a fellowship from the University of Chicago.
The couple married in 1956 and later moved to Berkeley, California, where Jadwiga Maurer taught Polish language and literature as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The couple took faculty positions at Indiana University in 1965 and moved to Lawrence in 1968, where both of them came to teach at the University of Kansas. Jadwiga Maurer retired from KU in 2001.
In her thirty-year career at KU, Professor Maurer taught a wide range of courses in Polish language and literature. The pinnacle of her scholarly career was her groundbreaking 1990 study 'Of an Alien Mother' – Sketches on the Ties of Adam Mickiewicz with the Jewish World. This book offered a new interpretation of Adam Mickiewicz, the national poet of Poland. Starting with the likelihood that Mickiewicz's mother was a descendant of converted Jews, Professor Maurer probed the significance of these Jewish roots to Mickiewicz's fashioning of his life and art.
In addition to scholarly studies, Professor Maurer wrote fiction, publishing numerous semi-autobiographical stories in Polish dealing with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Her last collection of stories, The Doubles appeared in 2002. Jadwiga's stories have earned critics' praise and become the topic of scholarly investigations.
Professor Jadwiga Maurer is survived by her husband Warren, her son Stephen and her daughter Elizabeth.
Please sign this guestbook at Obituaries.LJWorld.com.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Jadwigo, wiem ze jestes gdzies tam i pamietasz ze: "My jestesmy z Kielc! Co tam globalizacja!"
Dziekuje ze pomoglas mi osadzic sie w swiecie jako kielczanka wlasnie. Zawsze bede Cie pamietac!
Magdalena J. Zaborowska
Friend
October 20, 2022
Jadwiga was a wonderful friend and fellow "Kielczanka" with whom I found immediate rapport when we first met ... back in the last century. I was lucky enough to know her for quite a few years and to interact at professional meetings and socially. I trained a Ph.D. student, Justine Pas, who wrote her dissertation on Jadwiga's fiction. Jadwiga's brilliant work and spirit live on. I will never forget her.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska
Friend
October 20, 2021
It's difficult to believe that Jadwiga Maurer, an enormously gifted writer and a great scholar, teacher, and mentor, is no longer with us. But I remind myself in this difficult time that her creative and scholarly work lives on. I am sending my deepest sympathy to Jadwiga's family.
Halina Filipowicz
November 5, 2012
I had the honor of speaking with Jadwiga about her amazing short stories. She was generous, patient, and candid. She had a sincere interest in mentoring young scholars and sharing her perspective on being a woman in academia. She shall be missed.
Justine Pas
November 2, 2012
Our deepest sympathy.
Jerzy & Slawa Grzymala-Busse
October 30, 2012
I greatly regret Jadwiga's passing. She was not only a respected writer, but also a most important member of KU's Slavic Dept.
Anna Cienciala
October 29, 2012
Her death was met with very great sadness.
Irena Grudzinska-Gross
October 29, 2012
We are deeply saddened by her death. Her remarkable contribution to the literary studies, and to the Holocaust literature is yet to be reassessed.
In her narrative prose, she left a profound testimony of her "lost generation".
With condolences to her family,
Anna Frajlich and Wladyslaw Zajac
Anna Frajlich-Zajac
October 29, 2012
I'm very saddened by Jadwiga's passing. We both come from Kielce, and I am grateful for all that she has done to rejuvenate Jewish culture of her native region, to foster dialogue and healing through her writing. Her legacy lives on.
Magdalena Zaborowska
October 29, 2012
I was very saddened to learn of Jadwiga's death. I remember the many years when I would see her walking the rather long route from her home to the University.
Jane Frydman
October 29, 2012
Professor Jadwiga Maurer was a remarkable woman,
friend, and scholar. She will be missed but remembered
always through her most inspirational and beautiful stories.
With our deepest sympathy to her family,
Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, Tyrone and Dominique Duncan
Bozenna Pasik-Duncan
October 26, 2012
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