Kazimierz Brodziński (Królówka, Galicia 1791 – Dresden 1835), one of the most prominent poets of Polish Romanticism, originated from a szlachta family (Polish petty nobility) and was schooled in Tarnów (Galicia) and Cracow. During the Franco-Austrian War he joined the pro-Napoleonic Army of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and took part in the Russian campaign of 1812 and the hostilities of 1813. Wounded in the Battle of Leipzig and captured by the Prussians, he settled in Warsaw in 1814, where he entered the public service of the Russia-dominated Kingdom of Poland and began to take active part in the city’s cultural and academic life; in the 1820s he was associated in various capacities with the university there.

Brodziński edited several journals, wrote critical articles on literature and theatre, published poetry, and translated opera librettos (Don Giovanni; L’Italiana in Alghero) for the National Theatre (Teatr Narodowy). His idyll Wiesław: Sielanka krakowska (“Wiesław: An idyll from Cracow”, 1820) exemplified the Romantic pastoralism that Brodziński had imbued from his German examples (Herder, Gessner), and that he had advocated in his essays O klasyczności i romantyczności tudzież o duchu poezji polskiej (“On Classicism and Romanticism, or the spirit of Polish poetry”, published in the journal Pamiętnik Warszawski in 1818) and O idylli pod względem moralnym (1823).

In a visit to Prague (as part of a European tour) in 1825, Brodziński established intense contacts with Czech cultural nationalists such as Josef Jungmann, Václav Hanka, and Jan Kollár; in 1831 he participated in the Polish Uprising, supporting the radical faction of the Patriotic Society (Towarzystwo Patriotyczne). On the 3rd May 1831, the 40th anniversary of the Polish-Lithuanian Constitution, and in the full swing of the insurrectionary events, he gave (and published) a seminal lecture to the Warsaw Society of the Friends of Science (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk), O narodowości Polaków (“On the Nationality of the Poles”). After the rising’s repression he spent his remaining years in Warsaw, writing his memoirs in 1833, Wspomnienia mojej młodości, “Memoirs of My Youth”, first published in 1844.