Zbigniew Ewald Tobjański (1932–2015). Communist official, archivist, activist, columnist and regionalist

Abstract

Zbigniew Tobjański was a committed activist in the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (ZHP) and the Union of Polish Youth (ZMP) organizations from an early age. He graduated from the Commercial Technical School in Pabianice. From 1954 he was a member of the Polish United Workers Party and worked in the party apparatus. In 1956–1964 he served as commander of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association district in Łask. In 1972, he defended his master's thesis on Czech settlements in Zelów at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Wroclaw. Since 1972, he was director of the State Archives of the City of Łódź and Łódź Province. From 1977 to 1990, as head, he directed the work of the Archives of the Provincial Committee of the Polish United Workers Party in Sieradz. He received his doctorate in history in 1991 on the basis of a dissertation entitled “Czech Population on Polish Lands in the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries”. It was on his initiative that the Dłutowo Lovers Society was established, of which he was president from 1995–2012. He published articles in the Czech press on Czech settlement in central Poland. He was the author of many studies of a regional nature, particularly on the former Sieradz province and the history of Dłutowo.