Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924, in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine, also known as Lemberg in Austro-Hungary), and died July 28, 1998, in Warsaw. His father, a bank manager in the multicultural city of Lwów, ran a middle-class household steeped in Polish traditions (Herbert Sr. served in the Piłsudski Legion, a volunteer army widely credited with ushering in the Polish Republic's sovereignty in 1919). The family's background was Austrian, but some of its members believed that the Herberts fled from England to Poland to escape the persecution of Catholics under Elisabeth I.
Zbigniew was fifteen when the Second World War began. In his adolescence he witnessed the occupation of Lwów by Soviet Russia, then by Nazi Germany, and then again by Soviet Russia. Poles were high on
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Citation: Thompson, Ewa M. . "Zbigniew Herbert". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 February 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2102, accessed 27 November 2024.]
