Anna Radziwiłł

Anna Radziwiłł (born 1939) is a Polish historian, pedagogist, and politician. Former member of the Solidarity movement and Minister of Education of Poland.

She was born April 20, 1939, in the village of Sichów as daughter of "Red Prince" Krzysztof Mikołaj Radziwiłł. In 1961 she graduated from the faculty of history of the Warsaw University. Immediately after graduation she started to work as a school teacher. In 1967 she completed her studies and obtained the title of doctor of humanistic sciences for her study on "Educational ideology of the Sanacja and its reflection in education policies of 1926-1939". Her work was to be published the following year by the PWN, but in 1968, after the anti-intelligentsia campaign of the communist regime, it was banned by the censorship.

She continued to work as a teacher of history and Polish language in various Warsaw-based schools. At the same time she published a number of studies, mostly on history of education in Poland after 1945. Most of them were banned and were published underground, outside of the official system. In 1970's she also started cooperation with various undergrounds opposition newspapers, including Więź, Znak and Res Publica.

After the legalization of the Solidarity movement, Anna Radziwiłł became one of its advisors. As such, she took part in various conferences between the communist authorities and the democratic opposition. The exact effect of these consultations was a reform of history education in Polish schools. For that she was awarded with the Golden Cross of Merit in 1981. However, the reform was finally halted by the introduction of the Martial law in Poland.

In the underground she started her work on various handbooks to Polish 20th century history. Some of them were published by the underground printing presses and were used by, among others, the so-called Flying University. After the democratic reforms of 1989 and the ousting of the communist authoities, Anna Radziwiłł was elected on June 6 to the Senate of Poland. She also assumed the post of a sub-secretary of state in the ministry of education in Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government. In 1992 she resigned her post and returned to university studies. Together with Wojciech Roszkowski she prepared a set of history handbooks for primary schools and lycea (published after 1994), which became the most widely-used history handbooks for the period between 1789 and 1990 in Poland.

In 1998 for her merits she was awarded with Commanders' Cross of the Polonia Restituta medal. In 1999, during the government of the Unia Wolności-AWS coalition, Anna Radziwiłł returned to politics as an advisor to the minister of education. At the same time she became the deputy secretary of the Stefan Batory Foundation. Among her most notable duties was preparation of the reform of education in Poland. In 2001 she gave up that post and retired. However, in 2004 minister Mirosław Sawicki proposed her as the new deputy minister of education of Poland. Prime Minister of Poland Marek Belka accepted her candidature and Anna Radziwiłł returned to public life.