Tadeusz Sulimirski

Tadeusz Sulimirski (1 April 1898 – 20 June 1983) was a Polish historian and archaeologist, who emigrated to the United Kingdom soon after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. He is best known for his works on the ancient Sarmatians.

He studied in Lwow University (now Lviv, Ukraine), where he received his doctorate for his work in prehistory and anthropology. He was a lecturer of prehistory in Lwow University from 1933 to 1936, and then became professor of prehistoric archaeology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939 he left Poland and went into exile to the United Kingdom, where in 1941 he became secretary general in the Ministry of Education of the Polish government in exile. In that position he wrote a number of geopolitical propaganda articles calling for the expansion of Poland to the west through the annexation of German territory lying east of the Oder River, on the grounds that in early medieval times those territories had been part of the early Polish state.

From 1958 he was professor of Central and Eastern European archaeology in the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London. He gave lectures and seminars in many European countries in 1952-1965, and in a number of United States universities during a tour in 1968-1969. He continued to travel and lecture after retirement.

Professor Sulimirski died on 20 April 1983. He was survived by his wife, Olga Sulimirski; five children, Felicia Janiszewska (Boba), Maria Romanowska (Ninia), Witold Sulimirski, Karol (Charles) Sulimirski, Jerzy (George) Sulimirski; 15 grandchildren, including Witold's children, Ela (Landegger), Adam and Edward; and Karol's children, Roger, Mark and Renata (Weiss); and, numerous great grandchildren.

• Society of Antiquaries of London
• Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
• Polskie Towarzystwo Archeologiczne i Numizmatyczne
• Prehistoric Society London-Cambridge

Tadeusz Sulimirski is best known for his seminal work on the Sarmatians:

• The Sarmatians (vol. 73 in series "Ancient People and Places") London: Thames & Hudson, 1970. (Also published in the USA by Praeger, and translated into Polish in 1979.)

He contributed to many international journals and encyclopedic works, and also wrote a number of publications on central and eastern European prehistory, mainly in Polish:

• Kultura wysocka, 1931,
• Polska przedhistoryczna, vol. 1 (1955), vol. 2 (1959) - on Prehistoric Poland

During the Second World War, he published the geopolitical propaganda work Poland and Germany: Past and Future, (London and Edinburgh, West-Slavonic Bulletin, 1942)