Eugeniusz Romer was the son of Edmund Romer and Irena Kördvelessy de Asguth. He came from a noble family of German origins that had settled in Poland since the 15th century and had been the heirs of the village of
Bieździedza since the late 16th century. Eugeniusz's grandfather, Henryk, lost the family estate due to his participation in the
November Uprising. His son, Edmund, along with his brother Władysław, took part in the
January Uprising. Later, as a graduate of Vienna's
Theresianum and an Austrian official, he underwent partial Germanization and did not particularly cultivate Polish national traditions in his family home. He was a president of
Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists (1910–11). In final years of the 19th century, he went to
Vienna and
Berlin to broaden his knowledge of glaciology, geology and meteorology. Romer also went to
Lausanne, to study tectonics and morphology. In 1911 he became professor of Lwów University (in 1946 also of Jagiellonian University), later he was named
professor honoris causa at the universities in Lwów,
Poznań and Kraków. In 1952 he became a member of
Polish Academy of Sciences In 1909 Romer went to
Switzerland, to study Alpine glaciers. Next year, he traveled to Asia, and in 1913 to
Alaska, to the
Saint Elias Mountains (where one of glaciers has been named after him). In 1916, while in Vienna, Romer started work on the
Great Statistical and Geographical Atlas of Poland. This atlas, published in Vienna in 1916, was crucial to establishing borders of the
Second Polish Republic. He was a member of the Polish delegation at the
Paris Peace Conference, 1919, helping to draw the western border of Poland. His Ukrainian rival, and the father of Ukrainian geography,
Stepan Rudnytsky, was a fellow student of
Albrecht Penck in Vienna. The second edition of his atlas was published in Lwów and
Warsaw in 1921. In 1921 in Lwów Romer founded
Cartographical Institute. In 1921-24 he led to a merger of two publishing companies
Książnica and
Atlas into
Ksiaznica-Atlas, which was moved to
Wrocław after
World War II. It still exists today. In 1929 he retired, concentrating his activities on the institute. However, he kept close ties with Lwów's Jan Kazimierz University, lecturing and examining. In 1941, when Lwów was captured by the
Germans, he hid in a monastery at Piekarska Street, and
this decision probably saved his life. Soon after, the
Home Army decided to move him to Warsaw, from where he was to be transferred to
England to work as an advisor of the
Polish government-in-exile. However, doctors recommended that Romer should stay in the occupied country, as the journey was too risky for his weak health. Thus, he remained in Warsaw, using the false name Edmund Piotrowski. Romer survived the
Warsaw Uprising and a
camp in Pruszków. After the war, he settled in Kraków, taking the post of director of Department of Geography at the
Jagiellonian University. Since 1899, he had been married to Jadwiga Rossknecht, daughter of co-owner of the
Okocim Brewery. They had two sons: Witold Romer (1900–1967), professor of the
Wrocław University of Technology and Edmund Romer (1904–1988), professor of the
Silesian University of Technology in
Gliwice. Eugeniusz Romer died 1954 in Kraków and was buried at the
Salwator Cemetery. ==Sources==