Born in Kraków on the 30th of September, 1849, into a bourgeois family. Having completed his secondary school in 1867, he took up studies at the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University, where he attended the lectures of, for instance, Antoni Zygmunt Helcel, Julian Szujski, or Julian Dunajewski, familiarizing himself with the views of the representatives of the ‘Kraków historical school’ and of the Conservative ‘Stańczycy’ circle. He qualified himself as assistant professor at the age of just twenty-four, and in 1877 became an associate professor of Polish and German law. His most famous work - Dzieje Polski w zarysie – was published two years later. This historical synthesis, repeatedly supplemented later on, almost instantly won Bobrzyński great fame in the scientific circles but also provoked bitter controversies on account of the criticism of the system of government of the Polish Commonwealth it comprised. Bobrzyński would particularly highlight the weaknesses resulting from the comparatively weak royal authority and the nobility’s proneness to anarchy. His academic career was combined with political activity: in 1889 he was elected to the Diet of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and to the Imperial Council of Austria, and in 1890-1901 he was the deputy chairman of the National School Council. After the assassination of the Governor-general of Galicia, Count Andrzej Potocki, by a Ukrainian student, Bobrzyński assumed the vacant office in 1908. However, he resigned from it five years later, as a result of the political struggle regarding the reform of electoral law and under pressure from the hostile Church hierarchy. During the First World War he held the post of Minister for Galicia for a short space (1916/17), being bound to the political line pursued by the Vienna government until the fall of the Austria-Hungary. After the year 1918 he did not resume his academic career. In 1919 he presided over the Questionnaire for the Assessment of Constitution Drafts and was a co-author and chief designer of one of the most interesting projects. Towards the end of his life he retired from active political life; not only due to his age, but also because of the fact that he considered Piłsudski’s regime illegitimate. Bobrzyński died in Poznań on the 3rd of July, 1935. His main works include Dzieje Polski w zarysie (Warsaw, 1879); W imię prawdy dziejowej. Rzecz o zadaniu historii i dzisiejszym jej stanowisku (Warsaw, 1879); Dialog o zasadach i kompromisach (Kraków, 1916); Wskrzeszenie państwa polskiego. Szkice i studia historyczne (vol. 1: 1914-1918, Kraków, 1920; vol. 2: 1918-1923, Kraków, 1925); Szkice i studia historyczne (2 vol., Kraków, 1922), and Z moich pamiętników (Wrocław, 1957).
