Hubert Orłowski

Hubert Orłowski was born on 22 May 1937 in Podlejki (German: Podleiken), a village near Gietrzwałd (Dietrichswalde) in the Osterode district of East Prussia, in the region of Warmia. His parents were Alois Orłowski and Monika Orłowski, née Preylowski. The region passed to Poland after the Second World War, and his former school later recalled that he remembered the years of no man's land that followed. He attended a Polish primary school, passed his matura and went to Poznań to study German philology at Adam Mickiewicz University, graduating in 1961.

Orłowski stayed at Adam Mickiewicz University for the rest of his academic career. He received his doctorate in 1967 with work on Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, completed his habilitation in 1971, became an associate professor in 1977 and a full professor in 1987. He served as prorector and prodean and led the Institute of German Philology for many years. He was also a professor at the Institute for Western Affairs in Poznań.

He held Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowships in West Germany in 1976 and 1977 and again in 1980, lectured as a guest professor at the University of Kiel in 1984 and 1985 and at the University of Graz in 1987 and 1988, and taught at more than twenty universities in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

His research focused on German literature and culture, especially under National Socialism, together with narrative theory, historical semantics, stereotype research and Polish German literary relations. His books included Literatura w III Rzeszy (1975), Polnisches Schrifttum unter Zensur (1988), Polnische Wirtschaft: Zum deutschen Polendiskurs der Neuzeit (1996), Die Lesbarkeit von Stereotypen (2004) and, with Andreas Lawaty, Deutsche und Polen: Geschichte, Kultur, Politik (2006). With Christoph Kleßmann he co-edited the Poznań German Library, a series of Polish translations of German thinkers including Norbert Elias, Walter Benjamin and Gottfried Benn, which won the Literatura na Świecie award in 2001.

He became a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2002 and a full member in 2010, sat on the council of the Borussia Foundation from 2006, served as vice chairman of the scientific council of the Academy's Centre for Historical Research in Berlin and was a member of the jury of the Jerzy Giedroyc Prize. From 2007 to 2025 he was rector of the Samuel Bogumił Linde School of Foreign Languages in Poznań.

Although he made his life and career in Poznań, Orłowski remained deeply tied to Warmia, which he called his small homeland and the homeland of his ancestors. He wrote about it in Warmia z oddali, a book of recollections of Podlejki and the prewar region, and in Rzecz o dobrach symbolicznych, a study of the 1877 Marian apparitions at Gietrzwałd, and he wrote on the German literature of East Prussia in Za górami, za lasami. Colleagues at the Linde school remembered him as a demanding but effective teacher of human relations and a brilliant lecturer who took great care over the Polish language.

Hubert Orłowski died on Thursday 12 November 2026, aged 89. The cause of death has not been made public. His death was announced on 13 November by the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn and by the Institute of German Philology at Adam Mickiewicz University, and tributes followed from the Samuel Bogumił Linde School of Foreign Languages, the Wojciech Kętrzyński Northern Institute in Olsztyn and the Kętrzyński Scientific Society. His farewell and funeral were announced for Tuesday 17 November 2026 at 10:00 at the cemetery chapel in Skórzewo, near Poznań.

Orłowski is remembered as one of Poland's leading Germanists and a key figure in postwar Polish German intellectual dialogue. His work on the stereotype of Polnische Wirtschaft became a standard reference on how Germans have imagined Poland, and the translations he edited introduced major German thinkers to Polish readers. He trained more than twenty doctoral students, and his Poznań colleagues described him as a master, teacher, friend and mentor to many generations of Germanists. In Warmia he was honoured as a scholar who kept the memory of the region's complex past alive, receiving the Wojciech Kętrzyński Warmia and Mazury Humanities Award in 2014.