Tadeusz
Marek-Zakiej

Tadeusz Żakiej (pen names: Tadeusz Marek, Maria Lemnis, and Henryk Vitry) was born in Lviv, then part of Poland, in 1915. He studied musicology at the Conservatory of the Polish Music Society in Lviv, where his professors were Stefania Łobaczewska and Seweryn Barbaga. Żakiej was a musicologist, music critic, poet, and writer, as well as a culinary critic. He founded the quarterly Polish Music/Polnische Musik, published in English and German by the ZAIKS Polish Society of Authors and Composers. Until 1984 Żakiej served as the publication’s editor-in-chief. He wrote numerous books and other publications on music and was an author of radio broadcasts. He wrote about early guitar and lute music (Czytelnik Publishing House, 1952). He also wrote a biography of Franz Schubert (1952) and a book on contemporary Polish music (1945–56), both published by the PWM Edition in Kraków. Żakiej wrote the words for Kantata na pochwałę pracy (Cantata in Praise of Labor), composed by Bolesław Woytowicz in 1949. He also wrote culinary books and articles on food that were published in popular magazines. The writer Erhart Kästner and the music director of Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, Otto Tomek, recommended Żakiej to Peter Nestler, the director of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. In 1971 Żakiej spent four months in West Berlin as a fellow of the Artists-in-Berlin Program. 

Text: Monika Żyła