Halychyna's capital city plays key role in molding luminaries (10/08/06)

Halychyna's capital city plays key role in molding luminaries

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - Halychyna's capital city of Lviv played a key role in molding some of the most influential people in history and contributors to humanity.

Of the many notable people who have ties to the city, few were actually born there.

Most either arrived in their childhood and then developed their talents, or came to the city to pursue their higher education, some of them subsequently establishing their careers there.

Always a hub of Ukrainian intellectualism, Lviv also served as the launching pad for the nation's greatest leaders, including its first president, Mykhailo Hrushevsky.

Ukraine's most prolific author, Ivan Franko, spent much of his creative life in Lviv, and the city formed some of the nation's greatest spiritual leaders, including Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky.

Lviv served as the childhood incubator for internationally renowned musicians, such as Artur Rodzinski, a U.S. conductor of Polish descent, and opera singer Solomiia Krushelnytska, who blossomed into an international star in Lviv.

REARED IN LVIV

Patriarch Lubomyr Husar

The current leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was born in Lviv on February 26, 1933, where he would spend the first 11 years of his life. Anticipating persecution under Soviet communism, the Husar family fled to Salzburg, Austria, before eventually settling in the U.S.

It would be another half-century before Bishop Husar would be able to return to his native Lviv, leading the Studite monks to resettle in Ukraine in 1992. Four years later he was named auxiliary bishop to Major Archbishop Myroslav Lubachivsky.

On January 28, 2001, Bishop Husar was enthroned as major archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. The same day, Pope John Paul II announced his designation as cardinal.

Solomea Pavlychko

Lviv helped to cultivate Solomea Pavlychko, who emerged as a leading intellectual, feminist and literary critic of her generation. Born on December 15, 1958, Ms. Pavlychko lived in Lviv until leaving for Kyiv to pursue her undergraduate studies at Shevchenko State University.

Ms. Pavlychko eventually earned a doctorate in philosophy and taught at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. She authored five scholarly books and translated numerous works into Ukrainian, including William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" and H.D. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover."

After the Soviet Union's collapse, she taught literature at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Ms. Pavlychko had been an advocate of Western values and Ukraine's adoption of European values.

She drowned on December 31, 1999, in Kyiv.

Artur Rodzinski

Among the world's many musical talents to have developed their skills in Lviv was Artur Rodzinski, the director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra between 1943 and 1947, who was of Polish descent.

Born in Croatia on January 1, 1892, Mr. Rodzinski's family soon afterwards immigrated to Lviv, where the young boy would spend his childhood learning piano.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the family moved to Vienna, where Mr. Rodzinski continued his law studies and enrolled in the Vienna Academy of Music. At the war's end, Mr. Rodzinski returned to Lviv in order to begin his career in music.

He conducted the pit orchestra at the Lviv Opera House, where he made his debut directing Verdi's "Ernani." In 1920 he began directing at the Grand Theater in Warsaw.

Between 1925 and 1929, Mr. Rodzinski worked with Leopold Stokowski, who eventually became conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1929, Mr. Rodzinski moved to California to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Later he conducted the Cleveland Orchestra. He died in 1958.

Sviatoslav Vakarchuk

Lviv cultivated Ukraine's current most influential pop culture star, Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, lead singer of the rock band Okean Elzy. Born on May 14, 1975, in Mukachiv, Zakarpattia Oblast, Mr. Vakarchuk earned two degrees from Ivan Franko University in Lviv in theoretical physics and international economics.

Mr. Vakarchuk is not shy about his love for Lviv and what he has described as an idyllic childhood growing up there, noting "I don't have any unpleasant memories of Lviv."

During the city's 750-year anniversary celebration on September 29, Mr. Vakarchuk announced his desire to finance the establishment of a Lviv monument to Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk. Mr. Vakarchuk is active in Ukrainian cultural life and finances many efforts promoting the culture and language.

MADE THEIR MARK IN LVIV

Ivan Franko

Perhaps no one individual more symbolizes the city of Lviv than Ukraine's most prolific writer, Ivan Franko. Born on August 27, 1856, and reared in the village of Nahuyevychi in the Lviv Oblast, Franko began his studies at Lviv University in 1875 after graduating from the Drohobych Gymnasium.

Immediately, Franko became a Lviv fixture, where he became a socialist activist organizing workers. After just two years of studying in Lviv, Austrian authorities arrested him for his radical views. He was arrested a second time in 1880 and then prohibited from the university that would one day bear his name.

In 1894 Franko became a lecturer on Ukrainian literature at Lviv University, but was denied the department's chairmanship for his political views.

In 1902 students and activists bought Franko a home in Lviv, embarrassed that he was living in poverty. He lived there for the remaining 14 years of his life. The house is now the site of the Ivan Franko Museum. He died on May 28, 1916.

Mykhailo Hrushevsky

It's only natural that Lviv served to cultivate Ukraine's first president, Mykhailo Hrushevsky.

Born on June 29, 1866, in Kholm (now in Poland), Hrushevsky traveled throughout his childhood with his parents. It was only after he earned his master's degree from the University of Kyiv that he settled in Lviv.

In 1894 Hrushevsky became director of the Historical-Philosophical Section of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Four years later Hrushevsky published in Lviv the first of 10 volumes of the History of Ukraine-Rus', the first major synthesis of Ukrainian history and one that presented Ukrainians as a distinct nation from Russia with its roots dating back to Kyivan Rus'.

The next year, Hrushevsky joined Franko in forming the National Democratic Party. He left Lviv six years later to pursue political activity.

On April 19, 1917, Hrushevsky was elected chairman of the Central Rada, which became the revolutionary Parliament of Ukraine. On April 29, 1918, he was elected president of the Ukrainian National Republic.

During the Stalinist purges, he was persecuted and exiled for his nationalist views. He died in 1934 in Kislovodsk, Russia.

Solomiia Krushelnytska

Although she spent many years traveling and performing throughout the world, opera star Solomiya Krushelnytska always considered Lviv her home. Born on September 23, 1872, in the village of Biliavyntsi in the Ternopil Oblast, Ms. Krushelnytska's exceptional vocal abilities were immediately apparent and she began performing at age 11.

In 1891 she began her studies at the Lviv Conservatory, which she completed two years later. During this time, Krushelnytska made her first solo performance, executing the lead vocal in Handel's "Messiah." By 1894 she was drawing her own audiences at the Lviv Opera House.

Krushelnytska's talent brought her worldwide fame, and she performed in Italy, France, Egypt and Argentina. During her more than 35 years of performing, she remained active in Ukrainian cultural life and consistently performed in Ukrainian cities.

After living in Italy for 40 years, Krushelnytska decided to permanently settle in Lviv in 1939 after her Italian husband died.

She became a professor at the Lysenko State Conservatory and began teaching there in 1944. She died on November 16, 1952, and was buried next to her friend, Ivan Franko, in the Lychakiv Cemetery.

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky

Among the greatest contributors to Lviv religious and cultural life was Andrey Sheptytysky, the eighth metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. A native of the village of Prylbychi in the Lviv Oblast, he was born on July 29, 1865. Sheptytsky studied in Poland and was ordained as a Ukrainian Catholic priest in 1892 in Peremytshl. He arrived in Lviv in 1896 to lead the St. Onufriy Monastery. Just over four years later he was enthroned as metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Sheptytsky's tenure as metropolitan (1901-1944) brought enormous cultural gains to western Ukraine. In 1901 he founded the first of several communities of Studite monks in the Lviv Oblast. In 1905 he founded the Ukrainian National Museum in Lviv. In 1928 he founded the Lviv Theological Academy, the only Ukrainian institution of higher education in western Ukraine at the time.

He was also a political leader who spoke out in support of Ukrainian rights in Halychyna and for national rights and the self-determination of Ukraine.

| Home Page |