Abraham Gumplowicz created one of the first lending libraries in the Jewish district of Kraków in 1837. Beginning in 1840, he led the group Zur Förderung der Geistigen und Materiellen Interessen der Israeliten (Toward the Advancement of the Spiritual and Material Interests of the Israelites), promoting secular education and religious reform. Gumplowicz was a co-founder of his city’s Tempel (Reform synagogue), and during the period called the Springtime of Nations in 1848, he served on the local council that supported Kraków’s rebellion. During the January uprising of 1863, he was an intermediary for the insurgent National Government, and beginning in 1866 he served as an alderman. His sons;

Dr. Ludwig Gumplowicz

Maxmillian Gumplowicz and his father

In This Photo:
Franciszka Fanny Gumplowicz

Dr. Maksymilian Max Ernest Gumplowicz
Birth:
December 21, 1864
Kraków, Kraków County, Malopolskie, Poland
Death:
November 28, 1897 (32)
Vienna, Wien, Austria

W?adys?aw Gumplowicz, Ludwik’s younger son, was born in Krakow in 1869. He was a doctor who worked as a geographer and journalist. In 1900, he joined the Polish Social Democratic Party and became its ideologue. In 1901, he spent time in an agricultural cooperative community governed by the principles of Fourierism near London; among his publications was Kwestya polska a socyalizm (The Polish Question and Socialism; 1908). From 1919 to 1923, he served at the Polish embassy in Vienna but was dismissed when a rightist coalition took power in Poland. Beginning in 1923, he lectured at the Free Polish University and in the Society of Workers Universities.
Died in Warsaw in 1942