Adam Mickiewicz

Born on 24 December 1798 in the Russian-occupied remnants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Mickiewicz became a poet when his country no longer existed on any map. His activism earned him five years of exile in central Russia; in 1829 he escaped the empire and never returned. He settled first in Rome, then Paris, where he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France until his entanglement with the mysticism of Andrzej Towiański cost him the position. The poetic drama Dziady and the national epic Pan Tadeusz - along with Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna - became fuel for insurrection across partitioned Polish lands. In 1849 he founded La Tribune des Peuples, writing for democracy and national liberation. He died, likely of cholera, on 26 November 1855 in Istanbul, where he had gone to raise Polish and Jewish forces against Russia in the Crimean War. Thirty-five years later his bones came home to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków.