Among the Poles who associated their lives with Bucharest, Lucjan Skupiewski (1876-1949) holds a special place. A doctor by training and a politician and social activist by avocation, he lived almost all his life in the Romanian capital of the first half of the 20th century and belonged to the local social elite. It is fortunate that his last house, located in the villa district of Aviatorilor, has been preserved.

From Warsaw to Bucharest
. The Skupiewski family originated from Mazovia. Lucjan's father, Józef Skupiewski (1846-1910), graduated in law from the Warsaw Main School in 1868. For the next few years he worked in his profession in Warsaw, but shortly after Lucjan's birth (1876), for reasons that are not entirely clear, he went into exile in France and Belgium. It is known that he worked there as a journalist for French-language newspapers and in this capacity he settled in Romania in 1885.

The employment of a Polish journalist in a French-language Bucharest newspaper was not unusual at the time - it was a period of intensive construction of the young Romanian state, where specialists were drawn from all over Europe. This also applied to the modern press, and among the leading Romanian journalists of the era were many foreigners, mostly French and Italians. It is worth mentioning that shortly after Skupiewski, the cartoonist Witold Piekarski, considered one of the better caricaturists publishing in the Romanian press before the First World War, also settled in Bucharest.

From the beginning of his stay in the country, Jozef Skupiewski was associated with the National Liberal Party (Partidul Național-Liberal), a grouping that dominated the Romanian public scene from the 1870s until the 1930s. He took an active part in the turbulent political life of the Danube monarchy at the turn of the 20th century. He was not inferior to local politicians in terms of temperament and was often in the limelight due to duels or scandals caused by his sharp journalism against liberal opponents.

Romanian doctor and politician
Although Polish was spoken in the Skupiewski household, both father and son were Romanian citizens, and their social and professional lives took place in the reality of Bucharest at the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Lucjan Skupiewski graduated from Bucharest's prestigious Gheorghe Lazăr Lyceum, and received his doctorate in medicine from the local university in 1902. His main speciality was gynaecology, but he also practised as a surgeon. In his public activities, he often dealt with public health issues, combating infectious diseases or alcoholism.

From 1914 onwards, he took an active part in political life, like his father in the ranks of the Liberal party. He was elected several times to the Bucharest city council (serving as deputy mayor of the city, among other positions) and the Romanian parliament (mainly to the senate in the 1930s). In the interwar period, Skupiewski was a prominent figure in Bucharest's political and social world, as evidenced by his good relations with the royal court and his role as a confidential liaison officer with, among others, Józef Piłsudski and Ignacy Mościcki.

Lucjan Skupiewski lived in a turbulent era for Romania. He was a subject of four kings, lived through the Second World War and the dictatorship of Marshal Antonescu, and spent the last years of his life under Communist rule. He died in 1949 and his body was cremated in Bucharest's Cenușa (Ashes) crematorium. Lucjan Skupiewski's symbolic grave is located in the family quarters at Bellu Cemetery, the oldest and most important necropolis in the Romanian capital.

Ties to Poland
The Skupiewski family was an exception compared to other Polish families settled in Bucharest and making a career in Romanian institutions. Usually, already the representatives of the first generation that grew up on Romanian soil were reluctant to speak Polish or to refer to Polish origins. This was partly due to the natural assimilation processes and partly to the model of Romanian patriotism dominant since the beginning of the 20th century, averse to the influx of strangers and generally disallowing the formula of the Romanian patriot of foreign nationality.

The Skupiewski household spoke Polish, and Lucjan's first wife, Zofia, was Polish, the daughter of the painter Tadeusz Ajdukiewicz, who worked for a short time in Bucharest (known from this period are, among other things, his portraits of the royal couple and a series of paintings depicting silhouettes of soldiers in the Romanian army). However, the marriage broke up after a few years and Skupiewski later married a Romanian woman, Elena Laptev.

Already a well-known doctor and politician in Romania, Skupiewski did not deny his Polish origins. He took part in the life of Bucharest's Polish community, took an interest in the situation in the reborn Republic, and travelled there several times. He also enjoyed the trust of Józef Piłsudski, whom he met on three visits to Romania (1922, 1928 and 1931). Interestingly, their last meeting probably took place in autumn 1934, during Piłsudski's holiday spent in Moszczanica near Żywiec. The only evidence of this meeting is a photograph from the NAC collection, but the reason why Skupiewski came to Moszczanica from Romania is not fully known.

It is also worth mentioning the fate of Kornelia, the only daughter of Lucjan and Zofia Skupiewski. After her parents' divorce, she left for Poland, where she married cavalry colonel Wincenty Jasiewicz, the long-time commander of the 2nd Grochów Lancers Regiment. Col Jasiewicz fell seriously ill shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and left for Bucharest for treatment under the care of his father-in-law. He died there in 1941 and was buried in the Bellu cemetery in the Skupiewski family quarters. Kornelia and her children happily survived the war and died in 1965 in Warsaw.

House at 6 Grigore Mora Street
Dr Lucjan Skupiewski lived in several places in Bucharest during his life. In addition, as a wealthy man, he owned summer houses, including in Sinaia in the Carpathian Mountains and in Techirghiol on the Black Sea.

His last place of residence in Bucharest was a house at 6 Grigore Mora Street, located in the prestigious Aviatorilor district, known for a number of villas and diplomatic representations (nearby is, among others, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Bucharest, operating in the same building since 1928). Unfortunately, little is known about the circumstances of the building itself and its architect. It is a typical urban villa, dating from the turn of the 20th century and built in the so-called Romanian national style. Lucjan Skupiewski bought the house in 1933 and lived there for the rest of his life.