Monument to Professor Stanisław Zuber in Albania

The ceremony, which took place on 17 October 2011, was attended by the President of Albania, Bamir Topi; the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sport, Aldo Bumci; the Polish Ambassador to Tirana, Irena Tatarzyńska; and city officials. The monument was co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The bronze bust was created by the distinguished Albanian sculptor Professor Mumtas Dhrami.

Stanisław Zuber (born 14 October 1883 in Lviv, died in 1947 in Tirana) – a Polish geologist, specialising in the geology of oil deposits, as well as the regional and mineral resources geology of Albania.

He studied in Lviv and Kraków. Whilst still a student, he published his first academic paper in 1914. In the spring of 1915, following the occupation of Lviv, he was deported deep into Russia. He settled in Baku, where he found employment as a geologist with a Polish oil company. He worked there from 1915 to 1923. He explored for oil deposits in the Eastern Caucasus and in the south-eastern part of the Caspian Sea, in the Baku region. He also studied, amongst other things, mud volcanoes. He published the results of his work in the USSR and in Poland upon his return in 1923. In 1924, he defended his doctoral thesis on mud volcanoes in Lviv. At the 14th International Geological Congress in Madrid in 1926, he presented his research on the geology of oil deposits in the Ponto-Caspian regions, mud volcanoes and the Carpathian flysch.

That same year, at an international oil conference in Bucharest, he gave a presentation on the migration of crude oil. Representatives of oil firms and companies present at the conference recognised Zuber as a talented geologist. As a result, the head of the Italian delegation, Senator and industrialist Puppini, signed an employment contract with him at the oil company AIPA (Azienda Italiana Petroli Albania) to carry out exploration work in Albania, Italy and Montenegro. After obtaining his habilitation at the Jagiellonian University in 1927, Zuber travelled to Italy, from where he went on to Albania, where he took up the post of chief geologist at AIPA, based in the town of Kuçova (Kuczowa).

He surveyed the Kuçova-Lushnja, Murriz-Pekisht and Patos-Cakran-Selenica areas. He sent the results of the surveys carried out in the Italian concession areas to Rome. Among other things, he was optimistic about the prospects of discovering oil- and gas-bearing areas in southern Albania, which were soon confirmed by drilling. Thanks to his efforts, Albania now has two centres of the oil industry: Kuçova and Patos. The oil fields at Kuçova proved to be so large that they supplied Italy with fuel during the Second World War.

Until 1935, Professor Zuber frequently travelled to Poland, where he was awarded the title of ‘docent’. At the same time, he conducted geological research in Italy, in the central and southern parts of the Apennine Peninsula, in Sicily and in the vicinity of Naples. He also took part in numerous international conferences and symposia on Earth sciences, particularly concerning the geology of oil deposits (Paris, Washington, Rome, Liège, London, etc.). After 1935, he settled permanently in Albania and devoted himself to studying the country’s geology, particularly the occurrence of crude oil, natural gas, natural bitumen, ore-bearing minerals and drinking water. He also studied Tertiary stratigraphy and tectonics, which laid the foundations for our understanding of the Albanian Neogene. He also produced a tectonic map of Albania at a scale of 1:4,000,000, a geological map of Albania at a scale of 1:200,000 and a mineral map of Albania at a scale of 1:300,000.

He wrote numerous reports, papers and proposals; he also produced numerous geological cross-sections and maps at scales ranging from 1:50,000 down to 1:10,000; the total number of these amounts to 450. Furthermore, the list of publications appearing in various journals around the world comprises 62 titles. After the war, in 1945 and 1946, Stanisław Zuber was treated well by the communist authorities in Albania and faced no obstacles to his work. In 1946, he presented a report – amongst other things – to the Ministry of the Economy on metal ore deposits in eastern and north-eastern Albania, identifying the locations of mines that were subsequently brought into operation in the following decades.

In early June 1947, Zuber was arrested and charged with collaboration, sabotage and espionage. He was tortured in an attempt to extract a confession. He died whilst under investigation in a prison in Tirana. The fact of his death in prison was not known in Albania until April 1991, when the writer and journalist Petro Marko wrote about the case in the magazine *Rilindja Demokratike*.

In 1992, he was posthumously awarded the Albanian ‘Martyr for Democracy’ medal.

In 2011, the Department of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage allocated 12,000 euros, which, through the Polish Embassy in Tirana, was used to fund the construction of a monument to Professor Zuber. The inscription on the monument is bilingual.

In Tirana, there is also a street and a plaque commemorating Stanisław Zuber.