Samuel (Stanislaw, Stan) Czamański
- Born on: 23.11.1918
- Birthplace: Lodz (Łódź),
- Category: Diploma program
- Right of domicile: Lodz (Łódź),
The English version is based on a translation by artificial intelligence. The authentic version is the German version.
According to Jewish tradition in Poland, Stanislaw Czamański received, in addition to his 'civilian' first name, the Hebrew name of a deceased relative: Samuel. With this first name, he was recorded in the documents of the Viennese authorities. However, in his later academic career, he became known by his 'civilian' first name Stanislaw (or Stan).
In his birthplace Łódź, Czamański attended the gymnasium. Subsequently, he studied textile technology at the Federal Institute for Textile Industry in Vienna (1936-1938), which had been founded in 1758 by Empress Maria Theresa as the k.k. Commercial Drawing Academy.
At the University for World Trade, Stanislaw Czamański enrolled for the winter semester 1936/37. Here he received his certificate for the First (general) examination in February 1938. As a Jew, he had to abandon his studies after the 'Anschluss' of Austria; he was deregistered from the university on July 21, 1938. He had already deregistered from his apartment at Alserbachstraße 1/3/8 (9th district of Vienna) on March 14, 1938, to flee to Switzerland - just two days after the Wehrmacht's invasion of Austria.
In exile, he continued his education. At the University of Geneva, he completed a degree in economics (1938-1940), and at the Hebrew University, founded in 1918 with the involvement of Albert Einstein in Jerusalem, he studied philosophy (1940-1941). During World War II, Czamański undertook two important jobs: he fought against the Nazi regime in the Polish army, and in Palestine, he participated in the establishment of an area that became one of the preferred target countries for Jewish exiles, particularly as a result of the persecution and annihilation of the Jewish population by the 'Greater German Reich'.
After the end of World War II, Stan Czamański was initially involved in the reconstruction in Łódź. Here, he taught at the Central School for Planning and Statistics (Szkola Glowna Planowania i Statystyki) between 1948 and 1957 and worked for the municipal and regional planning commission of Łódź from 1951 to 1957. In 1958, he took over as Production Manager the head of the planning department at the company ATA Textile Co., Ltd., based in Haifa, which he held until 1961. The company was founded in 1934 by Erich Moller and his cousin Hans Moller, two scions of a Jewish industrial family based in Bohemia; Hans Moller is known to have emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Palestine a year earlier (Institute for Contemporary History Munich/Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration [Hrsg.] 1980, p. 506).
In 1961, Stanislaw Czamański moved to the USA. To adapt his 'civilian' first name to American usage, he shortened 'Stanislaw' to 'Stan'.
In the United States, as well as in Israel and other countries, Stan was active at several universities as well as in extracurricular organizations dealing with regional planning. At the University of Pennsylvania, he began a doctoral program in 1963 as part of a Harrison Fellowship. Two years later, he completed his doctorate in the young discipline of regional science. Czamański then worked as an assistant professor at the same university for several years. From 1966, Czamański was program director at the Institute of Public Affairs at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada); he held this position for ten years. In the same year, he was appointed associate professor for urban and regional planning at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York); in 1970, he was promoted to full professor; in 1988 he was emeritus. Also noteworthy are a research professorship he held at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) in 1968, as well as teaching activities at the University of Pittsburgh (1966), the University of Puerto Rico (1966), Florida State University (Tallahassee, 1971/72), Florida International University in Miami (1983 and from 1991), and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton (1983), the University of Tel Aviv (1972), the Hebrew University (1982-1988), where he had already studied during the war, and the University of Haifa (1987/88). Since 1958, he was associated with the Technion, the Technical University of Israel in Haifa, and between 1957 and 1983, he was involved multiple times at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). In 1985, he was a visiting professor at the University of Aix-Marseille (France), and in 1989 he taught at various universities in Indonesia.
In addition to his university career, he was active in regional science. Stanislaw Czamański served as an advisor to the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency in 1964/65. In 1978/79, he was Deputy Director of the United Nations Center for Regional Development for Asia based in Nagoya (Japan). Czamański was one of the founding members of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA). He joined the Regional Science Association (now Regional Science Association International, RSAI), which was founded five years earlier, in 1959. From 1974/75, he served as president of the international Regional Science Association, and from 1985 to 1987, he chaired the Israeli section of this society. His memberships also connected him with the American Economic Association (since 1962) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (since 1983). In addition, Czamański advised the World Bank, the Settlement Study Center in Rechovot (Israel), several American municipalities and states, as well as the governments of Canada (1968-69), Iran (1973/74), and Brazil. He also served as a regional science advisor to economic enterprises and public and semi-public organizations in the Mediterranean region. Finally, he advised the Jewish Agency in Haifa on industrial promotion in Galilee.
Czamański's scholarly reputation is also evidenced by his role as editor of several professional journals and the book series Studies in Regional Science. His own books, such as Regional Science Techniques in Practice (Lexington 1972) and Regional and interregional social accounting (Lexington 1973), are still considered standard works.
About his teaching style, it is stated in an obituary: “His courses were intellectual feasts. Although his style of presentation was formal and somewhat dry, the amount of theoretical material he covered and illustrated with empirical case studies was most impressive. Among the topics he treated were urban and regional economic growth theory, input-output and industrial complex analyses, social accounting, regional econometric modeling, demographic projection techniques, graph theory for network analysis, applications of factor analysis and discriminant analysis, and optimization techniques (…).” Beneficial for his international research and teaching activities were, not least, his language skills: Stanislaw Czamański spoke Polish, English, Hebrew, Russian, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Arabic, which he learned during World War II in Palestine.
Shortly after the end of World War II, Stanislaw Czamański met Francezca, who was born in 1918 in Ozorków, a town north of Łódź. The couple married in Jerusalem in 1946. A son, Daniel Czamański (born November 17, 1946 in Jerusalem), was born from the marriage.
On August 21, 2012, Stan Czamański, whose emigration under the pressure of the Nazi persecution policy is seen as evidence of the immense loss of intellectual capacity, passed away in Haifa at the age of 94. He was buried in the Haifa Cemetery. In his memory, the Stan Czamanski Prize for Outstanding Scholarship by a Young Scholar was established, which is awarded annually by the Israeli section of the RSAI.
Author: Johannes Koll
Support for research: Barbara Timmermann
Source material
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Universitätsarchiv, Studierendenkarteikarte und Alte Prüfungsliste.
Meldeauskunft des Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchivs, GZ MA 8 – B-MEW – 119502/2013.
E-Mail von Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daniel Czamanski (Sohn von Stanislaw) aus Haifa an PD Dr. Johannes Koll (WU Wien) vom 22. April 2017.
E-Mail von Univ.-Prof. em. Dr. David Boyce (The University of Illinois at Chicago, 1986/87 Präsident der RSAI) an PD Dr. Johannes Koll (WU Wien) vom 12. April 2017.
Kieran Donaghy/Sid Saltzmann: The Stan Czamanski Prize, http://regionalscience.org/~regi1c84on004f8ealh/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1263:the-stan-czamanski-prize&Itemid=646 [4. April 2017].
Institut für Zeitgeschichte München/Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933, Bd. 1: Politik, Wirtschaft, Öffentliches Leben, bearb. von Werner Röder/Herbert A. Strauss, München u.a. 1980.