Roman Longchamps de Bérier
Roman Longchamps de Bérier (9 August 1883 – 4 July 1941) was a Polish lawyer and university professor. He was one of the leading civil-law scholars of his generation and the last rector of Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów before the Nazi occupation. He was murdered in the Massacre of Lwów professors.
He was born in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) in Austro-Hungarian Galicia into a distinguished family with distant French roots; the family name gave the local suburb Lonszanówka. He studied at Lwów University (Lemberg) and became a specialist in civil law.
In 1918 he volunteered during the battles around Lwów in the Polish-Ukrainian War. In 1920 he became a professor at the Faculty of Law of the renamed Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów. Two years later he joined the Commission of Codification of the Republic of Poland, helping to prepare Polish civil law. In 1931 he became a member of the Polish Academy of Skills, and in 1936 he was appointed to the Competention Tribunal, a central body in resolving conflicts between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.
After the outbreak of the defensive war in 1939, he helped found the Civilian Committee of the Defence of Lwów to organize the city’s defenses during the siege. After Lwów was occupied by the Soviets and annexed to the USSR, he was relieved of his official duties but remained a professor at the university.
On 4 July 1941, during the Nazi occupation, he was arrested and murdered in the Massacre of Lwów professors. He was shot while at a coffee with Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, who was killed at the same time, though not on the official list. Among the victims were three of his sons: Bronisław (born 1916), Zygmunt (1918) and Kazimierz (1923).
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:54 (CET).