Herasymovych, Ivan

Herasymovych, Ivan [Герасимович, Іван; Herasymovyč], b 27 November 1876 in Halych, Galicia, d 11 May 1942 in Berlin. Educator and community leader. From 1898 Herasymovych taught in various schools in Halych county. Fired from his position by the Polish authorities for nationalist activities, he resumed teaching in Bukovyna. In Chernivtsi he founded and published the semimonthly Promin’ (1904–7), the first Ukrainian-language teachers' journal (see Pedagogical periodicals) in the Austrian Empire. In 1918–19 he was the head of the Press Office of the Supreme Command of the Ukrainian Galician Army. With the Bolshevik takeover of Ukraine he fled to Berlin, where he edited the weekly Ukraïns’ke slovo (Berlin) and wrote Holod na Ukraïni (Famine in Ukraine, 1922). From 1922 he lived in Lviv, where he worked in the central administration of the Ridna Shkola society and edited its journal Ridna shkola (Lviv) (1932–9). During the German occupation of Western Ukraine he worked in the schools department of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow. He wrote textbooks and articles on educational matters.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]