Helena Modjeska - Early Life

Early Life

Helena Modjeska was born in Kraków, Poland, on October 12, 1840. Her name was recorded at birth as Jadwiga Benda, but she was later baptized Helena Opid, being given her godfather’s surname.

The question of her origins is a complicated one. Modjeska’s mother was Józefa (Misel) Benda, the widow of a prosperous Kraków merchant, Szymon Benda. In her autobiography, Modjeska claimed that her father was a musician named Michael Opid. While it is true that the Benda family did employ a music teacher named Michal Opid, who later stood as Helena’s godfather, Opid was not the father of Józefa Benda’s two youngest children.

There is evidence to suggest that Helena and her older brother Adolf were the results of an affair between Józefa and Prince Władysław Sanguszko, a wealthy and influential Polish nobleman.

Also glossed over in Modjeska's autobiography were the details concerning her first marriage, to her former guardian, Gustave Sinnmayer (known in Poland as Gustaw Zimajer). Gustave was an actor and the director of a second-rate provincial theater troupe. The date of Modjeska’s marriage to Gustave is uncertain. She discovered many years later that they had never been legally married, as he was still married to his first wife when they wed. Together the couple had two children, a son Rudolf (later renamed Ralph Modjeski), and a daughter Marylka, who died in infancy.

Gustaw Zimajer used the stage name "Gustaw Modrzejewski." It was the feminine version of this name that Modjeska adopted when she made her stage debut in 1861 as Helena Modrzejewska. Later, when acting abroad, she used a simplified version of her name ("Modjeska"), which was easier for English-speaking audiences to pronounce.

In her early Polish acting career, Modrzejewska played at Bochnia, Nowy Sącz, Przemyśl, Rzeszów and Brzeżany. In 1862 she appeared for the first time in Lwów, playing in her first Romantic drama, as "Skierka" in Juliusz Słowacki's Balladyna. From 1863 she appeared at Stanisławów and Czerniowce, in plays by Słowacki.

In 1865 Zimajer tried to get her a contract with Viennese theaters, but the plan came to naught due to her poor knowledge of the German language. Later that year Helena left Zimajer, taking their son Rudolf, and returning to Kraków. Once there she accepted a four-year theatrical engagement. In 1868 she began appearing in Warsaw; during her eight years there, she consolidated her status as a theater star. Her brothers Józef and Feliks Benda were also well regarded actors in Poland.

An incident illustrates the circumstances under which Polish society then labored. At one of Modrzejewska's Warsaw performances, seventeen secondary-school pupils presented her with a bouquet of flowers tied with a ribbon in the red-and-white Polish national colors. The pupils were accused by the Russian Imperial authorities of conducting a patriotic demonstration. They were expelled from their school and banned from admission to any other school. One of the pupils, Ignacy Neufeld, subsequently shot himself; Modrzejewska attended his funeral.