The article presents the Cracow-centered biography of Feliks Gross. It is primarily based on archival documents, reminiscences, interviews, Professor’s letters and his publications. The author describes the history of the Gross family, concentrating on Adolf, Feliks’ father, politician and social worker. The important quality of this family seemed its religious diversity, liberal political views and its belonging to the Polish intelligentsia. Feliks also exhibited his pacifist and socialist sympathies rather early. The period of his studies at the Law Department of the Jagiellonian University was the time of his political activism and growing interest in social problems and sociology. On the list of his mentors, we could find: Stanisław Estreicher, Jan Stanisław Bystroń, and (later) Bronisław Malinowski. Gross merged his careers as an attorney with political activism (Polish Socialist Party and education of adults) and scholarly work (Ph.D. in ethnology of law). When growing antisemitism prevented him from doing his post-doctoral dissertation, Malinowski came to his aid and offered Gross the opportunity to lecture at the London School of Economics. The WWII disabled those plans.
The author analyzes documents related to Gross in terms of the Fritz Schütze biographical process theory and points to the models of action, institutional patterns, trajectories and concealments.
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