Identity photograph of Stefania Allina, taken after 1945. Stefania Allinna (b. 19 November 1895 in Łódź, d. 20 April 1988 in Warsaw) – daughter of Zygmunt Karol Allina and Julia née Rauch, pianist and educator of Jewish origin. From 1910 to 1917, she studied at the Warsaw Music Conservatory in Aleksander Michałowski's piano class and in Józef Surzyński's church music class. In the years 1918-1919 she studied composition at the Frédéric Chopin Higher School of Music in Warsaw under the direction of Felicjan Szopski and Kazimierz Sikorski. She was taught by great masters, including studying under Egon Petri (piano) and Hugo Leichtentritt (theory, composition) in Berlin from 1922 to 1928. In 1937, she took a master course conducted by Edwin Fischer in Potsdam.
In the 1920s and 1930s, her career as a pianist and educator developed. She gave concerts in Warsaw, Kraków, Berlin, Prague, and from 1935 – in a duet with Władysława Markiewiczówna. She made numerous recordings for the Polish Radio. From 1917, she taught piano at the Warsaw's Institute of Music, and in 1929-1939 she took up a position at the State Music Conservatory in Katowice, later the Academy of Music – she was one of the first educators there. Stefania conducted journalistic activities, her articles were published in "Silesian Music News". She spent the World War II period in Warsaw, where she participated in a secret teaching operation. After the Warsaw Uprising, she was sent through Pruszków to Wrocław for forced labour. The end of the war found her there and she initially worked there. She then moved to Katowice, where she became a piano lecturer at the State Higher School of Music (1945-1970) and the Mieczysław Karłowicz 2nd Degree State Music School in Katowice (1959-1967) until her retirement in 1970.
She trained 22 pianists, and her pupils included Wiesław Szlachta, Michał Spisak, Jan Gawlas, Czesław Stańczyk, Józef Świder, Stanisław Tomczyński and Piotr Paleczny, winner of the 1970 Chopin Competition. She was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1954. She was active in the Association of Polish Musicians and took care of elderly musicians in need of help and support. She died at the age of 93. | MH