Maria Pià Âsudska (née Koplewska; 1865 â 17 August 1921), was a Polish socialist and independence activist, the first wife of Poland's Chief of State Józef Pià Âsudski and ostensibly the first lady of Poland during most of his service as Poland's Chief of State.
She was born in 1865 in Vilnius, at that time part of the Russian Empire, to Konstanty Koplewski, a prominent physician. After graduating from high school, she moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. There she studied in the Bestuzhev Courses, a university for women, while cultivating friendships within certain revolutionary circles. It was there she met Marian Juszkiewicz, a young railway engineer whom she married in 1883. Their marriage was not a happy one, however, and fell apart soon after the birth of their daughter, Wanda, in 1887.
In 1892, the beautiful, intelligent and socially poised Maria met Józef Pià Âsudski. After seven years, they married on 15 July 1899 at the village of PaproàDuà ¼a near à Âomà ¼a. Since Maria was a divorcee and the Catholic Church did not recognize divorce, she and Pià Âsudski had converted to Protestantism. Soon afterward they settled in à Âódà º, where Józef continued his revolutionary activities. In February 1900, they were arrested when a clandestine printing press was discovered in their apartment. After eleven months Maria was released, while Pià Âsudski remained imprisoned in the infamous Tenth Pavilion at the Warsaw Citadel in the Russian-occupied part of Poland. Upon his subsequent escape from a mental hospital in St. Petersburg to which he had been transferred, the couple moved to Lwów, in eastern Galicia in Austria-Hungary.
In mid-November 1901, they relocated to London, the seat of the Polish Socialist Party's leadership. In April 1902, however, pursuant to the needs of the PPS, they returned to Lwów, and in 1904 moved to Kraków.
In May 1906 Pià Âsudski met Aleksandra Szczerbià Âska, who was working with the PPS paramilitary organization. After a time, Pià Âsudski and Aleksandra began an affair. In 1908 Maria Pià Âsudska's daughter by her first marriage, Wanda, died. By 1909, Maria was aware of Józef's affair but refused to divorce him, and they continued to share a home until the outbreak of the First World War. Maria remained popular among the PPS and its paramilitary faction, and had helped Józef gain adherents amongst them. Their marriage continued to deteriorate, however, and after his release from Magdeburg Prison in November 1918, Pià Âsudski abandoned her. Aleksandra Szczerbià Âska became his de facto wife, although for propriety's sake they had to maintain separate homes. Maria Pià Âsudska withdrew from public life and continued to reside in Kraków.
Maria Pià Âsudska died in Kraków on 17 August 1921. She was buried at the Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius. Pià Âsudski did not attend the funeral; two months later he married Aleksandra, by whom he had had a daughter, Wanda, in 1918, and a second daughter, Jadwiga, in 1920.