SUMMARY:

The scientific and political engagement of scholars in the Polish national project acquired new dimension and intensity after World War I and the emergence of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939). In the field of physical anthropology, scientists provided the state with various anthropometric measurements and claimed the alleged consequences of racial differences. No matter how committed anthropologists were to ideologies, the self-politicization of the discipline intended to facilitate research, which increasingly highlighted the connection between race and social phenomena. Yet against these scholars’ intentions, the findings of their studies were not systematically implemented in the social policies of the interwar Polish state. This article recounts the birth of applied anthropology in Poland and seeks to assess the discipline’s potential for gains in its relationship to power and politics of the state against the backdrop of crystallization of modern social sciences.