Mirosława Danuta Wałęsa ( ''née'' Gołoś; born 25 February 1949), is the wife of the former

President of Poland The president of Poland ( pl, Prezydent RP), officially the president of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Prezydent Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), is the head of state of Poland. Their rights and obligations are determined in the Constitution of Pola ...

Lech Wałęsa Lech Wałęsa (; ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democrati ...

. In 1983 she accepted the

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

on behalf of her husband,R. W. APPLE JR., "AWARD IS ACCEPTED BY DANUTA WALESA", ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', December 11, 1983

/ref> who feared, at a time of great political upheaval in the country, that the Polish government might not allow him to return if he travelled to Oslo himself. Lech and Danuta have been married since 8 November 1969 and have eight children. Danuta grew up the second of nine children in Krypy village near

Węgrów Węgrów is a town in eastern Poland with 12,561 inhabitants (31 December 2003). Situated in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999), it is the capital of Węgrów County. History First mentioned in historical records in 1414, Węgrów receiv ...

( Krypy, Gmina Liw). She was working in a flower shop near the

Lenin Shipyard Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...

when she met Lech Wałęsa, then an electrician. After they married, she began using her middle name more than her first name, per Lech's request. She was more resolutely anti-Communist than her husband. During her husband's frequent interrogations by the SB in the 1980s, she was known to openly taunt officers who came to pick him up. Released in 2011, Danuta Wałęsa's autobiography ''Marzenia i tajemnice'' ("Dreams and Secrets", coauthored by Piotr Adamowicz) has sold over 400,000 copies.

References

*Fundacja "Sprawni inaczej" (Foundation Differently Able

*Dzienni

* Living people People from Węgrów County First Ladies of Poland 1949 births Polish Roman Catholics Polish anti-communists {{Poland-politician-stub