Roman Dmowski

Roman Dmowski

Roman Stanisław Dmowski (born August 9, 1864 in Kamionki, Gmina Kórnik near Warsaw , Russian Empire , † January 2, 1939 in Drozdowo ( Łomża district )) was a Polish politician and one of the main actors of the National Democratic Party (endecja). Sometimes he is even referred to as the father of Polish nationalism, although his pro-Russian stance and Pan-Slavist idea with Poland as part of the Russian-dominated Slavic Empire caused the endecja to split . In contrast to Józef Piłsudski , whose bitter enemy he was and whose policy was aimed at Polish expansion to the east at the expense of the Soviet Union, Dmowski called for Poland to expand beyond its historical borders in order to regain formerly Slavic, "Germanized" areas. It was mainly about the German areas of Silesia and East Prussia.

life and work

Dmowski came from an old Polish noble family (family coat of arms Pobóg). Already in his student days he was politically active in the Polish Youth Association "Zet" ( Związek Młodzieży Polskiej "Zet" ). He organized street demonstrations by students in honor of the 100th anniversary of the first Polish constitution on May 3, 1791 and was punished for this with six months' imprisonment in the Xth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel and subsequent banishment to Mitau . In 1895 he was able to flee and settled in Galicia's capital Lemberg , which was then part of Austria . There he took over the editing of the journal Przegląd Wszechpolski (All-Polish Review) in July 1895 , which was the ideological mouthpiece of the Polish national-democratic movement. Dmowski became head of the National League ( Liga Narodowa ) in 1893 and was co-founder of the National Democratic Party ( Stronnictwo Narodowo-Demokratyczne ) in 1897 . He spent the years 1898 to 1900 in France and England . From 1900 he spoke out in favor of rapprochement with Russia , which met strong opposition in the party and led to the split in the National Democratic Party. In 1901 he returned to Galicia, this time to Krakow , from where he traveled to Japan in 1904 to thwart Piłsudski's efforts to obtain Japanese arms supplies for Polish armed operations on Russia's western flank during the Russo-Japanese War . In 1905 he moved to Russian Poland , where his pro-Russian attitude with a seat in the II. And III. Russian Duma (1907-1909) was rewarded. There he took over the leadership of the Polish bloc. Dmowski fought revolutionary movements (including the Polish national PPS “Frakcja Rewolucyjna” Pilsudskis) and was an anti-Semite . In 1911 he organized the boycott of Jewish companies. In 1915 he went abroad again ( Switzerland and France), where he ensured political support for Poland from the Entente states. On August 15, 1917, he founded the Polish National Committee ( Komitet Narodowy Polski ) in Lausanne , into which ten representatives of Józef Piłsudski were co-opted in January 1919, and took over its leadership. The committee was politically active in Paris and worked closely with the Supreme People's Council , founded in Poznan in 1916 .

Dmowski headed the Polish delegation during the peace negotiations in Paris and signed the Versailles Peace Treaty . After the collapse of tsarist Russia, he rejected the idea of ​​a Russian-dominated Pan-Slavic empire and advocated a nationally homogeneous and monoconfessional Catholic Polish state. He continued to be a political opponent of Piłsudski, who had always strived for not only a sovereign but also a multinational and multi-denominational state.

In newly established Poland , Dmowski was a member of the constituent national assembly , member of the Defense Council and, in autumn 1923, foreign minister in the cabinet of Wincenty Witos for almost two months .

After Piłsudski's May coup in May 1926, Dmowski founded the “Block Greater Poland” ( Obóz Wielkiej Polski ) and later the National Party (1928–1947) ( Stronnictwo Narodowe ). Roman Dmowski spent the last years of his life in Drozdowo near Łomża and died there on January 2, 1939. He was the undisputed leader of the Polish National Democratic Party throughout his life. The founder of Polish research on the West, Zygmunt Wojciechowski , chief ideologist of the “League of Young Nationalists” ( Związek Młodych Narodowców ), said that Dmowski was a political role model for him.

Dmowski was not only a politician, but also a political publicist with a strong national and Catholic influence. Throughout his life he relied on a close alliance with Russia, since he saw Poland's main opponent in Germany . In his books he described his visions of the state, including a. that of the new patriotism based on national interests and political realism. He denounced a lack of discipline, inability to work in groups and passivity as Polish "sins". He addressed the allegedly negative influence of the Jewish minority , which in his opinion dominated Polish economic life and during the partitions of Poland had adopted an indifferent, sometimes even contrary, attitude towards Polish interests.

Works (selection)

• Nasz Patriotyzm. 1893.
• Myśli nowoczesnego Polaka. 1903.
• Walka z anarchią i Demokracja Narodowa. 1906.
• Niemcy, Rosja a sprawa polska. 1908.
  • New edition: Niemcy, Rosja i kwestia polska. 7th edition based on the 1938, Wydawnia Nartom, Breslau 2013, ISBN 978-83-89684-79-0 .
• Anachronizm. 1909.
• Upadek myśli konserwatywnej w Polsce. 1914.
• Nowe czasy i nowe zagadnienia. 1924.
• Polityka polska i odbudowanie państwa. 1925.
• O napaści posła Zdziechowskiego. 1926.
• Kościół, naród i państwo. 1927.
• Dziedzictwo. pod pseudonimem Kazimierz Wybranowski 1931.
• W połowie drogi. pod pseudonimem Kazimierz Wybranowski 1931.
• Świat powojenny i Polska. 1931.
• Przewrót. 1934.

German speaking

• Germany, Russia and the Polish question (excerpts). In: Poland and the East, texts on a tense relationship. Edited by Andrzej Chwalba , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005

literature

• Norman Davies : The duel: Dmowski against Piłsudski. In: In the heart of Europe. History of Poland. 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2002.
• Kurt Georg Hausmann: The political ideas of Roman Dmowski: a contribution to the history of nationalism in East Central Europe before the First World War . Kiel 1968.
• Krzysztof Kawalec: Roman Dmowski . Warszawa 1996 (Polish)
• Robert Brier, The Polish “Western Thought” after the Second World War 1944–1950 (PDF; 828 kB) Digital Eastern European Library: History 3 (2003).
• Andreas Kossert : Founding Father of Modern Poland and Nationalist Antisemite: Roman Dmowski. In: Rebecca Haynes, Martyn Rady (Eds.): In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe . IB Tauris, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84511-697-2 , pp. 89-104.
• Gertrud Pickhan : Dmowski, Roman. In: Handbook of Antisemitism . Volume 2/1, 2009, p. 179 f.
• Hartmut Kühn : Poland in the First World War: The struggle for a Polish state up to its re-establishment in 1918/1919. Peter Lang Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-631-76530-2 .

Web links

Commons : Roman Dmowski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Roman Dmowski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Roman Dmowski in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Holdings in the Berlin State Library

Footnotes

1. ^ Roman Dmowski. Retrieved March 16, 2019 . 
2. ↑ cf. Davies 2002, p. 121.
3. ^ Manfred Alexander: Small history of Poland . Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-017060-1 , p. 252.
4. ↑ Quotation from Poland and the East ... 2005, p. 506 (Ed .: About the authors)
5. ↑ Cit. Davies 2002, p. 122.
6. ^ Jürgen Heyde: History of Poland. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-50885-1 , p. 92.
7. ↑ Paul Roth : The emergence of the Polish state - an international law-political investigation (= public law treatises. Ed. By Heinrich Triepel , Erich Kaufmann and Rudolf Smend . Issue 7). Verlag Otto Liebmann, Berlin 1926, in particular pp. 133-142.
8. ↑ Robert Brier, The Polish “West Thought” after the Second World War 1944–1950 (PDF; 828 kB), Digital Eastern Europe Library: History 3 (2003), p. 15 f.