Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski

Kwiatkowski around the beginning of the 1930s

The cabinet under Koscialkowski; Kwiatkowski seated, second from the right

Eugeniusz Felicjan Kwiatkowski (born December 30, 1888 in Cracow , † August 22, 1974 in Cracow) was a Polish engineer, manager, economist and politician of the interwar period. He was Minister of Industry and Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic . In the years before the Second World War he belonged to the group of the top five Polish politicians and had a major influence on the country's economic and financial policy. Because of the expansion of the port and the city of Gdynia , which he promoted, he is also referred to as the "father of Gdynia".

Life

Kwiatkowski's father was a lawyer and employed by a railway authority in Krakow. After an inheritance, the family moved to Czernichowce (near Sbarash in today's Ukraine). Here Kwiatkowski spent his childhood with his siblings Roman, Janina and Zofia. From 1898 he was a student in Lemberg . He then attended the Jesuit college in Chyriw .

Kwiatkowski studied chemistry at the Technical University in Lemberg (1907 to 1910) and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (1910 to 1912). In 1913 he married Leokadia, with whom he had three children (Jan, Hanna, Ewa).

First World War and the interwar period

During the First World War Kwiatkowski fought in the Polish legions . For a while he also worked as a manager in the Lublin gas works . In the ensuing Polish-Soviet war , he worked in the chemistry department of the Central Procurement Office of the Military Ministry. In 1921 he left the army as a lieutenant. He became a lecturer at the Technical University in Warsaw . He also worked in a nitrogen factory in Mościckis (Upper Silesian Nitrogen Works in Chorzów, East / Polish Upper Silesia).

After Józef Piłsudski's coup d'état in 1926, the President and Piłsudski confidante Ignacy Mościcki Kwiatkowski proposed for the post of Minister of Economics ( Ministerstwo Przemysłu i Handlu ) in the cabinet of Kazimierz Bartel . From 1926 to 1930, Kwiatkowski served in this function in eight subsequent governments (in addition to Bartel, these were the cabinets of Józef Piłsudski, Kazimierz Świtalski and Walery Sławek ). He is considered the "father of the recovery".

From 1931 to 1935 he managed the nitrogen factories ( Zakłady Azotowe w Tarnowie-Mościcach ) in Chorzów and Mościce .

From 1935 to 1939 he was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Treasury in the governments of Marian Zyndram-Kościałkowski and Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski .

Economic Policy

Kwiatkowski drew up a much-noticed, ambitious four-year plan for the development of the Polish economy for the years 1936 to 1939. As part of this plan, the Polish merchant navy and overseas trade (e.g. coal exports) were strengthened. He pushed the planned construction of a Polish seaport in Gdynia. The construction of the port also led to a strong expansion and growth of the formerly small fishing village.

The Central Industrial Area (Polish: Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy , COP) was an infrastructure project developed and promoted by Kwiatkowski. It ran for several years and was the largest investment program for the economy of the Second Republic. The aim was to create a heavy industrial production area in the center of the country - as far away as possible from the borders with Germany and the Soviet Union. It included parts of the territory of the following, then provinces : eastern part of the Kielce province , southern part of the Lublin province , western part of the Lvov Province and the Province Krakow . By building up his own production resources, Kwiatkowski wanted to make the Polish economy independent of deliveries from abroad (especially from the German part of the Upper Silesian heavy industrial region ). The program started on September 1, 1936, could not be completed due to the outbreak of World War II. Nevertheless, parts of the plan could be implemented; these formed the basis for the continuation of the program in the post-war period.

In April 1938, Kwiatkowski spoke out in Katowice before representatives of the OZON party for the elimination of non-Polish elements from economic life.

Kwiatkowski was a representative of a Keynesian economic policy and an anti- inflationary currency policy . It was not until the spring of 1939 that after considerable deposit withdrawals at the Polish banks, due to the uncertain political situation in Europe, he was no longer able to assert himself against the lifting of the 30% gold cover obligation for all banknotes in circulation .

Kwiatkowski represented the technocratic wing of the Sanacja government, was a staunch supporter of statism and was impressed by the success of the New Deal in the USA, which, with its partly planned economy, met fierce opposition from representatives of liberal economic policies. The spokesman for the liberals and thus Kwiatkowski's most important political opponent was the deputy and economics professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Adam Krzyżanowski.

With his four-year plan for industrialization, Kwiatkowski gained unexpected popularity among the population. His politics symbolized the end of the world economic crisis.

World War II and post-war period

After the occupation of Poland by German and then by Soviet troops, Kwiatkowski left the country with other members of the government on September 17, 1939. He was interned in Romania until 1945 .

After the war he returned to Poland and worked as a government representative for the reconstruction and development of coastal projects. He lived in the Claaszen villa in Sopot . From 1947 to 1952 he was a member of the Sejm . In 1948 he was dismissed from civil service as “politically unreliable”. His name was no longer mentioned in Polish school books after the Second World War. After his release, he studied and published chemistry, physics and history. To everyone's surprise, the then general secretary of the party, Edward Gierek , had Kwiatkowski contacted again in the 1970s regarding planned investments in the port of Gdańsk .

Kwiatkowski died in Krakow, where he was also buried. The funeral service was held by then Cardinal Karol Wojtyła in the Wawel Cathedral .

Awards and honors

In 1931, Kwiatkowski was awarded the Grand Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order . Three days before his death, the University of Danzig awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1996, Kwiatkowski was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle . He was also posthumously accepted into the Galeria Chwały Polskiej Ekonomii in 2005. In Gdansk, an expressway ( Trasa im. Eugeniusza Kwiatkowskiego ) is named after him. A private university in Gdynia also bears his name ( Wyższa Szkoła Administracji i Biznesu im. Eugeniusza Kwiatkowskiego ). Many other streets and schools in Poland are named after him. In several cities (e.g. Warsaw, Krakow, Gdynia or Stalowa Wola ) there are monuments or plaques dedicated to him. A REM 120 multi-purpose dry cargo ship for the Gdańskie Morskie line was named after him in 2008 ( Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski , later chartered and renamed BBC Kwiatkowski ) '.

Works

• Zagadnienie przemysłu chemicznego na tle wielkiej wojny , 1923
• Postęp gospodarczy Polski , 1928
• Polska gospodarcza w roku 1928 , 1928
• Powrót Polski nad Bałtyk , 1930
• Dysproporcje. Rzecz o Polsce przeszłej i obecnej , 1932

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In addition to Kwiatkowski, these included Mościcki, Edward Rydz-Śmigły , Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski and Józef Beck
2. ↑ according to Marian Wojciechowski , Stosunki Polsko-Niemieckie 1933-1938 , The Polish-German Relations , Norbert Damerau (transl.) And Siegfried Baske (arr.), Posen 1965, p. 503
3. ↑ according to Scientific journal of the Wilhelm Pieck University Rostock , social and linguistic series, Volume 30, Issue 1–6, The Rector of the Wilhelm Pieck University Rostock, Rostock 1981
4. ↑ Mościcki and Kwiatkowski were close friends, according to Publications of the Institute for German Post-War History , Volume 1 of the publications of the Institute for German Post-War History, Institute for German Post-War History (Ed.), Verlag der Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung, 1963
5. ↑ according to Entry in the catalog of the German National Library DNB (see below)
6. ↑ ^{a b} Jutta Günther and Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast (eds.), Welcome investors or national sell-out? Foreign direct investment in East Central Europe in the 20th century , ISBN 3-8305-1186-8 , BWV, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin, 2006, p. 34
7. ↑ ^{a b} according to Marian Zgórniak, The war preparations of the states of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Poland , in: Europa am Abgrund - 1938 , documents and writings of the European Academy Otzenhausen, ISBN 3-8258-6062-0 , LIT-Verlag, Münster 2002, p 284 f.
8. ↑ according to American Jewsish Year Book , Volume 40 (1938/1939), p. 243, quoted in Viktoria Pollmann, lodger in the Christian house. The Church and the "Jewish Question" in Poland based on the diocese press of the Krakow Metropolitan Region 1926-1939 (Diss.), ISBN 3-447-04506-X , Harrassowitz, 2001, footnote 75 , p. 295.
9. ↑ according to Ingo Loose, loans for Nazi crimes. The German Credit Institutions in Poland and the Robbery of the Polish and Jewish Population 1939-1945 , Institute for Contemporary History, ISBN 978-3-486-58331-1 , Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, p. 23
10. ↑ ^{a b} according to Włodzimierz Borodziej, History of Poland in the 20th Century , ISBN 978-3-406-606489 , Beck, Munich 2010, p. 183 f.
11. ↑ according to Ryszard Kołodziejczyk, Image przedsiębiorcy gospodarczego w Polsce w XIX i XX wieku , ISBN 8390084643 , Instytut Historii (Polska Akademia Nauk), 1993, p. 253
12. ↑ ^{a b} according to Georg Stöber, Germany and Poland as countries bordering the Baltic Sea , Volume 119 of Studies on International Textbook Research, 3883043192, Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2006, p. 113 .
13. ↑ ^{a b} according to Piotr Dwojacki, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski - 35 rocznica śmierci , from August 20, 2009 (in Polish) at Kwiatkowski.edu.pl , see under web links.

Web links

Commons : Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Kwiatkowski.edu.pl , a website of the Fundacja Gdyńska Inicjatywa Akademicka i Wyższa Szkoła Administracji i Biznesu im. Eugeniusza Kwiatkowskiego (in Polish)