Gabriel Narutowicz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gabriel Narutowicz

Gabriel Narutowicz (born March 17, 1865 in Telšiai ( Kowno governorate , today's Lithuania ); † December 16, 1922 in Warsaw ; first name also Gabryel ) was a Polish hydraulic engineer and politician . He was the first president of the Second Polish Republic and was five days after he took office in a politically motivated assassination murdered .

Youth and Studies

Gabriel Narutowicz came from a small Polish noble family ( Szlachta ) from Telšiai in today's Lithuania, which had its roots in the Royal Republic ( I. Rzeczpospolita ), which in turn ceased to exist in 1795 as a result of the third division of Poland. Since then, and thus also at the time of Gabriel Narutowicz's birth, Lithuania and most of Poland belonged to the Russian Empire .

Gabriel's father Johannes (Jan) Narutowicz was a district judge and landowner in Brėvikiai near Telšiai in Samogitia , one of the five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. Because of his participation in the January uprising of 1863/1864 against Russian rule, the father was imprisoned for a year. He died when Gabriel was only a year old.

Gabriel's mother Victoria Szczepkowska was Johannes' third wife. After the death of her husband, she took over the upbringing of her sons. The educated woman, fascinated by the philosophy of the Enlightenment , had a great influence on the development and worldview of Gabriel and his siblings. The Russification , which was accelerated after the uprising of 1863, would have forced their children to attend a Russian school. She therefore moved to Libau in the Courland Governorate (today Liepāja in Latvia ), where Narutowicz graduated from high school.

Memorial plaque for Gabrjel Narutowicz (ETH, 1932)

Narutowicz had to break off his studies of mathematics and physics in St. Petersburg in 1886 because of pulmonary tuberculosis and treat the disease in a year-long cure in Davos. He then studied civil engineering at the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum (today Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule , ETH) in Zurich from 1887–1891 , where he graduated with a degree in engineering.

Hydraulic engineer

Kubel power plant near St. Gallen, 1903

After completing his studies, Narutowicz found his first job building the railway line to St. Gallen. He then worked as a civil engineer for three years in the construction office for water supply and sewerage in the city of St. Gallen and then spent a year as a section engineer in the canton of St. Gallen on the construction of the Rhine canal (part of the Austrian-Swiss Rhine regulation ). His work received awards at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1896.

Narutowicz received in the same year in the neighboring village of Untereggen the Swiss citizenship . Now a successful creative period began for him at the St. Gallen engineering office of Louis Kürsteiner, which is leading in hydraulic engineering in Switzerland . Narutowicz 'work on the Kubel power station buildings near St. Gallen (1898–1901 and four extensions by 1907), Le Refrain on the Doubs River in the Jura (commissioned in 1909) and Monthey in the Valais, as well as on several important water supply and sewer systems, earned him a high reputation. Within the company he soon rose from engineer to office manager and finally to partner.

Andelsbuch hydropower plant, Bregenz district, Vorarlberg

Under his leadership, the Andelsbuch hydropower plant was built in Vorarlberg between 1906 and 1908 as one of the largest and most modern power plants of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the time .

After teaching water supply and sewerage at the ETH Zurich in 1906, the Swiss Federal Council appointed him full professor for hydraulic engineering in 1907 . Narutowicz left the Kürsteiner engineering office in 1908, moved with his family to Zurich and took up his post. Compared to pure research, he put his practical teaching in the foreground and ran his own engineering office for hydraulic engineering with great dedication. He received orders from Switzerland ( Etzelwerk near Einsiedeln ), Italy ( Montjovet on the Dora Baltea river in Aosta Valley, Italy) and Spain (Buitreras on the Guadiaro river in the province of Málaga).

Mühleberg hydropower plant near Bern, Switzerland
Bust in front of the Mühleberg power plant

From 1913 to 1920 Narutowicz was Dean of the Faculty of Hydraulic Engineering at the ETH in Zurich. He was a permanent member of the Building Council of the City of Zurich , a member of the Committee on Water Management of the Federal Department of Home Affairs and a delegate of the Swiss government to the International Commission on Rhine Regulation . On his return to Poland he resigned from all these offices.

The Mühleberg Aare power station below Bern is the culmination of his engineering career . It was created under its project and construction management 1917-1920 and found that time as one of the largest and most modern medium pressure - storage power plants in Europe attention. The associated workload caused him to give up his professorship at ETH Zurich in 1919.

Support from Poles in exile

Even during his student days he was helping Poles who had fled from the Russian sphere of influence. He also kept in touch with Polish exile organizations such as the Socialist Party in Exile, which called itself the proletariat . For this, the Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant against him and requested his return. Since Narutowicz had received Swiss citizenship in 1886 , he could live with this threat. Gabriel Narutowicz tried not to take sides, but to mediate between the divided wings and to help the victims of the First World War . After the outbreak of war, he supported the policy of Józef Piłsudski , who strove to restore an independent Polish state.

Brother Stanisław Narutowicz

His older brother Stanisław (1862–1930) stayed in his hometown of Telšiai , became a lawyer and, after the end of the First World War, became a citizen of the now independent Lithuania . His wife Joanna Billewiczówna was a cousin of Marshal Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935). Stanisław Narutowicz was politically active and advocated a close alliance between Poland and Lithuania. He was supported by Piłsudski, who counted on him as the future head of government of Lithuania. But the proponents of a propolian course in Lithuania could not prevail. Stanisław died by suicide in 1930.

Minister in the Second Polish Republic

Narutowicz in conversation with Marshal Piłsudski, 1922

Marshal Piłsudski had led the state of Poland, which had no longer existed politically after the last of the Polish partitions, to independence and independence during World War I and in further disputes ( Second Polish Republic ). Until the election of the first constitutional president in December 1922, he acted as a kind of interim head of state and held the title of head of state.

Minister for Public Affairs (Transport, Construction, etc.)

After Poland regained its independence, in 1920 Piłsudski needed a specialist with extensive knowledge and the appropriate assertiveness to (re) build the infrastructure, which was partly destroyed by the war. He was able to win Gabriel Narutowicz for this, who had lost his wife that year. After returning to Poland from Switzerland, Narutowicz held the post of Minister for Public Affairs for two years from June 23, 1920 to June 6, 1922 in four successive cabinets of Prime Ministers Władysław Grabski , Wincenty Witos and Antoni Ponikowski (two terms of office) ( Transport, construction, etc.). He benefited from his experience in Switzerland, where he had grown up to be a pioneer in the generation and use of electrical energy. He increased the efficiency of the administration for the reconstruction of the country and was able to reduce the number of employees there to a quarter within the two years. He personally participated in building designs for bridges, roads, dams and a hydropower plant and monitored and controlled the execution of the work. By 1921, almost 270,000 buildings had been rebuilt, over 300 bridges and most roads repaired, and around 200 km of highways built.

Porąbka dam

He supervised the construction of the hydroelectric power station in Porąbka near Bielsko-Biala on the Soła River in the Beskids and took care of the regulation of the Vistula .

The fact that he represented a dormant pole in a time of constant government crises and, as a permanent member, gave the frequently changing governments a certain degree of continuity, should be emphasized and attributed to his expertise and his rational and open-minded nature.

Minister for International Affairs

In April 1922 Narutowicz took part in the Genoa Conference with the then Foreign Minister Konstanty Skirmunt . Thanks to his international reputation and skillful demeanor (he spoke fluent German and French), Polish interests were heard. On June 28, 1922, he became Foreign Minister in Artur Śliwiński's government, which lasted until July 7, 1922. He continued this office in the later government of Prof. Julian Ignacy Nowak from July 31, 1922 to December 14, 1922. In October 1922 he represented Poland at a conference in Tallinn .

President

The first post-war years in the Second Polish Republic were marked by great political instability, comparable to the first years of the Weimar Republic . Due to the lack of stable parliamentary majorities, the governments were only briefly in office and the political camps were irreconcilably hostile. The country suffered from an economic crisis and inflation . There were serious border disputes with almost all neighboring states (German Empire, Lithuania , Czechoslovakia , Soviet Union ) except Romania and Latvia . The heated mood of Polish public opinion was largely nationalistic and pronounced anti-Russian and anti-German. A third of the population of Poland belonged to national minorities (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Germans, Lithuanians, Jews), who were granted no or only very limited cultural autonomy and who were underrepresented in the Sejm (less than 5-10% of the MPs).

At Piłsudski's suggestion, Narutowicz was elected the first constitutional president by the National Assembly on December 9, 1922 with the votes of the left, the peasant party and the national minorities , and was sworn in on December 11. His predecessor Józef Piłsudski had held the title of head of state and had been a kind of interim head of state. Narutowicz, who had long been the target of nationalist agitation due to his moderate and compensatory policies, was then sharply attacked by Polish nationalists because he had been elected with the votes of the members of the national minorities. In the press of the right-wing parties, he was known as the “Jewish President”, serving the anti-Semitism that was virulent in Poland .

assassination

The radical right saw him as a "traitor to the Polish national cause". In the few days of his term in office, Narutowicz tried to find a balance and a government on a broad parliamentary basis. B. offered his political opponent Maurycy Zamoyski the office of foreign minister. A few days after his election he was murdered on the way to an art exhibition on the stairs of the Zachęta Art Hall in Warsaw by Eligiusz Niewiadomski , an artist and fanatic with ties to Narodowa Demokracja . The assassin may have been inspired by the murder of the German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau , who had also been the victim of nationalist fanatics, a few months earlier . The assassin was caught, sentenced to death and executed, but was celebrated by sections of the right as a hero and national martyr.

Narutowicz's tomb is located in St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw.

Guard of honor at Narutowicz's coffin

The five days of Narutowicz's presidency and the trial of the assassin were filmed in The Death of the President by Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz in 1977 .

Fonts

literature

Web links

Commons : Gabriel Narutowicz  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h see literature NDB Daniel Vischer: Narutowicz, Gabriel
  2. ↑ a b c d e see literature Marek Andrzejewski: Gabriel Narutowicz. Hydraulic engineers, university professors and politicians
  3. ↑ a b c Janusz Pajewski, Waldemar Łazuga: Gabriel Narutowicz. Pierwszy Prezydent Rzeczypospolitej . Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1993, pp. 45-47. ISBN 83-05-12624-2 .
  4. ↑ Klaus Plitzner: Electricity in Vorarlberg , p. 9 (pdf)
  5. ↑ tagesanzeiger.ch July 26, 2009: [ This power plant (Aare power plant Mühleberg) was built by a president ]
  6. ↑ see web link Andrzej Pukszto: Litewski brat polskiego prezydenta, Stanislaw Narutowicz
  7. ↑ Katrin Steffen: Jüdische Polonität ?: Ethnicity and nation in the mirror of the Polish-language Jewish press 1918-1939 . Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, p. 245.
personal data
SURNAME Narutowicz, Gabriel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish hydraulic engineer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Telšiai
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1922
Place of death Warsaw