Julian von Dunajewski

Julian Dunajewski (1901)

Julian Antoni Dunajewski and Julian (Knight) of Dunajewski (* 4. July 1821 in Stanislau , Galicia ; † 29. December 1907 in Kraków ) was a scholar and economist, who from 1880 to 1891 as the Austrian Imperial Finance Minister in the cabinet of Eduard Taaffe officiated .

Life

Julian Dunajewski was born as the son of the imperial administrative officer Simon Dunajewski and his wife Antonia von Blazowska, who, unlike her husband, was of noble descent. The marriage later had another son, Albin Dunajewski , who was to become Cardinal-Prince-Bishop of Krakow. The father was transferred to New Sandez ( Nowy Sącz ) in 1830 , where Dunajewski attended grammar school from 1831 to 1836. After two more years at the Lviv school he studied there and in the imperial capital Vienna Jus before he from 1846 - the year in which Krakow came formally to Austria - in the old residence of the Jagiellonian philosophy studied. In Cracow in 1850 he was promoted to Dr. phil. is doing his PhD after writing a dissertation on The Organization of the Community .

Immediately thereafter, Dunajewski applied for a chair in political science at Kraków University - and was ranked first by the selection board. But the appeal was not made - for political reasons, as the Austrian authorities considered him too “Polish-national”. In 1855 he became associate professor and in 1856 full professor for administrative and criminal law at the Academy of Law in Pressburg . In 1860 he received a professorship for administrative law and economics in Lemberg . When Agenor Goluchowski became Minister of State after the defeat of the Habsburgs at Magenta and Solferino , he promoted his compatriot Dunajewski, who was finally appointed professor in Cracow by an imperial resolution of July 23, 1860. From October 1861 to June 1880 Dunajewski was now at the Cracow University professor of political science, statistics and administrative law.

After the unrest in the wake of the Polish uprising in the Russian Empire in 1863 , which led to the state of siege being imposed on Krakow in 1864, Dunajewski, who was now recognized as an Austrian patriot, was subsequently appointed rector 1864/1865 of the university in May 1865, a dignity that Dunajewski would still hold in 1868/69 and 1879/80. His main focus was on economics and finance, but he also taught criminal law, statistics and, above all, administrative law. In 1864 he published his first work, Boden und Kredit , a year later, Das System der Nationalökonomie und Finanzwirtschaft appeared . In 1871 Dunajewski finally published a third work, Principles of the Organization of the Administrative Authorities for Galicia , which was regarded as a standard work until the end of the monarchy.

As early as 1870 Dunajewski had been elected to the Galician state parliament by his home community Neu Sandez . After the election to the Reichsrat in 1873 , Dunajewski was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives on November 5, 1873 , and just two weeks later he, who had joined the Polish Club, gave his maiden speech. In the elections to the Reichsrat in 1879, the Liberals were defeated and the Conservatives under Eduard Graf Taaffe, of Irish descent, won a majority. Taaffe, who had been head of government from 1868–1870, was to hold this post again until 1893, and in early 1880 he brought Dunajewski to his cabinet as Austrian finance minister.

Dunajewski drew the consequences of the lack of state control that had led to the great economic crash of 1873 and founded the "Länderbank" in 1880 as the future financier of the necessary infrastructural measures to stimulate the economy and the labor market. Dunajewski relied on the methods of issuing new shares, reserve funds, cover with bonds and similar financial steps to secure necessary investments, which have already proven themselves brilliantly in the expansion of the railway network. In this way, not only could the Galician transversal line be built, but also the northern and north-western lines could be adapted to the changed needs. It seems all the more astonishing today that Dunajewski succeeded in gradually balancing out the budget deficit that he had taken on and, from 1887/88 onwards, even reported a positive balance.

In order to sustainably reorganize the state budget, Dunajewski had also tackled a reform of tax policy through which state revenues could be optimized. He stubbornly opposed all proposals to reduce taxes before the state budget was balanced. At the same time he advocated a slightly progressive income tax without massive interference in direct taxes, since "one could easily make the rich poor, but not the poor rich". Instead, Dunajewski relied on indirect taxes as mass taxes, which he recognized as “the main source of satisfying urgent financial needs”. State levies such as the mineral oil, spirits, beer or tobacco taxes are mainly due to Dunajewski, from which generations of finance ministers have benefited since then. The (renewed) monopoly of the lottery as a state source of income can also be traced back to Dunajewski, who also knew how to use state profit perfectly for his purposes with various fees.

With his fiscal successes, Dunajewski soon became the most important man in the Taaffe government, for whom the Pole had become indispensable. The two worked together perfectly for a long time before the looming nationality conflict between Czechs and German speakers led to the first differences of opinion between Taaffe and Dunajewski. Even a Slav, Dunajewski was at least not completely hostile to the concerns of the Young Czechs , while Taaffe was looking for a balance with the German Nationals as a political counterweight to the Liberals. Dunajewski considered the political exclusion of the Young Czechs to be a dangerous strategy that could turn into an ordeal for the monarchy, but this warning did not get through to Taaffe.

The political stalemate between parliamentary forces led to early elections in 1891 . Dunajewski was no longer able to support the new political constellation. After eleven years as finance minister and at the age of 70, he was dismissed from the government with all honors by the emperor, awarded the highest civil order for a non-noble and appointed to the manor house .

literature

• Dunajewski, Julian von (1822–1907), politician. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 204 f. (Direct links on p. 204 , p. 205 ).
• Andreas Pittler : Scholar, Member of Parliament, Minister of Finance. In: Parliamentary Correspondence No. 699, November 4, 2002
• Andrzej Śródka, Paweł Szczawiński ( arr .): Biogramy uczonych polskich (Biograms of Polish Scholars), Part I: Social Sciences, 1st Half (A – J). Edited by Polska Akademia Nauk. Ośrodek Informacji Naukowej (Polish Academy of Sciences, Center for Scientific Information), Wrocław / Warszawa / Kraków / Gdańsk / Łodź 1983.
• J. Stahnke: Ludwik Teichmann (1823–1895). Anatomist in Krakow. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 205–267; here: p. 212.

Web links

Commons : Julian Dunajewski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Dunajewski, Julian Ritter by Dr. iur. . Short biography on the website of the Austrian Parliament
• Meyers Konversationslexikon (1906): Dunajewski