Lech Wałęsa

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Lech Wałęsa, 2009 Signature of Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa ( listen to ? / I , [ˈlɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa] ; born September 29, 1943 in Popowo ) is a Polish politician and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize . An electrician by profession, he was chairman of the Solidarność trade union from 1980 to 1990 and President of Poland from 1990 to 1995 . He helped organize the political change in Poland from a real socialist to a democratic market economy system of the Third Polish Republic . Audio file / audio sample

Life

youth

Wałęsa was born in what was then Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia in German-occupied Poland as the son of a carpenter. His father was taken to a satellite camp of the Stutthof concentration camp by the National Socialists , where he died in 1945. Wałęsa was one year old at the time of his father's death and grew up with his mother, who later married his uncle. He was raised Roman Catholic . After primary school, he attended an electrotechnical vocational school in Lipno and was considered to be of average talent. Between 1961 and 1966 Wałęsa worked as an electrical mechanic. In 1967 he started working as an electrician at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdanskto work. In 1969 he married Danuta Gołoś . The couple had eight children (including Jarosław Wałęsa ).

Opposition and Solidarność

Lech Wałęsa, August 1980

In 1970 Wałęsa was a member of the illegal strike committee at the Gdańsk shipyard. After the bloody end of the strike , in which over 80 workers were killed by the police called the Citizens' Militia , he was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison for “anti-social behavior”. In 1976, Wałęsa lost his job after collecting signatures for a petition to erect a memorial to the shipyard workers who died in 1970. Since he was on an informal blacklist, he could not find work anywhere and lived on donations from friends.

In 1978, together with Andrzej Gwiazda and Aleksander Hall, he organized the illegal underground association “Free Trade Unions of Pomerania” (Polish: Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża ). In 1979 he was arrested several times for running an "anti-government organization", but the court acquitted him. He was allowed to leave the prison in early 1980.

Wałęsa during the strike at the Lenin Shipyard in August 1980
Lech Walesa on strike in September 1980

After the start of the strike and the occupation of the Gdańsk shipyard , Wałęsa climbed the shipyard wall on August 14, 1980 and became a strike leader. All over Poland, workers spontaneously followed the Gdańsk example and also stopped work in their factories out of solidarity. A few days later, Wałęsa reached an agreement with the shipyard management and declared the strike over. Anna Walentynowicz , however, stopped the workers who wanted to leave the Gdańsk shipyard and convinced them to form an inter-company strike coordination committee (in Polish: Międzyzakładowy Komitet Strajkowy ) to guide and support the general strike in Poland.

In September of the same year, the communist government signed an agreement with the strike coordination committee that legalized the non-systemic trade union Solidarność, among other things. The strike coordination committee legalized itself as the “National Coordination Committee of the Solidarity Union” (Polish Krajowa Komisja Porozumiewawcza ) and Wałęsa was elected chairman.

He kept this position until December 1981, when the party leader and Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski , the martial law declared. Wałęsa was then interned in southeastern Poland, near the border with the Soviet Union, until November 14, 1982. The American magazine Time named him Man of the Year . The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and the Danish newspaper Politiken dedicated Wałęsa their 1982 Freedom Prize, endowed with 50,000 Swedish crowns, to his struggle for the right to live in freedom and truth.

In 1983 he applied to return to the Gdansk shipyard as an electrician. While he was officially treated as a "simple worker", he was actually under house arrest until 1987 .

Before Wałęsa received the Nobel Peace Prize, he was awarded the Shalom Prize of the German human rights organization “Working Group for Justice and Peace” in June 1983 .

In 1983 Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Because he feared that he would not be allowed back into the country if he personally accepted the award, his wife and their then 13-year-old son Bogdan accepted the award in Oslo . Wałęsa donated the prize money of 1.5 million Swedish kronor to the Polish Bishops' Conference for a fund to promote private agriculture in Poland.

In 1987 Wałęsa founded the illegal "National Executive Committee of the Solidarność Union " (Polish Krajowa Komisja Wykonawcza NSZZ "Solidarność" ). In 1988 he again organized an occupation strike at the Gdańsk shipyard and demanded that the union be legalized. Companies all over Poland followed the Gdańsk model. The country was hit by several waves of strikes. Wałęsa held a live discussion on television on November 30, 1988 with the chairman of the state trade union federation, OPZZ , Alfred Miodowicz , and won with wit and quick wit . This nationally acclaimed success paved the way for the round table talks .

Since 1989

After several talks between the communist interior minister General Czesław Kiszczak and Wałęsa, the government agreed to the "round table". It met for the first time on February 6, 1989 in Warsaw . Wałęsa acted as the spokesman for the “non-government side”. During the talks, the government signed an agreement to re-admit the Solidarność union and to prepare for “semi-free” elections to the Polish parliament.

1989 Wałęsa founded the "Citizens Committee of the Chairman of the Solidarność Union" (Polish Komitet Obywatelski przy Przewodniczącym NSZZ "Solidarność" Lechu Wałęsie ). Formally it was an advisory body, but it was actually some kind of political party that won the parliamentary elections on June 4, 1989. The opposition won all 161 seats in the Sejm , which were determined by free elections. Since, according to the round table agreements, 65% of the Sejm mandates automatically went to the PZPR and its allies, the election victory still meant only 35% of the mandates. This imbalance only ended with the following, finally free elections in 1991. In the newly established Senate , where no such regulation applied, the opposition received all but one seat as early as 1989 (99 out of 100).

Wałęsa now took on a key role in Polish politics. When the PZPR, despite being punished by the voters, insisted on appointing the head of government and nominated Interior Minister Kiszczak for this office , Wałęsa refused. He commissioned the two lawyers Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński , then his closest collaborators, to work behind the scenes with the chairmen of the Polish bloc partiesto negotiate the formation of a non-communist coalition government. The leadership of the PZPR now understood that they could no longer prevent Solidarność from taking over the government and agreed to become a junior partner in an all-party coalition led by it. In the presence of Wałęsa, the parliament elected the Catholic publicist Tadeusz Mazowiecki as Prime Minister of Poland with 378 out of 423 votes .

After the reorganization of the PVAP as the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland at the end of January 1990, Wałęsa no longer saw the basis for the compromises of the “round table” and demanded new elections, since 65% of the Sejm deputies were not legitimized by free elections. He also demanded the resignation of President Jaruzelski , as he could not rely on a democratic vote either. But Mazowiecki and his advisors, including the journalist Adam Michnik , feared for the domestic political stability, which in their eyes guaranteed the involvement of the former communists. Wałęsa then declared “war at the top” on them. He argued that the population was the tough oneWill not accept the reform program from the planned to the market economy if the political leadership is not fully democratically legitimized.

In the spring of 1990, in view of the looming German unity, Wałęsa said in an interview with the Dutch magazine Elsevier that if Germany were to destabilize Europe again, it would have to be "removed from the map". Wałęsa made it clear, however, that this statement had been taken “out of context”. Rather, he wanted to express that the Germans had "become politically mature", they knew about the "impossibility of political and military adventures".

President

Lech Wałęsa during a discussion in the Frankenthal Congress Forum (Pfalz)

On December 9, 1990, Wałęsa won the presidential election and was President of Poland for five years. The style of his presidency has been criticized by most political parties. By the end of 1995 he had lost much of the initial popular support. Poland became a market economy country during its presidency.

After the presidency

Lech Wałęsa at ITB Berlin 2011

In the 1995 presidential elections, Wałęsa was narrowly defeated by the former communist Aleksander Kwaśniewski . Afterwards he announced that he would withdraw politically . But he stayed active and tried to found his own political party. In 1997 he organized and supported the new alliance, the Solidarity Electoral Action (Polish Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność ), which became the strongest force in parliamentary elections . However, his support did not play an essential role; in the party he held only an insignificant position. The main organizer and spokesman for the alliance was the new head of the Solidarność union, Marian Krzaklewski .

In 2000 Wałęsa ran again for the presidential election , but received only marginally more than 1% of the vote. Then he declared for the second time that he would withdraw politically. Since then he has held lectures on the history and politics of Central Europe at various universities abroad and attended panel discussions on this topic.

On May 10, 2004, the Gdansk Tricity International Airport was officially renamed Gdansk Lech Wałęsa Airport to commemorate the prominent Gdansk citizen. His signature was included in the airport logo.

On January 1, 2006 Wałęsa resigned from Solidarność because he refused to cooperate with the Law and Justice party . As early as August 2005 he is said to have said: “This is no longer my union. Another era, different people, different problems ”. He is more of a "revolutionary".

At the end of 2007 he was accepted into the Council of Wise Men on the Future of Europe .

In March 2009, Wałęsa threatened to go into exile, as he was again accused of earlier cooperation with the Polish Communist State Security Service .

In 2009 Wałęsa took part as a guest speaker in the election campaign for the European Parliament. He appeared both at the congress of the pro-European EPP in Warsaw and at the Eurosceptic Libertas in Rome and Madrid, which led his critics to refer to his statement "Jestem za, a nawet przeciw" (German: I am for and even against ) recall.

On March 1, 2013, Wałęsa stated in a television interview in connection with the discussed introduction of registered partnerships that homosexual Sejm MPs should sit in the back row or "behind a wall". He explained his statement by saying that democracy is supported by majorities and that homosexuals, since they are a minority, should submit to majority opinion. He also suggested restricting the rights of homosexuals to rally , which journalists, politicians and historians at home and abroad recognized as group-related enmity. His son, MEP Jarosław Wałęsa, was appalled by his father's choice of words. Lech Wałęsa declined an apology, saying that he conformed to the majority opinion in Poland and that registered partnerships were “not a god-made model”.

On July 22, 2017, Wałęsa spoke out against the judicial reform carried out by the PiS during a mass rally in Gdansk, emphasizing the special importance of the separation of powers for democracy.

Controversy over cooperation with the secret service of the People's Republic of Poland

In his 1987 memoir A Path of Hope , published only in western foreign countries , Wałęsa admitted that he had “not been completely clean” in his forced contacts with the communist-controlled secret service SB , which had temporarily imprisoned him in December 1970, but explained this sentence not closer.

Citing a decision by the Sejm (later classified as unconstitutional) , Interior Minister Antoni Macierewicz presented the Sejm's Council of Elders with a list on June 4, 1992 with the names of 64 alleged former employees and informants of the UB and SB secret services , who were MPs or senior state officials at the time were. Wałęsa was also on the list that was leaked to the press, and his code name was “Bolek”. That same night, a clear majority passed a vote of no confidence in the national conservative government under Jan Olszewskiadopted. Wałęsa admitted a little later that he had signed several documents while in self-service custody in order to be released, but he denied having been Bolek and spying on his colleagues at the Lenin shipyard. Shortly afterwards he had his self-service file sent to him. At a later check it was found that some of the numbered pages had been torn from the bound bundle. Historians accused Wałęsa of personally destroying documents that compromised him.

When Wałęsa ran again in the presidential elections in 2000 , he, like all other candidates, had to submit a declaration that he had previously worked with the secret services of the People's Republic of Poland. He said no. The professional court in Warsaw, which had to review the declarations, certified that he had given correct information.

In 2008, President Lech Kaczyński stated that, according to the files, Wałęsa was indeed an informant for the SB. In the same year the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) published a book entitled “The SB and Wałęsa. A Biographical Contribution ”. It contained 130 pages of documents about Wałęsa's contacts with SB officers, which were commented on on a further 600 pages. A former self-service captain said, however, that Wałęsa had never been recruited as an employee, nor had he ever accepted any money. In 2011, the IPN announced that, on the instructions of Interior Minister Czesław Kiszczak , the SB had fabricated documents in the first half of the 1980s to discredit Wałęsa as an informant.

In February 2016, the IPN announced that Kiszczak's widow had gone to the head of the IPN in Warsaw to sell him secret service files that her deceased husband had hoarded at home for 90,000 złoty. The public prosecutor's department of the IPN, however, confiscated the collection of documents. Among them was a bundle of files about the self-service agent Bolek from 1970 to 1976. The IPN presented some of the seized documents to the press, several reports and receipts for sums of money received were signed with “Lech Wałęsa - Bolek”. Wałęsa, however, spoke of fakes.

On January 31, 2017, a graphological report by the IPN was published. It documents that Bolek was actually Lech Wałęsa. Historians emphasize, however, that Wałęsa did not act out of ideological reasons, but agreed to co-operate under duress in order to avoid arrest and further reprisals.

Orders and honors

Lech Wałęsa's coat of arms in the Royal Order of Seraphines

In addition to the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, the 1983 Shalom Prize and the Pacem in Terris Award 2001, Wałęsa received many state and private awards. The highest orders are the Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor , but also the Scandinavian Orders of Saint Olav , Elephants and Seraphines . 1989 Wałęsa received the Medal of Freedom ( The Presidential Medal of Freedom ), the highest civilian honor in the United States.

In 1999 he received the Grand Cross of the Czech Order of the White Lion .

He has also received honorary doctorates from 32 US and European universities. On April 20, 2009 Wałęsa became an honorary citizen of Szczecin , 2011 of Elbląg .

On June 9, 2009 Wałęsa received the Ernst Reuter plaque in the Berlin City Hall and in 2010 the Collane des Ordem de Timor-Leste in Dili .

In 2011 he was awarded the European Ortisei Prize . A year later he received the Golden Hen Media Prize in Berlin as an honorary award from the jury in the Politics category. In 2013 he was awarded the Point Alpha Prize . The naming of a street after him in San Francisco was reversed in 2014 because of homophobic comments.

Wałęsas results in presidential elections

  • 1990 : 74.25% (second ballot)
  • 1995 : 48.28% (second ballot)
  • 2000 : 01.01% (first ballot)

Fonts

Biographical films

literature

Web links

Commons : Lech Wałęsa  - collection of images, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Category: Lech Wałęsa  - in the news
Wikiquote: Lech Wałęsa  - Quotes

Footnotes

  1. ^ Lech Walesa. Nobelprize.org
  2. ^ Lech Walesa: Former President and Nobel Prize Winner. Poland-Digital.de, accessed on July 28, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Nobel dla Wałęsy. Pokojowa Nagroda Nobla Solidarność. Newsweek.pl, accessed on March 16, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Reinhold Vetter : Poland's stubborn hero. How Lech Wałęsa outwitted the communists. Berlin 2010, pp. 239–242.
  5. ↑ Reinhold Vetter: Poland's stubborn hero. 2010, pp. 302-304.
  6. ↑ Reinhold Vetter: Poland's stubborn hero. 2010, pp. 305-307.
  7. ↑ Reinhold Vetter: Poland's stubborn hero. 2010, pp. 334-341.
  8. ↑ Quoted from: Deutscher Ostdienst. No. 17, April 27, 1990, p. 7. According to the magazine for politics. Volume 38, University of Politics Munich, C. Heymann, 1991, ISBN 3-452-21992-5 , footnote on p. 362.
  9. ^ Lech Walesa . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1990 ( online - Apr. 9, 1990 ).
  10. ↑ More than a show of goodwill. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 23/24 June 1990, p. 4.
  11. ^ Walesa resigned from Solidarnosc Der Tagesspiegel August 22, 2006
  12. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung. 23 August 2006, p. 6 with reference to AFP / epd
  13. ↑ Walesa threatens to go into exile. In: FAZ. March 31, 2009 (Source cited: Reuters)
  14. ^ Wałęsa: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate: Walesa wants to ban homosexuals behind the wall. In: spiegel.de. March 1, 2013, accessed March 4, 2013 .
  15. ↑ paw: Lech Walesa: "Geje powinni siedzieć za murem". In: gazeta.pl. March 1, 2013, accessed March 4, 2013 (Polish).
  16. ↑ jb: "Przerażające ... Wypowiedź troglodyty". Politycy oburzeni uwagą Wałęsy nt. gejów. In: gazeta.pl. March 2, 2013, accessed March 4, 2013 (Polish).
  17. ↑ due to: Jarosław Wałęsa o słowach ojca: Złapałem się za głowę. In: gazeta.pl. March 4, 2013, Retrieved March 4, 2013 (Polish).
  18. ↑ wg: Wałęsa: Nikogo never będę przepraszał. Never mam ochoty spotykać się z Biedroniem. In: gazeta.pl. March 4, 2013, archived from the original on March 8, 2013 ; Retrieved March 4, 2013 (Polish).
  19. ↑ Lech Wałęsa calls on Poland to fight against judicial reform. In: zeit.de. July 23, 2013, accessed July 24, 2013 .
  20. ↑ Lech Walesa: A Way of Hope. Autobiography. Vienna 1987, p. 200.
  21. ↑ Reinhold Vetter: Poland's stubborn hero. 2010, pp. 354-355.
  22. ↑ Trzy podpisy Wałęsy. In: Gazeta Wyborcza . June 8, 1992, p. 3.
  23. ↑ POLAND: Wałęsa was Bolek. In: Der Spiegel. June 23, 2008.
  24. ↑ orzeczenie sędziów Sądu Apelacyjnego w Warszawie wraz for uzasadnieniem wyroku w sprawie lustracyjnej Lecha Wałęsy. ( Memento of May 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) ipn.gov.pl, August 11, 2000.
  25. ↑ Walesa scorns collaboration claimsoft , BBC News, June 23 of 2008.
  26. ^ Sławomir Cenckiewicz / Piotr Gontarczyk : SB a Lech Wałęsa. Przyczynek do biografii. Warsaw 2008.
  27. ↑ Nigdy never Dalem Wałęsie pieniędzy , gazeta.pl, December 10 of 2008.
  28. ↑ IPN: SB fabrykowała dokumenty nt. Lecha Wałęsy. onet.pl, December 21, 2011.
  29. ↑ IPN: Żona Kiszczaka chciała sprzedać teczki za 90 tys. Złotych. ( Memento of February 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) newsweek.pl, February 17, 2016.
  30. ↑ Wałęsa, an informant? sz.de, February 18, 2016.
  31. ↑ Florian Kellerman, allegations against Lech Walesa. Expert opinion confirms spy activity. January 31, 2017.
  32. ↑ New evidence incriminates Walesa from ARD tagesschau.de from January 31, 2017.
  33. ↑ Byly prezydent honorowym obywatelem - Lech Walesa popłakał się w Szczecinie. ( Memento of April 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) dziennik.pl, April 20, 2009
  34. ^ Government of East Timor: “The Restoration of Independence Attributes Us Responsibility” , May 21, 2010 , accessed on January 19, 2018.
  35. ↑ leader San Francisco renames Lech Walesa Street in wake of Polish's anti-gay remarks.
  36. ↑ Obwieszczenie Państwowej Komisji Wyborczej z dnia 10 grudnia 1990 r. o wynikach ponownego głosowania i wyniku wyborów Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. In: Dziennik Ustaw, sejm.gov.pl. December 10, 1990, accessed January 4, 2013 (Polish).
  37. ↑ Obwieszczenie Państwowej Komisji Wyborczej z dnia 20 listopada 1995 r. o wynikach głosowania i wyniku wyborów Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w drugiej turze głosowania, przeprowadzonej w dniu 19 listopada 1995 r. In: Dziennik Ustaw, sejm.gov.pl. November 20, 1995, accessed January 4, 2013 (Polish).
  38. ↑ Obwieszczenie Państwowej Komisji Wyborczej z dnia 9 października 2000 r. o wynikach głosowania i wyniku wyborów Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, zarządzonych na dzień 8 października 2000 r. In: Dziennik Ustaw, sejm.gov.pl. October 9, 2000, accessed January 4, 2013 (Polish).
personal data
SURNAME Wałęsa, Lech
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish trade unionist, leader of the Solidarność trade union and President of Poland
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Popowo