Gabriel Narutowicz

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Gabriel Narutowicz bigraphy, stories - The first elected President of the Republic of Poland

Gabriel Narutowicz : biography

17 March 1865 – 16 December 1922

Gabriel Narutowicz ( 1865–1922) was a Polish-LithuanianBitter glory: Poland and its fate, 1918 to 1939; p.179 professor of hydroelectric engineering at Switzerland’s Zurich Polytechnic, Minister of Public Works in Poland (1920–21), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1922), and the first president of the Second Polish Republic.

Presidency

Gabriel Narutowicz was president of the Polish Republic for only five days. He took the oath of office on 11 December 1922. Earlier on that day, opponents of his election tried to prevent the president-elect from getting to the Sejm by blocking the streets and throwing mud at his motorcade. Narutowicz was uncomfortable with the widespread belief that he was the representative of the Left. He only became the candidate of the Polish Peasant Party "Wyzwolenie" by happenstance; he had also not expected to win the election (in the first round Narutowicz gained just 62 of the votes; whereas, count Maurycy Zamoyski – 222).

During his first days after taking office, Gabriel Narutowicz met with the representatives of the Christian Democratic Party and Cardinal Aleksander Kakowski. Narutowicz realized that it would be impossible to form a majority government in the Parliament, so he made an attempt to create a government beyond the purview of parliament. As a gesture to the right wing, he offered the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs to his recent opponent, Maurycy Zamoyski.

Family

Gabriel Narutowicz was born into a Polish-Lithuanian noble family in Telšiai, in Lithuania, which was then part of the Russian Empire (earlier partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). His father, Jan Narutowicz, was a local district judge and also a landholder in the Samogitian village of Brėvikiai. As a result of his participation in the January 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia, he was sentenced to a year of imprisonment; he died when Gabriel was only one year old.

Gabriel’s mother, Wiktoria Szczepkowska, was Jan’s third wife. Following her husband’s death she raised her sons herself. An educated woman, intrigued by the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, she had a great influence on the development of Gabriel and his siblings’ world view. In 1873 she moved to Liepāja, Latvia, so that her children would not have to attend a Russian school, since after the Uprising of 1863, Russification was less strongly enforced there.

After Lithuania regained independence in 1918, Gabriel Narutowicz’s brother, Stanisław Narutowicz, became a Lithuanian citizen. Earier towards the end of World War I, Stanisław became a member of the Council of Lithuania, the provisional Lithuanian parliament. He signed the Lithuanian Act of Independence of 16 February 1918.

1865–1920

Narutowicz finished his secondary education at the gymnasium in Liepāja, Latvia. He then enrolled at the Institute for Mathematical Physics in St. Petersburg. Illness however caused him to suspend those studies and to later transfer to the Zurich Polytechnic in Switzerland where he studied from 1887 to 1891.

During his studies he helped the Poles who were on the run from the Russian authorities. He was also connected with an emigration party called “Proletariat”. As a result, he was banned from returning to Russia; what is more, the Russian authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. In 1895 Gabriel Narutowicz became a Swiss citizen and, after completing his studies, he got his first job on the construction of the St. Gallen railway.

He was an excellent construction engineer. In 1895 he became a chief of works on the River Rhine. Later he was hired by the Kurstein technical office. His works were exhibited at the International Exhibition in Paris (1896) and he became a famous pioneer of electrification in Switzerland. He directed the construction of many hydroelectric power plants in Western Europe (in places such as: Monthey, Mühleberg and Andelsbuch).

In 1907 he became a professor at ETH Zurich, in the water construction institute in Zurich. He was dean of that institute from 1913 to 1919. He was also a member of the Swiss Committee for Water Economy. In 1915 he was chosen chairman of the International Committee for regulation of the River Rhine.