Gabriel Narutowicz

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Gabriel Narutowicz
1st President of the Republic of Poland
In office December 11, 1922 – December 16, 1922
Prime Minister	Julian Nowak, Władysław Sikorski
Preceded by	Józef Piłsudski (Chief of State)
Succeeded by	Stanisław Wojciechowski Maciej Rataj (acting)
8th Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland
In office June 28, 1922 – December 14, 1922
President	Józef Piłsudski (Chief of State)
Prime Minister	Artur Śliwiński, Julian Nowak
Preceded by	Konstanty Skirmunt
Succeeded by	Aleksander Skrzyński
Born	March 17, 1865(1865-03-17) Telsze (Тельши, Telšiai), Russian Lithuania (now Telšiai, Lithuania)
Died	December 16, 1922 (aged 57) Warsaw, Poland
Political party	None (supported by the Polish People's Party "Wyzwolenie")
Profession	Engineer
Religion	Atheist[citation needed]

Gabriel Narutowicz (March 17, 1865 – December 16, 1922) was the first President of Poland. He was assassinated only a week after his election.

[edit] Early years and career

Born into a Lithuanian noble family in Telšiai, Lithuania, then under the Russian Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Narutowicz had been a professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, from 1908, and had directed the construction of many hydroelectric plants in western Europe.

After Poland regained independence in 1918, he became involved in Polish national politics, serving as Minister of Public Works (1920-21) and as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1922). He was widely recongized as one of the earlier Polish statesmen.

[edit] Election and brief Presidency

President Gabriel Narutowicz with Marshal Józef Piłsudski (left), Warsaw, 1922, days before Narutowicz was assassinated.

Supported by the "Liberation" party, Narutowicz decided to run for President of Poland. On December 9, 1922, he was elected by the Polish parliament (the Sejm), convening as the National Assembly of Poland, to be Poland's first president, and was sworn in on December 11.

His election, supported by leftist, centrist, peasant and national-minority deputies, aroused the ire of right-wing deputies, particularly the National Democrats.^[1] They emphasized that the deputies who had supported Narutowicz had included national-minorities representatives, and disparagingly called the newly-elected head of state "their president" or "President of the Jews". Narutowicz was also reproached for being an atheist and belonging to a Masonic lodge.

During his very short term in office he worked primary to appoint a new government, in place of Nowak's cabinet. However new cabinet was appointed by Acting President Maciej Rataj after Narutowicz death and before Wojciechowski's took the office. Also Naturowicz's first act in office was commuting of a death sentence.

While working on appointing a new government, he proposed portfolio of Foreign Affairs Minister to his main rival to the Presidency - Maurycy Klemens Zamoyski.

On December 16, 1922, five days after his inauguration, while attending the opening of an art exhibit at Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery, Narutowicz was shot dead by a mentally-deranged sympathizer of the National Democrats, the art professor and critic, Eligiusz Niewiadomski, who was sentenced to death and executed a month later.

[edit] Legacy

Warsaw's Plac Narutowicza (Narutowicz Square) is named in his memory.

[edit] Family

Gabriel Narutowicz's brother, Stanisław Narutowicz, was a member of the State Council of Lithuania, and his signature appears on the Lithuanian Act of Independence of February 16, 1918.

[edit] See also

• List of Presidents of Poland

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• Wapiński, Roman (1980). Narodowa Demokracja 1893-1939. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich. ISBN 83-04-00008-3.