Joseph Retinger

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Retinger (Józef Hieronim Retinger, 17 April 1888 – 12 June 1960) was a Polish political adviser and a founder of the European Movement that would lead to the founding of the European Union.

[edit] Life

Joseph Retinger was born in Kraków, Poland (at that time a part of Austria-Hungary), the youngest of four children. His father, Józef Stanisław Retinger, was the personal legal counsel and adviser to Count Władysław Zamoyski. When Józef H. Retinger's father died, Count Zamoyski took young Józef under his wing. Retinger had planned on becoming a priest, and was enrolled in a seminary, but the prospect of celibacy made him change his mind.^{[citation needed]}

Funded by Count Zamoyski, Retinger attended the Sorbonne in 1906, and was the youngest person ever to earn a Ph D there, in 1908 at the age of twenty, before his move to England in 1911, where his closest friend was fellow Pole, Joseph Conrad. He would later write about Conrad in his book, Conrad and His Contemporaries (1943).

In 1917, Retinger travelled to Mexico, where he became an unofficial political adviser to union organizer Luis Morones and President Calles. Later, during World War II, he advised Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile, General Sikorski.

After the war, he became a leading advocate of European Unification and helped to found both the European Movement and the Council of Europe. Retinger was later to become Honorary Secretary General of the European Movement.

Retinger initiated the original Bilderberg conference in 1954.

[edit] See also

• List of Poles

[edit] References

• Chapter 4, European Unity. from Memoirs of An Eminence Grise by John Pomian,
• Retinger, Joseph; Pomian, John [1972]. Memoirs of an Eminence Grise. Ghatto and Windus. ISBN 0856210021. 
• Dr J. H. Retinger, Polacy w cywilizacjach zagranicznych. Warszawa 1934