Wojciech Korfanty (20 April 1873 - 17 August 1939) was a Polish nationalist activist, journalist and politician, serving as member of the German Reichstag, the Prussian Landtag and, later on, in the Polish Sejm. Briefly, he also was a paramilitary leader. He is known for organizing Polish uprisings in Upper Silesia. He was known for his irredentist policies in the wake of World War I. He fought to protect Poles from discrimination and against the policy of "Germanisation" in Upper Silesia before the war. Wojciech was one of the chief advocates of joining Upper Silesia to the new Polish state after the war.
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Biography
Early Life
Mr. Korfanty was born the son of a coal miner in Sadzawka, part of Siemianowice, in Upper Silesia, then Germany. From 1895 until 1901, he studied philosophy, law, and economics, first at the Technical University in Charlottenburg (Berlin) (1895) and at the University of Breslau, where Werner Sombart was among his teachers and remained on friendly terms with him for many years.
In 1901, Mr. Korfanty became editor-in-chief of the Polish language paper Górnoslązak (The Upper Silesian), in which he appealed to the national consciousness of the region's Polish-speaking population.
In 1903, Korfanty was elected to the German Reichstag and in 1904 also to the Prussian Landtag, where he represented the independent "Polish circle" (Polskie koło). This was a significant departure from tradition, as the Polish minority in Prussia had so far predominantly supported the Catholic 'Centre Party' in elections. As the Catholic 'Centre Party' had refused to protect Polish rights, the Poles distanced themselves from the party, seeking protection elsewhere. In a polemic paper entitled Precz z Centrum ("Away with the Centre Party", 1901), Korfanty had urged the Catholic Polish-speaking minority in Germany to overcome their national indifference and shift their political allegiance from supra-national Catholicism to the cause of the Polish nation. However, Mr. Korfanty retained his Christian Democratic convictions and later returned to them in domestic Polish politics.
Polish Restoration
With the collapse of the Imperial Germany at the end of World War I, in 1918, the restoration of an independent Polish state, which had not existed since 1795, resulted. In a Reichstag speech on October 25, 1918, Mr. Korfanty demanded that the Prussian provinces of West Prussia (including Ermeland and the city of Gdańsk (then called Danzig)), Poznań (Posen), and parts of the provinces of East Prussia (Masuria) and Silesia (Upper Silesia), all of which had been parts of the Kingdom of Poland until 1795and the tripartite partition. After this date the inhabitants of these areas had been under the pressures of "Germanization" for over a century. After the war, during the Great Poland Uprising, Mr. Korfanty became a member of the Naczelna Rada Ludowa (Supreme People's Council) in Poznań, and a member of the Polish provisional parliament, the Constituanta-Sejm. He was also the head of the Polish plebiscite committee in Upper Silesia. In 1921 he was one of the leaders of the Third Silesian Uprising — a Polish insurrection against continued German rule in Upper Silesia, roughly half of which was eventually attached to Poland. Mr. Korfanty was accused by some Germans of organizing terrorism against the German civilians of Upper Silesia. They also accused him of ordering the murder of Silesian politician Theofil Kupka.
Republican Politics
Mr. Korfanty was a member of the national Sejm from 1922 to 1930, and in the Silesian Sejm (1922-1935), where he represented a Christian Democratic view-point. He opposed the autonomy of the Silesian Voivodship, which he saw as an obstacle against its re-integration into Poland. However, Mr. Korfanty defended the rights of the German minority in Upper Silesia, because he believed that the prosperity of minorities enriched the whole society of a region. He briefly acted as vice-premier in the government of Wincenty Witos (October-December of 1923). From 1924, he resumed with his journalist activities as editor-in-chief of the papers Rzeczpospolita ("The Republic", not to be confused with the modern paper of the same name) and Polonia. He opposed the May Coup of Józef Piłsudski and his subsequent establishment of Sanacja-government from a Christian Democratic position. In 1930, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Brest-Litovsk fortress, together with other leaders of the Centrolew, an alliance of left-wing and centrist parties in opposition to the ruling government.
Exile
In 1935, he finally left Poland and emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where from he participated in the "center-right" Morges Front group formed by émigrés Ignacy Paderewski and Władysław Sikorski. After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Korfanty moved on to France. He returned to Poland in the April of 1939, after Nazi Germany had cancelled the Polish-German non-aggression pact of 1934, hoping that the renewed threat to Polish independence would help overcome the domestic political cleavage. He was arrested immediately upon arrival. In August, he was released as unfit for prison due to his bad health, and died shortly afterwards, two weeks before World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. Although his cause of death remains unclear, it has been claimed that the treatment he received in prison may have caused his health to deteriorate.
Ex Post Facto
After 1945, when the Polish communists sought legitimation the as champions and guarantors of Polish independence, Mr. Korfanty was finally rehabilitated as a national hero due to his fight to protect the Polish population in Upper Silesia from discrimination, and his efforts to join the Polish population in Silesia to Poland. Today, many streets, places and institutions are named for him. When Opole Silesia became part of Poland in 1945, the town of Friedland in Opole Silesia was renamed Korfantów in his honour.
