Ignacy Jan Paderewski: the pianist who became prime minister

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was the most famous pianist of his age and, for most of 1919, the head of the government of a Poland that had just returned to the map of Europe. During World War I he used his fame in the United States to win Americans, and above all President Woodrow Wilson, to the cause of Polish independence. In 1919 he was prime minister and foreign minister, and he signed the Treaty of Versailles for Poland. He died in New York in 1941 and lay at Arlington National Cemetery until 1992.¹

Who was Ignacy Jan Paderewski?

Paderewski was born on 6 November 1860 (some Polish accounts give 18 November) at Kuryłówka in Podolia, then in the Russian Empire and today Kurylivka in Ukraine. His father managed landed estates. In 1872 he began studying at the Music Institute in Warsaw, where he also taught for a time after graduating, and he went on to study in Berlin and Vienna.²

His concert career took off at the end of the 1880s, with a debut in Vienna in 1887 and a concert at the Salle Érard in Paris in March 1888. From then on he played across Europe and the Americas. The United States became his second stage: from the 1890s he toured it again and again, and his Minuet in G became one of the best known piano pieces of the day.³

In 1899 he married Helena Górska and bought the Riond-Bosson estate near Morges in Switzerland, which became his home base. His first public act as a patriot came in 1910, when he paid for the Grunwald Monument in Kraków, unveiled on the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald.⁴

The campaign in America, 1915 to 1917

When war broke out in 1914, Paderewski threw himself into relief work. At the turn of 1914 and 1915, in Vevey, Switzerland, he and the novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz set up a general committee to help the war's victims in the Polish lands. In 1915 he crossed to the United States, where he and his wife founded the Polish Victims Relief Fund.⁵

Over the next years he gave more than 300 concerts and speeches for the Polish cause, among them an address at the Kościuszko monument in Chicago in 1915. Polish American organizations came to see him as their leader, and he became the best known spokesman of Polish independence in America.⁶

What mattered most was access to the White House. Paderewski won the support of Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson's friend and closest adviser, and through him reached the president himself. The Polish Press Agency writes that House twice arranged meetings between Paderewski and Wilson in 1916, the year of Wilson's reelection campaign.⁷

In January 1917 Paderewski wrote a memorandum on the need to restore an independent Polish state; according to the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California he delivered it to House on 12 January, and House passed it to the president. On 22 January 1917 Wilson told the Senate: "I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland."⁸

On 28 August 1917 Paderewski joined the Polish National Committee in Paris, led by Roman Dmowski, as its representative in the United States. He also pressed for the recruitment of Polish immigrants in America for the Polish army being formed in France, later known as the Blue Army. Estimates of the volunteers from the United States who reached France range from about 23,000, the figure of the historian Paul Valasek, to nearly 30,000 in the Polish Press Agency's account.⁹ › Józef Haller: the general of the Blue Army

The thirteenth of the Fourteen Points

On 8 January 1918 Wilson set out his program for peace to Congress in fourteen points. The thirteenth read: "An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant."¹⁰

How much of this was Paderewski's doing is a matter of judgment, but the judgments on record are generous. The Polish Press Agency writes that he contributed in large measure to the inclusion of the Polish point, and a resolution of the Polish Senate in 2016 says his activity convinced Wilson that an independent Poland with access to the sea was necessary. President George H. W. Bush went furthest in 1992: "more than anyone else, he was responsible for President Wilson's including Polish independence among his Fourteen Points."¹¹

Poznań, December 1918: the spark of the Greater Poland Uprising

After the armistice of November 1918 the Allies recognized only the Polish National Committee in Paris as Poland's representative, while Józef Piłsudski held power in Warsaw. Paderewski's journey home was meant above all to bring the two camps together, so that Poland could go to the peace conference with an internationally recognized government. He sailed on the British cruiser HMS Concord and reached Gdańsk on 25 December 1918.¹²

From Gdańsk his train went to Warsaw by way of Poznań, still a German city at the time. He arrived there on the evening of Thursday 26 December and was driven through cheering crowds to the Bazar hotel, where he spoke to the people gathered outside. The historian Marek Rezler stresses that he did not call for a fight: he spoke of joy at regained independence and tried to calm the mood.¹³

On 27 December Polish children marched past the hotel in his honor. In the afternoon came a German counter-demonstration: soldiers of the 6th Grenadier Regiment marched through the center with German civilians, tearing down Polish and Allied flags. Near the Bazar, shots were fired. Accounts differ on the time: about 4:40 pm according to Piotr Grzelczak and the Wielkopolska Museum of Independence's teaching materials, between 5:00 and 5:30 pm according to Rezler, who adds that it is not known who fired first. The shooting set off the Greater Poland Uprising.¹⁴

Paderewski's own role in the rising was passive. Rezler argues that, as the envoy of a government that still had to win the Allies' trust, he kept to an official neutrality and stayed out of sight, so that no one could accuse Warsaw of creating facts on the ground before the peace conference. In the first days of January 1919 he was in Warsaw.¹⁵

The insurgents took most of the province in the following weeks. On 16 February 1919, when the armistice with Germany was extended at Trier, the Allies required Germany to halt all operations against the Poles in the province of Posen, which ended the uprising; the Institute of National Remembrance counts Paderewski's diplomacy, by then as prime minister, among the reasons. The Treaty of Versailles gave almost all of Greater Poland to Poland. Since 2021, 27 December has been a Polish state holiday, the National Day of the Victorious Greater Poland Uprising.¹⁶ › Battle of Ławica, 1919

Prime minister and foreign minister, 1919

In Warsaw, talks with Piłsudski began badly: the head of state rejected the National Democrats' plan for a Council of the Polish Nation that would have governed until a parliament was elected. On the night of 4 to 5 January 1919 a group on the right tried to overthrow Piłsudski and failed within hours; Jacek Goclon and the Polish Press Agency both judge that Paderewski probably knew of the plan and left Warsaw that day. The failed coup sped up a compromise. On 16 January 1919 Piłsudski appointed Paderewski prime minister and, at the same time, minister of foreign affairs.¹⁷ › Józef Piłsudski: the marshal who restored Poland

The cabinet was a compromise between Piłsudski and the Polish National Committee of Roman Dmowski. In the words of a resolution of the Sejm in 2019, it was the first Polish government that all the local government bodies in the former Kingdom of Poland, Galicia, Greater Poland and Cieszyn Silesia obeyed, and it included non-party ministers alongside members of the Polish Socialist Party and the peasant left. Ten days after it was formed, on 26 January 1919, Poland elected its Legislative Sejm. Paderewski's popularity helped the National Democrats: the Polish Press Agency puts their share in Warsaw and other districts of the former Kingdom at about half, while Goclon gives over 40 percent in the former Kingdom and 54 percent in Warsaw.¹⁸

As expected, Paderewski concentrated on foreign affairs and on relations with the West. His American contacts brought food and material aid into the country. Goclon notes that the eastern policy, relations with Soviet Russia and Lithuania, remained Piłsudski's domain.¹⁹

Versailles with Dmowski

At the Paris Peace Conference the Polish delegation was led by Paderewski as prime minister and by Dmowski as president of the Polish National Committee. Goclon writes that Paderewski joined the conference only from 5 April 1919 and then took over as Poland's chief spokesman, while stressing how effective Dmowski had been in the hardest negotiations, above all with David Lloyd George. In Goclon's account Paderewski told the Allied leaders that Gdańsk was a matter of life or death for Poland, but he did not win it.²⁰

On 28 June 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, Germany recognized "the complete independence of Poland" when the treaty of peace was signed. For "the President of the Polish Republic" it was signed by "Mr. Ignace J. Paderewski, President of the Council of Ministers, Minister for Foreign Affairs" and "Mr. Roman Dmowski, President of the Polish National Committee". The Sejm resolution of 2019 calls it the confirmation of Poland's international recognition as a sovereign state and an ally of the victorious powers.²¹

Under the treaty Germany ceded Posen and West Prussia to Poland. Danzig became a Free City under the protection of the League of Nations, inside the Polish customs frontier, and the inhabitants of Upper Silesia and of southern East Prussia were to decide their future by plebiscite. The German Historical Museum in Berlin records the German view: the treaty was rejected across the political spectrum as a "dictated peace", and in the 1920 vote in southern East Prussia the result was almost unanimous for staying in Germany.²²

Fall from power

By the autumn of 1919 the government was under growing fire. The economy was in a bad state, the borders were still unsettled, and the failure to secure a final decision on Eastern Galicia hurt Paderewski's standing most. He also disagreed with Piłsudski over Soviet Russia: the head of state ruled out a settlement with the Bolsheviks, while the prime minister did not. On 9 December 1919 Paderewski resigned.²³

Goclon's verdict is mixed. The great pianist, he argues, lacked political experience and was often absent from cabinet meetings, but in winning American economic aid and the support of the Polish community in America nobody could match him at the time.²⁴

Later life: Morges, the National Council and New York

In January 1920 Paderewski returned to Switzerland, but he went on representing Poland for a time, at the Council of Ambassadors and at the League of Nations. In 1921 he left politics and went back to the concert stage, giving many of his concerts for charity.²⁵

After Piłsudski's coup of May 1926 Paderewski opposed the new regime. In 1936 his Riond-Bosson estate became the meeting place of the Morges Front, an opposition alliance whose founders included General Władysław Sikorski, Wincenty Witos and General Józef Haller. He did not forget Poznań: he paid for a monument to Woodrow Wilson, made by the American sculptor Gutzon Borglum and unveiled in the city on 4 July 1931. He stayed away from the ceremony. The official reason was his wife's health; the IPN exhibition reads his absence as a protest against the government, while Piotr Czyż of the National Museum in Warsaw finds it hard to say whether politics or personal matters decided.²⁶

When World War II began, Paderewski backed the Polish government in exile. In December 1939 he became chairman of the National Council of the Republic of Poland, the parliament in exile formed in France. In 1940 he crossed to the United States once more to seek help for Poland. He died in New York on 29 June 1941, at the age of 80.²⁷

Arlington, 1941 to 1992, and the return to Warsaw

On the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Paderewski's remains were placed in the vault of the USS Maine Mast Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The arrangement was meant to be temporary: in the words recorded by the US Senate, Roosevelt said, "He may lie there until Poland is free."²⁸

That came half a century later. On 26 June 1992, at a ceremony in Washington, President Bush recalled the promise and said, "That day has come." The remains left Arlington at the end of June with a military honor guard and reached Warsaw on 29 June 1992. On 4 July the Sejm welcomed the return of his ashes in a resolution, and on 5 July they were laid in the crypt of St John's Archcathedral in Warsaw.²⁹

His heart stayed in America. It is kept at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.³⁰

Legacy and remembrance

In Poland, Paderewski is remembered as one of the fathers of independence. The Sejm marked the centenary of his cabinet in 2019, crediting it with the first democratic elections to the Sejm, the creation of the State Police and the building of the state's administration and diplomatic service; the Senate called him a co-creator of Polish independence.³¹

In the United States his name stands for the moment when Polish Americans helped decide the fate of their ancestors' country. In 1992 Bush credited the people of the Polonia, Americans of Polish origin, with a critical role in bringing down the Iron Curtain. According to Valasek, many of the volunteers Paderewski helped recruit went on to fight in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919 to 1921.³²

Read about the wider story in the battles that won Polish independence, the fighting for Lwów in 1918 and the Polish-Soviet War that followed Paderewski's year in office.