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Ignacy Mościcki (1867-1946)
Ignacy Mościcki was born on 1 December 1867 in Mierzanów near Ciechanów. His
father was an insurgent who fought in the January Uprising of 1863,
and the family had a deep tradition of the insurrectionist and patriotic spirit,
which could not be erased by the attempts the partitioning powers undertook
after 1795 to deprive the Polish people of their feeling of national identity. After finishing school in Warsaw, Ignacy read Chemistry at the Riga University
of Technology. Once there, he became an organiser of the "educational circles"
for the Polish soldiers at the Riga garrison and his fellow students. The main purpose of these societies was to pursue conspiratorial activities. He also became involved with the Second Proletariat, a socialist party established by a Polish revolutionary, Ludwik Kulczycki. When he graduated in 1891 and returned to Poland, he continued these conspiratorial undertakings but was discovered and forced to leave the country in 1892.
During a five-year stay in London, where he emigrated with his family, he
studied at Finsbury Technical College and also spent some time in the Patent Library, concentrating for the most part on scientific work. In 1897 he became an assistant to Professor Józef Wierusz in his laboratory at the University of Freiburg (Switzerland). From 1912 he was a lecturer at the Lwów Polytechnic, and many years later (1925)was appointed Rector of that college. Finally he returned to Warsaw for a lecturer's appointment at the Warsaw University of Technology. He suspended his political activities in this period, and concentrated on scientific research which resulted in a number
of discoveries in electrical engineering and physics. He was the first to apply an industrial process of obtaining atmospheric nitrogen - a necessary component in the production of nitric acid. He also constructed high-voltage generators.
Mościcki was also involved in the establishment of numerous chemical plants in Poland, such as the R&D institute for methane, a chemical plant at Jaworzno, a nitrogen plant at Chorzów, and other large nitrogen works near Tarnów.
In 1926 he returned to politics. On 1 June of that year Ignacy Mościcki was sworn in as President of the Republic of Poland at the specific request of Józef Piłsudski, who, after the May coup (Piłsudski's military action to remove the then government from power), had become the dominant political force in the recently restored country. He stayed in office for thirteen years, since he was elected for a second term on 8 May 1933. In reality, however, until 1935 power was vested in Piłsudski, who did not want to hold the office of president himself. Mościcki served as president until 1939. When Poland was invaded by Hitler's Germany on 1 September, he issued an appeal in which he called on the entire nation to fight for independence and resist the invaders. On 17 September, when Soviet forces crossed the Polish border invading from the east, together with the entire government he left for Romania, where he was interned as a result of German pressure exerted on the Romanian authorities.
Then, invoking his Swiss citizenship (which he had obtained when he had worked at Freiburg in 1879), he resigned and named Władysław Raczkiewicz, chairman of the Polish National Council, as his successor.
In December 1939 Ignacy Mościcki moved with his family to Switzerland, where
he lived until his death. He died on 2 October 1946 in Versoix near Geneva,
at the age of 79.
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Facts
Since Ignacy Mościcki established the national
nitrogen works in Tarnów, the new industrial district
of this city has carried the name Mościce. On a visit in May 1938, President Mościcki also visited the part of the city which bears his name.
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