page_title: Ignacy Jan Paderewski
section_title: Politician and diplomat
hierarchical_section_title: Ignacy Jan Paderewski / Politician and diplomat
caption_attribution_description: Pomnik Ignacy Paderewski, Ujazdowski Park in Warsaw with the permission of the authers Marek and Ewa Wojciechowscy [1]
context_page_description: Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I.
  A favorite of concert audiences around the world, his musical fame opened access to diplomacy and the media, as possibly did his status as a freemason, and charitable work of his second wife, Helena Paderewska. During World War I, Paderewski advocated an independent Poland, including by touring the United States, where he met with President Woodrow Wilson, who came to support the creation of an independent Poland in his Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which led to the Treaty of Versailles.
  Shortly after his resignations from office, Paderewski resumed his concert career to recoup his finances and rarely visited the politically-chaotic Poland thereafter, the last time being in 1924.
context_section_description: In 1910, Paderewski funded the Battle of Grunwald Monument in Kraków to commemorate the battle's 500th anniversary. The monument's unveiling led to great patriotic demonstrations. In speaking to the gathered throng, Paderewski proved as adept at capturing their hearts and minds for the political cause as he was with his music. His passionate delivery needed no recourse to notes. Paderewski's status as an artist and philanthropist and not as a member of any of the many Polish political factions became one of his greatest assets and so he rose above the quarrels, and he could legitimately appeal to higher ideals of unity, sacrifice, charity, and work for common goals.
  During World War I, Paderewski became an active member of the Polish National Committee in Paris, which was soon accepted by the Triple Entente as the representative of the forces trying to create the state of Poland. Paderewski became the committee's spokesman, and soon, he and his wife also formed others, including the Polish Relief Fund, in London, and the White Cross Society, in the United States. Paderewski met the English composer Edward Elgar, who used a theme from Paderewski's Fantasie Polonaise in his work Polonia written for the Polish Relief Fund concert in London on 6 July 1916 (the title certainly recognises Paderewski's Symphony in B minor).
  Paderewski urged fellow Polish immigrants to join the Polish armed forces in France, and he pressed elbows with all the dignitaries and influential men whose salons he could enter. He spoke to Americans directly in public speeches and on the radio by appealing to them to remember the fate of his nation. He kept such a demanding schedule of public appearances, fundraisers, and meetings that he stopped musical touring altogether for a few years, instead dedicating himself to diplomatic activity. On the eve of the American entry into the war, in January 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson's main advisor, Colonel House, turned to Paderewski to prepare a memorandum on the Polish issue. Two weeks later, Wilson spoke before Congress and issued a challenge to the status quo: "I take it for granted that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, autonomous Poland." The establishment of "New Poland" became one of Wilson's famous Fourteen Points, the principles that Wilson followed during peace negotiations to end World War I. In April 1918, Paderewski met in New York City with leaders of the American Jewish Committee in an unsuccessful attempt to broker a deal in which organised Jewish groups would support Polish territorial ambitions, in exchange for support for equal rights. However, it soon became clear that no plan would satisfy both Jewish leaders and Roman Dmowski, the head of the Polish National Committee, who was strongly anti-Semitic.
  At the end of the war, with the fate of the city of Poznań and the whole region of Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) still undecided, Paderewski visited Poznań. With his public speech on 27 December 1918, the Polish inhabitants of the city began a military uprising against Germany, called the Greater Poland Uprising. Behind the scenes, Paderewski worked hard to get Dmowski and Józef Piłsudski to collaborate, but the latter came on top.
  In 1919, in the newly independent Poland, Piłsudski, who was the Chief of State, appointed Paderewski as the Prime Minister of Poland and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland (January 1919 – December 1919). He and Dmowski represented Poland at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and dealt with issues regarding territorial claims and minority rights. Somehow, Paderewski tried to whitewash to the press the role of the recreated Polish Army during the ongiong Jewish pogroms in the Polish–Soviet War. He signed the Treaty of Versailles, which recognized Polish independence won after World War I, and the subsequent Soviet invasion was halted.
  Paderewski's government achieved remarkable milestones in just ten months: democratic elections to Parliament, ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, passage of the treaty on protecti
caption: Monument to Paderewski in Warsaw's Ujazdów Park
exif: {}