In a Reichstag speech on October 25, 1918, Korfanty demanded that the provinces of West Prussia (including Ermeland(Warmia) and the city of Danzig (Gdańsk)), the Province of Posen, and parts of the provinces of East Prussia (Masuria) and Silesia (Upper Silesia) be included in the Polish state.Īfter the war, during the Great Poland Uprising, Korfanty became a member of the Naczelna Rada Ludowa (Supreme People's Council) in Poznań (Posen), and a member of the Polish provisional parliament, the Constituanta-Sejm. However, Korfanty retained his Christian Democratic convictions and later returned to them in domestic Polish politics.Īt the end of World War I, in 1918, a Kingdom of Poland was proclaimed by Germany, which was then replaced by an independent Polish state. In a 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, when the 'Centre Party' refused to advocate Polish minority rights (beyond the Poles' rights as Catholics), the Poles distanced themselves from it, seeking protection elsewhere. This was a significant departure from tradition, as the Polish minority in Germany had so far predominantly supported the conservative 'Centre Party', which represented the large Catholic community in Germany, who felt inferior in the protestant-dominated Reich. 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). In 1901, 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. From 1895 until 1901, he studied philosophy, law, and economics, first at the Technical University in Charlottenburg (Berlin) (1895) and then at the University of Breslau, where Marxist Werner Sombart was among his teachers and remained on friendly terms with him for many years. Korfanty was born the son of a coal miner in Sadzawka, part of Siemianowice (at the time Laurahütte), in Prussian Silesia, then German Empire. Wojciech was one of the chief advocates of joining Upper Silesia to the new Polish state after the war. He fought to protect Poles from discrimination and against the policy of Germanisation in Upper Silesia before the war. He was known for his policies in the wake of World War I which sought to join Silesia to Poland. Briefly, he also was a paramilitary leader, known for organizing the Polish Silesian Uprisings in the region of Upper Silesia, contested by Germany and Poland. Wojciech Korfanty (20 April 1873 - 17 August 1939), born Adalbert Korfanty, was a Polish nationalist activist, journalist and politician, serving as member of the German parliaments Reichstag and Prussian Landtag, and later on, in the Polish Sejm.
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