Michał Łempicki

Michał Łempicki was born on 14 September 1856, near Sztum, Russian Empire (in today's Poland).[1] His mother was Izabela, his father, Michał senior (1818-1895), was a nobleman from the province of Płock, then in the Congress Poland. In 1861, he was sentenced to exile to Samara. A year later, his wife Isabella was allowed to join him with their three children, Michał Antoni and his sisters. After a brief release to Saint Petersburg in 1871, the Samara exile resumed till 1886.[2]

In 1874, the young Michał graduated from the Samara gymnasium and moved to Saint Petersburg. From 1874 to 1881, he studied at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute (Russian: Санкт-Петербургский горный институт): he was graduated both from the Institute Natural Sciences department and from the Physics-Mathematics Faculty of Saint Petersburg Imperial University.[3]

From 1881 onwards, he served in the Mining Department as the head of the Polish mining factories transferred from Warsaw.[3] In 1884, he conducted geological research in the provinces of Kharkiv, Yekaterinoslav and Kursk, with the civil servant rank of Titular advisor (Russian: Титулярный советник). The next year, he became the acting senior clerk of the Salt Division of the Mining Department.[4] As such, Michał Łempicki carried out several works for the Russian Empire:[4]

• studying salt lakes and other hydrological works in Western Siberia;
• analyzing Sloviansk mineral waters:
• performing geological researches in the Congress Poland; (e.g. developing a geological map of the Dąbrowa Basin).

In 1890, he joined the Polish Mining Plants section of the Mining Department: to this end, he left Saint Petersburg to live in the Dąbrowa Basin on Polish territory. In 1895, he became a member of the Main Mining Directorate (Russian: Главное Горное Управление - ГГУ), offering technical expertise to the mining company "Граф Ренард" ("Count Renard") in Sosnowica region;[4] there he eventually took over the management of the society till 1901.

Kopalnia Mortimer Coal Mine in Sosnowiec ca 1920

In 1896, he founded the company M. Łempicki i Spółka Przedsiębiorstwo Górnicze, Wiertnicze i Hydrologiczne (English: M. Łempicki's Company of Mining, Drilling and Hydrology), based in Sosnowiec, Silesia: it operated not only in Silesia, but also in the territory of the Russian partition and in Siberia. The company is still active today under the name G-drilling- United Oilfield Services.[5]

During the same period, Michał was an active member of various Polish industrial and scientific societies: hence in 1891 he entered the "Physiographic Commission of the Academy of Arts and Sciences", which founders originated from the Dąbrowa Basin.[2]

From 1901 to 1906, he was the managing director of the Joint Stock Company of the Strahovitsky Mining Plants in the Radom Province. In 1906, Łempicki had gathered several positions in the mining business:[6]

• director of the Society of Industrialists of the Provinces of the Congress Poland (till 1912);
• director of the Warsaw Society for Supervision of Steam Boilers;
• deputy chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Handicrafts in the Congress Poland.

Michał Łempicki published a number of papers related to mining exploitation. He retired in 1912 with the administrative civilian rank of State councilor.[3]

Since 1900, he was the co-owner of a mining and drilling firm M. Łempicki and Co. in the Piotrków Governorate:[6] it carried out large-scale drilling operations in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, notably to build artesian wells. The company, which name changed over the years, had after 1905 many shareholders, in particular engineers from the Dąbrowa Basin (Józef Předpelsky, Anthony Olszewski, Stanislav Sventokhovsky, Edward Poplavsky). Local branches were established in Katowice, Warsaw and Vilnius.[1]

Łempicki had also invested in several other business, including the Korwinów ceramic factory near Czestochowa or an agricultural machinery factory in Lublin. The amount of his assets is estimated at 500 000 Imperial rubles.[3]

In November 1905, Michał took part in the Polish delegation appealing to the Prime Minister Sergei Witte. The goal of this petition was to ask for a reconsideration of the policy of the Russian government towards the Kingdom of Poland. He was very active among the Polish community of Saint Petersburg, becoming in March 1906, the Secretary of the Polish Central Election Committee in the Russian capital. As a matter of fact, Łempicki was harassed by the Russian authorities. Indeed in 1907, having failed to be elected to the Second State Duma, Michał was forced to emigrate to Switzerland then Germany. Back to Poland, he continued to administer his mining companies.[3]

On 20 October 1912 he was elected to the fourth convocation of the State Duma, as representative of the Piotrków Governorate. He then joined the "Koło Polskie" (English: Polish wheel-Russian: Польское коло), a group of Polish deputies in the State Duma of the Russian Empire. At the Duma, he was a member of the budget commission, the trade and industry commission and the labor commission.[3]

Provisional Council of State, 1917, Michał Łempicki is the second seating from the left

Łempicki Villa at 6 Chopina st., Bydgoszcz

M Lempicki Obituary

On the eve of the First World War, Łempicki entered the occupied territory of Poland with an Austrian passport. According to Polish sources, he had renounced citizenship, even though he still signed his articles in the Western press as "Deputy of the Russian State Duma" (French: "député a la Douma d'Empire"). With the help of Austria-Hungary, he co-created a League of Polish Sovereignty and became its president.[2]

His actions were utterly condemned by the Russian Duma: on 12 December 1915 he was expelled from the "Koło Polskie" for "anti-Russian activity".[7] Following the occupation of the Congress Poland by German troops, Michał actively cooperated with the ruling administration: as a consequence, on 15 December 1916, he was deprived of his deputy mandate by a decree of the State Duma, officially for non-attendance at meetings.[3]

From 1917 to 1919, Łempicki participated to the "Provisional Council of State" where he collaborated, inter alia, with Józef Piłsudski, Franciszek Radziwiłł or Władysław Studnicki: he chaired the Department of the Interior, which was responsible for matters related to the organization of local administration, health care and electoral law.[8] Since 1917, he was also a member of the Military Commission established by the Provisional Council of State.[1]

At the restoration of Poland's independence, he was appointed permanent consultant to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In particular, he was engaged in the work organization in mines and metallurgical plants in Silesia and in the Dąbrowa Basin. He took part in the preparation of the draft law on mining and on the status of the State Geological Institute.[1] Furthermore, he actively participated in the foundation of Polish military formations.

In 1921, Łempicki and his wife moved to Bydgoszcz, where they found here a large group of former inhabitants of the Eastern Borderlands. He knew the city after previous stays at a friend's flat at 23 Chrobrego Street.[2] They lived in the newly built villa at 6 Chopina street. In Bydgoszcz, Michał kept contact with Warsaw institutions, where he liked to visit the Sejm and enter into political discussions with various ministries, having still many friends in this domain. Additionally, he often met with colleagues from the Society of Industrialists and was still a shareholder of many companies. He started to write articles for the daily local journal "Dziennik Bydgoski". In the 1920s, he was politically associated with the National Democratic movement.[8]

In his villa, he had gathered a rich library, ornamented with many pictures (mainly portraits of children) by his deceased sister Leokadia Łempicka (1865–1913). He shared his passion of books with a good friend of his, Dr. Władysław Bełza.[8]

Even before World War I, Łempicki started to cooperate with newspapers, like the Kurier Warszawski. He co-founded in 1903 the "Przegląd Górniczo-Hutniczy",[9] a journal related to questions about mining and metallurgical industry. In Bydgoszcz, he pursued his writings (mainly political and social-oriented) for the "Dziennik Bydgoski".[8]

He died on 29 December 1930, at the age of 74. His funeral took place on 1 January 1931: according to his will, there were neither speeches nor wreathes over the grave. Its coffin was placed in the "Missionary Fathers Church" in Ossoliński avenue. He was buried in the "Nowofarny cemetery" in Bydgoszcz.[10]

Michał Łempicki bequeathed all his collections, about 800 volumes and the correspondence of his father Michał, to the city of Bydgoszcz.[11] The donation comprised books, paintings, letters that his father once received from friends, autographs of Archbishop Zygmunt Feliński, poet Karol Baliński, historian Tadeusz Korzon, Mikhail Bakunin and writer Eliza Orzeszkowa.[12]