Discover

'Gabriel Narutowicz' (''Coat of arms of Narutowicz''), (March 17 1865 – December 16 1922) was the first elected President of the Republic of Poland.
Born from a Lithuanian noble family in Telšiai in Lithuania, then under the Russian Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Narutowicz had been a professor at the Polytechnical Institute in Zurich Switzerland, since 1908, and had directed the construction of many hydroelectric plants in Western Europe. After Poland regained its independence in 1918, he became involved in the national politics of Poland, and served as the Minister of Public Works, 1920-1921, and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1922.

On December 9 1922, he was elected by the Polish Parliament (Sejm, convened as the National Assembly of Poland), to be the ''First President of Poland'', and was sworn in on December 11. His election, supported by the Left, Center, Peasant and Minority deputies, roused the ire of the Right-Wing deputies, particularly the National Democrats, who emphasized that the deputies who had supported Narutowicz had included Jews, and hence called the newly-elected head of state the "President of the Jews".
On December 16 1922, five days after his inauguration, while attending the opening of an art exhibit at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, Narutowicz was shot by a sympathizer of the National Democrats, an art professor and critic, Eligiusz Niewiadomski. The murderer was sentenced to death and executed a month later.
Gabriel Narutowicz's brother, Stanislovas Narutavičius, was a member of the State Council of Lithuania, and his signature appears on the Lithuanian Act of Independence of February 16 1918.

Contents

See also

See also

★ List of Presidents of Poland