National Council of the Duchy of Cieszyn

On 19 October 1918, in Cieszyn, Polish national activists set up the National Council of the Duchy of Cieszyn (PL). It was to represent the Polish population of the Duchy of Cieszyn, the eastern part of Austrian Silesia, and to bring about its union with the reviving Poland. The activists did not wait for the politicians of Galicia or for decisions in Vienna. They resolved to create a centre of Polish authority on the spot themselves, before others decided the fate of the land.

A council of three parties

The Council was initiated by the mining engineer Józef Kiedroń. It brought together representatives of the three Polish groupings active in Cieszyn Silesia: the nationalist Polish National Union, the Union of Silesian Catholics (PL) and the socialists of the Polish Social Democratic Party, the party of Ignacy Daszyński. At first the Council had just over twenty members, and its membership grew quickly. Women also sat on it, among them the socialist Dorota Kłuszyńska.

The Council did not elect a single chairman. Its proceedings were directed by three presidents of equal rank, one from each camp: Father Józef Londzin (PL), leader of the Union of Silesian Catholics; Jan Michejda (PL), a lawyer and a Lutheran, leader of the National Union; and the socialist Tadeusz Reger (PL). According to the editors of its minutes, party differences were scarcely visible in the Council’s work. It had no party clubs, and no voting discipline was imposed.

Background

The Polish parties had been preparing for this step for several days. According to some accounts, as early as 12 October their representatives, meeting in Cieszyn under the chairmanship of Father Londzin, declared that the Duchy belonged to a united, independent Poland. They also recognised the Regency Council in Warsaw, which a week earlier had proclaimed its will to create an independent state, and declared themselves in favour of good relations with the Czechs. On 16 October Emperor Charles announced the reconstruction of Austria as a union of national states. National councils then began to spring up across the monarchy, with no intention of waiting for reform from Vienna.

Cieszyn Silesia was a mixed land. According to the Austrian census of 1910, just over half of the Duchy’s inhabitants gave Polish as their language of daily use, over a quarter Czech, and roughly one in six German. Poles predominated in the districts of Bielsko, Cieszyn and Frysztat, Czechs in the district of Frydek. The land was also rich. It contained part of the Ostrava-Karviná coalfield (PL) with its coking coal, the ironworks at Trzyniec and the Košice–Bohumín Railway, which linked the Czech lands with Slovakia. That is why both Poles and Czechs laid claim to the Cieszyn region, and why the Poles wanted to act quickly.

What followed

In its first days the Council did not yet announce publicly that it wanted to join the Duchy to Poland. On 27 October it called a rally in the market square of Cieszyn which, according to various accounts, drew tens of thousands of people, and according to some studies about 50,000. Those gathered passed a resolution in favour of joining Cieszyn Silesia to Poland. On 30 October, in the proclamation “People of Silesia!”, the Council declared that the Duchy belonged to the Polish state, while the final border with the Czechs was to be settled by agreement between the two governments and by the will of the population. Meanwhile, on 29 October in Opava, the Czechs set up their own representative body, the Provincial National Committee for Silesia (Zemský národní výbor pro Slezsko).

During the night of 31 October to 1 November, Polish soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army’s Cieszyn garrison disarmed the Austrian units without bloodshed, and the Council took power in the districts of Bielsko, Cieszyn and Frysztat. It is sometimes called the first Polish organ of authority independent of the partitioning powers. It remained active until July 1920, when Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia.