Polish Provincial Sejm in Poznań

On 3 December 1918 the Polish Provincial Sejm (PL), an assembly of representatives of the Poles living within the borders of Germany, began its sittings in Poznań. Delegates came not only from Greater Poland but also from Silesia, Pomerania, Warmia and Masuria, and even from the Polish working-class communities in Westphalia and the Rhineland. The sittings were preceded by a service in Poznań’s parish church. The city was decorated with white-and-red flags and eagles, and order in the streets was kept by the Polish People’s Guard and by scouts, without the German police. The assembly met in the hall of the Apollo (PL) cinema in Piekary Street, although according to some accounts the plenary sessions were held in the nearby Lambert hall, while the committees met in the cinema.

The Sejm was a fruit of the revolution that had overthrown the monarchy in Germany at the beginning of November. In the Prussian partition the Poles took advantage of the authorities’ moment of weakness: on 11 November a secret inter-party committee, active since 1916, came into the open, and on 12 November it chose a three-member Commissariat, consisting of the priest Stanisław Adamski, Wojciech Korfanty and Adam Poszwiński (PL). On 14 November the organisation took the name of the Supreme People’s Council and called elections to the Sejm. The Prussian authorities agreed to the assembly on one condition: it could not resolve to detach any part of the Reich’s territory. The elections took place between 16 November and 1 December, often in the form of public meetings. Women too could vote and stand, which is regarded as the first such case in the history of Polish parliamentary life.

1,399 delegates were elected: 526 from Greater Poland, 431 from Silesia, 262 from West Prussia, 47 from Warmia and Masuria and 133 from the Polish communities in the interior of Germany. Among them were 129 women and 75 Catholic priests. Depending on the source, between about 1,100 and 1,200 deputies took part in the sittings. The most strongly represented were supporters of National Democracy, which regarded the Polish National Committee in Paris as the representation of Poland.

In its most important resolution the Sejm recognised the Supreme People’s Council as the sole legitimate supreme authority of the Poles in Germany and elected its new membership of 80. The physician Bolesław Krysiewicz (PL) became chairman of the presidium. Unable formally to proclaim the separation of the Polish lands from the Reich, the delegates expressed their will to unite them with the rest of the country in a united, independent Polish state with access to the sea. Telegrams to this effect were sent to Georges Clemenceau, President Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George. They spoke cautiously about Warsaw. The authority of Józef Piłsudski had come from the hands of the Regency Council, appointed by the occupiers, and not from the will of the nation, so the Sejm demanded the swiftest possible formation in Warsaw of a Provisional Government of National Unity with representatives of all parties and all partitions. The Poznań politicians had in any case earlier refused to join the government of Jędrzej Moraczewski. There was also talk of Poland’s future political system, of relations between state and Church, and of national minorities, above all the Germans.

On 5 December the Sejm adjourned its sittings, which were never resumed. A day later the Supreme People’s Council elected a six-member Commissariat as its executive body: Adamski and Władysław Seyda (PL) from Greater Poland, Korfanty and Józef Rymer from Silesia, Stefan Łaszewski (PL) from Pomerania and Poszwiński from Kuyavia. The Council wanted to win the lands of the Prussian partition for Poland by peaceful means, awaiting the decisions of the peace conference, and did not support armed struggle. The Germans responded on 12 and 13 December with their own congress of people’s councils, and brought volunteer units of the Heimatschutz into the province. Tension grew throughout December until on 27 December, the day after Ignacy Jan Paderewski arrived in Poznań, an uprising broke out in the city.