Poland's VIP planes after national fathers
Poland's five new VIP planes - 2 Gulfstream G550 and 3 Boeing 737 machines - will be named after Polish national heroes and indepenence fighters, deputy Defence Minister Bartosz Kownacki informed Friday in Bydgoszcz, north Poland.
The G550s will carry the names of Prince Jozef Poniatowski (see: NOTE 1) and General Casimir (Kazimierz) Pulaski (see NOTE 2), the 737s will be named after Jozef Pilsudski (see: NOTE 3), Roman Dmowski (see: NOTE 4) and Ignacy Jan Paderewski (see: NOTE 5).
Earlier Kownacki attended the signing of a letter of intent between the Gulfstream company and Poland's Military Aviation Plant no. 2 in Bydgoszcz on the servicing of the new G550s in the plant.
The names for the machines were chosen from more than 1,100 entries in a Defence Ministry competition announced last Tuesday. The condition was for the names to have a universal resonance and at the same time to honour outstanding Polish personages. (PAP)
mb/
NOTE 1: Prince Jozef Antoni Poniatowski (May 7, 1763 – Oct. 19, 1813) was a Polish general, war minister and military chief, as well as a Marshal of the French Empire.
Poniatowski, a nephew of Polish King Stanislaw II Augustus, began his military career began in the Austrian army, where he reached the rank of colonel. He joined the Polish army in 1789 in the rank of major general and took over command of the Royal Guards. Poniatowski took part in the 1792 Polish-Russian War, winning a victory in the Battle of Zielence in Ukraine.
In 1794 Poniatowski participated in the Kosciuszko Uprising (see: NOTE 6) and led the defence of Warsaw, for which he was exiled and permitted to return in 1798.
Poniatowski became minister of war in 1806 after the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw (see: NOTE 7). He led a 16,000-strong army in the Austro-Polish War, winning a victory against the Austrians in the Battle of Raszyn and subsequently foraying into Galicia, which brought a surprising Polish victory and allowed the Duchy to partly reclaim territories lost in the Partitions of Poland (see: NOTE 8).
Poniatowski was a close aide to Napoleon Bonaparte and took part in Bonaparte's Russian campaign. He was injured while fighting for Moscow and had to return to Warsaw, where he occupied himself with rebuilding Polish armed forces intended to fight in Germany. Covering the French army's retreat after losing the famous "Battle of the Nations" at Leipzig (1813), Poniatowski was wounded several times and drowned in the Elster river.
NOTE 2: Kazimierz Pulaski (born March 6, 1745 in Warsaw, Poland — died October 11/15 1779 on board a ship between Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, US), emblemed 'Slepowron', became known as the "Father of the American Cavalry". He was a Polish patriot and US colonial army officer, and hero both of the Polish anti-Russian insurrection of 1768 (the Confederation of Bar or the Bar Confederation) and the American Revolution.
Kazimierz was the son of Jozef Pulaski (1704–69), one of the initiators of the Bar Confederation (1768–1772), which was an association of Polish nobles formed at the fortress of Bar in Podolia in order to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (see: NOTE 8). As a young man Pulaski distinguished himself in the defense of Berdichev (1768) and Czestochowa (1770–71) against Russian forces. In October 1771 he unsuccessfully attempted to kidnap Poland's King Stanislaw II to the confederates’ camp and was falsely accused of an attempt on the king. After Prussia and Austria invaded Poland in the spring of 1772, Pulaski left for Saxony, later moving to France where he lived in financial straits.
In December 1776 in Paris Pulaski met the American statesman Benjamin Franklin, who recommended him to General George Washington. Pulaski landed in America in June 1777. He served in Washington’s army at Brandywine, at Germantown and in the winter campaign of 1777–78, and was made general and chief of cavalry by Congress. The Pulaski Legion, a mixed unit he formed in 1778, made use of his experience in guerrilla warfare. In May 1779 Pulaski defended Charleston. Wounded at Savannah on October 9 1779, he died aboard the warship Wasp.
NOTE 3: Born on December 5, 1867, Jozef Pilsudski was Poland's post-World War I independence architect and inter-war state leader. After regaining independence by Poland in 1918, Pilsudski became the Chief of State, the Commander-in-Chief and Marshal of Poland. In May 1926, following a successful coup d'état he took over power in Poland. He was Poland's two-time PM, General Inspector of Armed Forces and minister for military affairs (1926-1935).
Jozef Pilsudski was a proponent of preemptive war against Hitler, to which he repeatedly tried to convince the French side. He died at Warsaw's Belweder Palace on May 12, 1935. His funeral became an international tribute with a series of masses, ceremonies and a funeral train touring Poland.
Pope Pius XI conducted a special ceremony in the Holy See on May, 18th. Also a commemoration was held at League of Nations seat in Geneva and condolences poured in Poland from world heads of state, including Britain's King George V, Japan's Emperor Hirohito, France's Albert Lebrun and Pierre-Étienne Flandin, Austria's Wilhelm Miklas as well as Germany's Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, Italy's Benito Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel III.(
NOTE 4: Roman Stanislaw Dmowski (Aug. 9, 1864 – Jan. 2, 1939) was a Polish politician and co-founder of the rightwing National Democracy movement. Considering the Germanization of Polish territories under the German Empire as the main threat to Polish national culture, Dmowski supported more accommodation with another partitioner of Poland, the Russian Empire. During World War I he was a major spokesman for Polish interests through his Paris-based Polish National Committee. Dmowski was instrumental in the 1918 restoration of Poland's independent existence.
Although Dmowski never wielded official political power except for a brief term serving as a foreign minister in 1923, he remained one of the most influential Polish politicians of his time notwithstanding. For most of his political life he was the chief opponent of the Polish military and political leader Jozef Pilsudski and his vision of Poland as a multinational federation.
NOTE 5: Ignacy Jan Paderewski (Nov. 18, 1860 - June 29, 1941) was a Polish piano virtuoso, politician and advocate of Polish independence. Beloved by concert audiences worldwide, his musical fame gave him access to diplomacy and the media.
Paderewski played an important role in Poland's independence quest by meeting with then US President Woodrow Wilson and obtaining the explicit inclusion of independent Poland as point 13 in Wilson's 1918 peace terms, also known as the Fourteen Points. In 1919 he served as the prime minister and foreign minister of Poland, as well as represented Poland at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
NOTE 6: The Kosciuszko Uprising under Polish-Lithuanian military leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko (see: below) was a Polish revolt against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia and an unsuccessful attempt to free the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Russian dominance after the Second Partition of Poland (1793). The insurgency's fall preceded the 1795 Third Partition of the Commonwealth.
Tadeusz Kosciuszko (February 4 or 12, 1746 – October 15, 1817) was a Polish–Lithuanian military leader who was proclaimed a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and the United States. Kosciuszko fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the American side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kosciuszko Uprising after which Poland was ultimately partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria.
Numerous places worldwide are named after Kosciuszko, including the highest mountain in Australia and an island in Alaska, not to mention a New York bridge and several cities in the US.
NOTE 7: The Duchy was a Polish state established on the Polish lands ceded by the Kingdom of Prussia under the terms of the Treaties of Tilsit, two agreements signed by Napoleon I in 1807 with Russia and Prussia. The treaties were made at the expense of the Prussian king who gave away about half of his pre-war territories.
From those territories Napoleon created, among others, the Duchy of Warsaw, a move which was to support the idea of the restoration of Poland's statehood and the rebuilding of the Kingdom of Poland in its pre-partition boundaries (see: NOTE 8 & 9).
Following Napoleon's failed 1812 invasion of Russia, the Duchy, held in personal union by one of Napoleon's allies, King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony, was occupied by Prussian and Russian troops until 1815, when it was formally partitioned between the two countries at the congress. It covered central and eastern part of present Poland and minor parts of present Lithuania and Belarus.
On October 24, 1815, Russia received most of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw as a "Kingdom of Poland" with the tsar as king ruling it independently of Russia. Russia, however, did not receive the province of Poznan, which was given to Prussia as the Grand Duchy of Poznan, nor Krakow, which became a free city. Furthermore, the tsar was unable to unite the new domain with the parts of Poland that had been incorporated into Russia in the 1790s. Prussia received 60 percent of Saxony, later known as the Province of Saxony, with the remainder returned to King Frederick Augustus I as his Kingdom of Saxony.
The Free, Independent, and Strictly Neutral City of Krakow with its territory, named the Free City of Cracow or Republic of Cracow, was a city republic formed by the congress on the basis of the city itself and its vicinity. It was controlled by its three neighbours (Russia, Prussia, and Austria).
It was a centre of agitation for an independent Poland. In 1846, in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Krakow Uprising, it was annexed by the Austrian Empire. It was an overwhelmingly Polish-speaking city-state. 85 percent of its population was Catholics, 14 - people of Jewish descent, while other religions comprised less than 1 percent. Krakow had a Jewish-descended population reaching nearly 40 percent, while the rest were almost exclusively Polish-speaking Catholics.
NOTE 8: The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (see: NOTE 9) towards the end of the 18th century which ended the existence of sovereign Poland for 123 years. The partitioning powers were the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and Habsburg Austria, which divided the country among themselves progressively.
On Sept. 18, 1772, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Austrian Empire notified Poland of the partition and demanded a Sejm (parliament) sitting to approve the cession. Opposition to the partition was broken by threats and the occupation of Poland by the troops of the three countries.
The 1772 partition of Poland led to further two partitions, in 1793 and 1795 ending the existence of a sovereign Poland for 123 years. Nevertheless, the nation itself did not cease to exist for over a century connecting the East with the West culturally, technologically and tradewise. Partitioned Poland also remained a robust base to anti-invader conspiracy movements and freedom fight bouts with four insurrections including the 1794 Kosciuszko Uprising, the November Uprising (1830), the Krakow Uprising (1946) and the January Uprising (1863).
NOTE 9: Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth was the XVI - XVIII centrury Polish-Lithuanian state composed of the Crown - Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, considered a precursor to modern democratic system such as federation, constitutional monarchy. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, was a dual state consisting of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ruled by one monarch, who was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
The Commonwealth was one of the biggest countries in 16th/17th-century Europe, at its peak spanning about 1.2 million km2 and with a multi-ethnic population of about 11 million. It was formally established by the Union of Lublin in July 1569. Considerably reduced in size by the First Partition of Poland in 1772 and the Second Partition in 1793, it disappeared from the European map after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. (PAP)
