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Zygmunt Szczotkowski[edit]

Zygmunt Szczotkowski in 1905

Zygmunt Franciszek Szczotkowski (b. September 17, 1877[1] in Warsaw, died February 9, 1943 in Bieżanów) – mining engineer, the first Polish manager of the Janina Coal Mine in Libiąż.

He was the son of Stefan Wincenty Andrzej (b. February 1, 1843[2]) in the Stefanpole manor[3] near Riebiņi, in a family of former Inflanty landowners[4][5] of Łodzia coat of arms, a railroad civil servant and a resident of the Stefanowo residence near Włocławek and Maria Filmena, born Kolbe[6], born 1849 in Włocławek, died February 21, 1931 in Libiąż. As a young man, stefan Szczotkowski supported the cause of the January Uprising, for which the Szczotkowski family was punished with the loss of their property, and Stefan himself was forced to migrate into far East of Russia[7]. He arrived in Warsaw in 1867 and got married there. Soon he became ill with tuberculosis and died when his son was two years old.

Zygmunt attended school in Włocławek at first[8], later on his life his mother decided to move to Warsaw[9], where he graduated the gymnasium with a matura in 1896. He went off to study in a prestige mining academy in the Austrian city of Leoben, which he graduated with a diploma in mining engineering on February 24, 1900. After graduation, he undertoook preparations for an expedition into the Ural Mountains, where the possibilities of taking advantage of the natural resources were to be verified, but soon he gave the preparations up. In January 1901 he passed an exam before the Special Mining Commitee for the Dąbrowa Górnicza district. In 1901-1906 he was heading the operation of exploring the Klimontów shaft of the Niwka-Modrzejów Coal Mine near Sosnowiec. As of July 1906 he managed the Saturn coal mine in Czeladź[10]; he gave up this post in 1913 and left for France and Belgium, where he got acquainted with modern technology, to be used in the Sosnowiec mountain rescue unit, then in the planning phase. Between 1914 and 1919 he headed the Warsaw Fuel Section office, in 1916-1917, also in Warsaw, he completed a higher course in civil servitude. In 1919 he managed a mining operation near Zawiercie.

Libiąż mine in 1930, Szczotkowski's quarters in the foreground
Zygmunt Szczotkowski in 1931

As of March 1 1920 Szczotkowski became the chief engineer[11], and between November 18 1920 and the onset of the Second World War – the Polish manager of Compagnie Galicienne de Mines (Galician Mining Company) in Libiąż (nowadays Janina Coal Mine)[12][13].

In the interwar period he took active part in the development of the Central Industrial Region[14]; he also cooperated closely with the former Leopold Skulski government minister for industry and trade (1919-1920), Antoni Olszewski (in 1935-1937 he was a member of Olszewski's Commitee for the Investigation of National Enterprises, the so-called Statism Commitee) and with a former Minister of Transport in the governmnents of Kazimierz Bartel and Józef Piłsudski, later to become the manager of the Trzebinia Coal Mine, Paweł Romocki. For his merits for the Polish industry, on November 11, 1937, Szczotkowski was awarded the Knight's Cross of Order of Polonia Restituta. After the outbreak of the Second World War, as of September 18 1939 for the first year of occupation of Poland (until the Germans formally appointed the new manager on June 3 1940[15]) he was emplyed in the mine as a Treuhänder[16]. Był na krótko aresztowany przez Gestapo pod zarzutem dywersji w kopalni; po zwolnieniu kierował kopalnią jeszcze przez kilka miesięcy, a latem lub jesienią 1940[11] opuścił Libiąż i wyjechał do swojej rodziny przebywającej od 1 września 1939 w wybudowanym krótko przed wojną domu w podkrakowskim Bieżanowie[17] . Zmarł po ciężkiej chorobie, wskutek przewlekłej niewydolności układu krążenia trzy lata później.

Był dwukrotnie żonaty: w październiku 1907 ożenił się z 19-letnią Magdaleną Anną z domu Sznabl[18], z którą się potem rozwiódł[19] (wyszła potem za mąż po raz drugi; zmarła pod koniec lat 60. XX w.), a następnie w czerwcu 1923 z Marią z Wietrzykowskich herbu Korab wdową primo voto Borowską (1886-1959)[20].

Dużo podróżował, szczególnie po Europie i krajach wokół Morza Śródziemnego, interesował się techniką (w tym radiotechniką) i fotografią (także nowinkami w tej dziedzinie, np. fotografią barwną). W wolnym czasie zajmował się też numizmatyką i w mniejszym nieco stopniu filatelistyką, a także stolarstwem (w tym techniką intarsjowania różnymi gatunkami drewna).

References[edit]

  1. ^ All dates in this article, unless specified otherwise, are written according to the New Style
  2. ^ Most possibly according to the Old Style dating
  3. ^ "Latvijas romas katolu draudžu metriku grāmatas, Rēzeknes-Lubānas Dekanāts". Retrieved 5 March 2013. (Church books » Roman Catholic » Dekanāti » Rēzeknes-Lubānas » 1843-1843 Born), p. 76/113
  4. ^ Zygnunt's grandfather was an assessor Alfons Stefanowicz Szczotkowski, died 1846, and his uncle – a noble from a Latgale powiat of Ludza, Jan Mateusz, a younger brother of Stefan Wincenty
  5. ^ In Latvian national archives which maintain copies of the Russian Empire census data from 1897, Ludza powiat datasheets in Vitebsk Governorate show an entry on p. 527/669 related to Jan Mateusz Szczotkowski, living in Ludza with his wife, three daughters and a Belarussian servant
  6. ^ Among the Kolbe family members there was also a Bronisław Kolbe, born in Włocławek, later to become a mining engineer and a manager in a few mining and processing plants in [{Silesia]] and Zagłebie Dąbrowskie
  7. ^ After three years, he was allowed to travel to Congress Poland; the central national archives of Chuvashia (ЦГА ЧР.) in Cheboksary contain records of Stefan's compulsory stay in Tsivilsk(ЦГА ЧР. Ф.122. Оп.1.Д.7. Л.58; ЦГА ЧР. Ф.122. Оп.1.Д.9.Л.132; ЦГА ЧР. Ф.122. Оп.1.Д.28. Л.60; ЦГА ЧР. Ф.122. Оп.1.Д.2б. Л.46)
  8. ^ According to his own words, he frequently covered the distance between Stefanowo and Włocławek – about 15 km – by foot
  9. ^ She tried, without much success, to take advantage of the economic situation regarding the plots of land in the vicinity of Otwock, along the recently (1877) opened Vistula River Railroad; lack of success led to her selling out most of her property and family heirlooms
  10. ^ In that mine, while still studying at Leoben, between August 8 and September 30, 1898, he was an apprentice.
  11. ^ a b In the biography hastily prepared by his wife, Maria, during the war, it is stated that he performed this function as of 1919; the same note gives the ending date of his employment for the Janina mine mistakenly as October 1941 instead of 1940
  12. ^ This was a relatively new mine at the time, set up with the help of French capital in 1907, its French manager was Alexis Bartet
  13. ^ In the 2008 work on the Janina coal mine history by Maria Leś-Kunicka, the registry of the mine's managers states that in 1935 Szczotkowski was replaced by Józef Litwiniszyn, father of Professor Jerzy Litwiniszyn; the information is not complete, since both men were emplyed between 1920 and 1939, and all the time Litwiniszyn Was Szczotkowski's proxy regarding technical matters and worked as a "mine manager". The same inconsistency is repeated in the 2012 "Paliwo dla energetyki" (Fuel for the power industry) article by Wojciech Kwinta, published in the Polska energia magazine
  14. ^ He was the co-author, together with Michał Dunajecki, the then manager of Siersza Coal Mine and Ludwik Oelwein, the then manager of the Jaworzno-Bory Coal Mine, of a memorial, delivered to Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski in 1927, titled "Sprawa Kopalń Zagłębia Krakowskiego" (The Case of the Cracow Coalfield) in which the authors emphasized the dire need of providing support to support the growth of the five mines in the Cracow Coalfield area, especially in the face of the potentially coming dangers to the stability of Polish coal mining industry in Silesia.
  15. ^ Libiąż camps during he Second World War
  16. ^ i.e. a comissary manager; Nazi authorities referred to him, e.g. in the correspondence from July 1940, as Direktor der Galizischen Bergwerksgeselschaft – Director of the Galician Mining Company
  17. ^ korespondencja niemieckiego kierownictwa kopalni kierowana do niego pod koniec września i w połowie października 1940 adresowana była już do Bieżanowa, a on sam określany był w niej jako Bergwerksdirektor außer Dienst ("dyrektor kopalni w stanie spoczynku")
  18. ^ miał z nią dwie córki: Miłosławę, ur. 1908, oraz Zofię Stanisławę, ur. 1911, która wyemigrowała do Rumunii
  19. ^ małżeństwo Szczotkowskich zawarte zostało w kościele katolickim, który wówczas, tak jak i dziś, nie uznawał rozwodów; Zygmunt Szczotkowski zmienił w związku z tym wyznanie (w październiku 1922) na kalwinizm; dopiero pod koniec życia powrócił do wiary katolickiej (formalny akt przejścia podpisał w sierpniu 1942, ale już w kenkarcie z marca 1942 w rubryce "wyznanie" wpisano "rzymskokatolickie")
  20. ^ z nią miał córkę Annę Marię, ur. 1924; po wojnie wyszła za mąż za Henryka Zielińskiego i zamieszkała we Wrocławiu

Bibliography[edit]

  • L. Nieckula, Cmentarz Bieżanowski [w:] "Gazeta Dzielnicowa Dwunastka", ISSN 1426-3211, Kraków-Bieżanów, nr 6-7/2004, str. 6
  • M. Leś-Runicka, Historia kopalni węgla kamiennego Janina w Libiążu, wyd. Południowy Koncern Węglowy, ZG Janina, Libiąż 2008 (bez nru ISBN)
  • W. Kwinta, Paliwo dla energetyki [w:] "Polska Energia" – magazyn informacyjny pracowników Grupy Tauron (ISSN 1689-5304), wyd. Tauron Polska Energia SA, Departament Komunikacji Rynkowej i PR, Katowice, nr 4(42)/2012, str. 26-27
  • J. Zieliński, Portret pioniera [w:] "Nasze Forum" – magazyn Grupy Tauron (bez nru ISSN), wyd. Południowy Koncern Węglowy, Jaworzno, część I w nrze 11(35)/2012, str. 10-11; część II w nrze 1(37)/2013, str. 12-13
  • J. Zieliński, Budował Janinę [w:] "Przełom" – Tygodnik Ziemi Chrzanowskiej, ISSN 1231-5664, nr 48(1069), 5.12.2012, str. 22