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MASTERS IN THEIR OWN HOME OR DEFENDERS OF THE HUMAN PERSON? WOJCIECH KORFANTY, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND POLISH CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY’S ILLIBERAL RIGHTS-TALK*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

PIOTR H. KOSICKI
PIOTR H. KOSICKI*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Maryland E-mail: kosicki@umd.edu
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Abstract

Prior to World War II, the founder and key theorist of Poland's Christian Democratic movement—the Silesian political revolutionary Wojciech Korfanty—developed a sophisticated “Catholic rights-talk” in conversation with trends in Western European Catholic thought. In the wake of the Holocaust, however, both in ephemeral political opposition on Polish soil and in subsequent exile, Poland's Christian Democrats abandoned their interwar rights discourse. This essay explores that shift, locating its source in interwar Polish Catholic anti-Semitism. Given the Holocaust's perverse fulfillment of Polish Christian Democracy's crucial 1930s advocacy of restricting the political and economic life of Poland to rights-endowed Christians—necessitating the removal of Jewish “non-persons”—the Poles’ transnational postwar advocacy vacillated between Cold War cooperation with American-aligned governments and a desire to participate in the governance of a Poland that, even if Communist, had finally become a “nationally homogeneous state.”

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 99 - 130
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The author thanks Duncan Kelly, Brian Porter-Szűcs, and the three journal reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this essay, as well as participants in the February 2013 New Histories of Transnational Christianity workshop at Harvard University.

References

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22 Quoted in Lewandowski, Wojciech Korfanty, 124.

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30 Kosicki, “Between Catechism and Revolution,” 85–150.

31 Długajczyk, “Spór nie zażegnany,” 148.

32 Orzechowski, Wojciech Korfanty, 431.

33 At the same time, this animus did not prevent him from striking deals with the parliamentary representatives of these minorities. Lewandowski, Wojciech Korfanty, 122–7.

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39 Korfanty himself never invoked Maritain—in line with the role of popularizer in which he cast himself, Korfanty rarely invoked any of his influences by name—but testimony from his closest collaborators attests to the French Thomist's formative influence. Piwowarczyk, “Nad trumną.”

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45 Wojciech Korfanty, “Przebudowa ustroju gospodarczo-społecznego” (7 Nov. 1932), in Korfanty, Naród, Państwo, Kościół, 133–41, at 133.

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60 Wojciech Korfanty, “Moralność katolicka a wybory” (18 Aug. 1935), in Korfanty, Naród, Państwo, Kościół, 244–7, at 245.

61 Wojciech Korfanty, “Zdrowie moralne narodu” (15 June 1933), in Korfanty, Naród, Państwo, Kościół, 171–3, at 173.

62 Wojciech Korfanty, “Czy Pan Bóg jest na prawicy czy na lewicy?” (16 June 1936), in Korfanty, Naród, Państwo, Kościół, 282–6, at 285.

63 Wojciech Korfanty, “Smutna rocznica” (10 May 1936), in Korfanty, Naród, Państwo, Kościół, 271–5, at 273.

64 Wojciech Korfanty, “Tworzenie i organizacja woli narodu” (20 March 1937), in Korfanty, Naród, Państwo, Kościół, 293–7, at 297.

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