Ignacy Moscicki
Ignacy Moscicki was a chemist who was made president to be agreeable, held the office for thirteen years, and used it once - to keep the Polish state legally alive after it had been overrun. He was an industrial chemist of genuine distinction, the inventor of a commercially viable process for fixing atmospheric nitrogen and a professor at Lwow, with no political career at all when Pilsudski seized power in May 1926 and needed a president who would not obstruct him. Moscicki was proposed, elected by the assembly, and served for the rest of the marshal's life as the civilian face of a government the marshal actually ran. The constitution of April 1935 was written to formalise that arrangement, giving the president authority over the government, the army and his own succession, and answerable to God and history rather than to parliament. Its intended occupant died five weeks after it was promulgated. Moscicki inherited powers designed for somebody else and spent the remaining four years balancing the factions of the marshal's heirs, presiding over a country with a shrinking democracy, a deteriorating position between two totalitarian neighbours, and a military that had absorbed most of the budget and was still equipped for the previous war. In September 1939 the government crossed into Romania and was interned there under German pressure. Moscicki's one decisive act followed. The 1935 constitution let a president name his own successor in wartime, and he used it: he resigned, appointed a man who was outside Romanian custody and could reach France, and thereby transferred the presidency without a break. It is why the government in exile was the lawful continuation of the republic rather than a committee, why it commanded armed forces and an underground state at home for six years, and why the government installed later by the Soviet Union was contested in law for another forty-five. He spent the war in Switzerland and died there in 1946.
- Lived: 1867 CE – 1946 CE
- Nationality: Polish
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
