Unknown Polish Constitution Draft of 1919. Contribution to the history of European political thought in the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

Source research conducted by the authors in the area of the history of the Polish system led to the discovery of the anonymous constitution draft of 1919 in the Archives of New Records in Warsaw. The article presents the analysis of the main assumptions of this draft. This discovery made it possible to formulate a thesis that in the systemic debate in 1917–1921 there were more original concepts and private drafts of the constitution deviating from the accepted schemes than indicated by current state of research. The analysed draft is original and, unfortunately, a forgotten system concept. It is also a testimony to the richness of Polish legal and political thought in the first half of the 20th century. Among the analysed elements there are, inter alia, the omission of the principle of the sovereignty of the people, or the tripartite division of power in favour of the specific form of clerical rule – the power of bureaucracy with a wide range of collegial institutions, as well as drawing on foreign models – references to the British model of parliamentary secretaries, or the system of administration in the German Reich.

Keywords

• Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)
• Small Constitution of 1919
• Legislative Sejm (Constituent Assembly)
• Ignacy Jan Paderewski
• polish legal and political thought