- Kazimierz Bartel
Kazimierz Bartel (
3 March 1882 –26 July 1941 ) was a Polish mathematician and politician who served as Prime Minister of Poland three times between 1926 and 1930.He was born in
Lviv (Lwów),Austria-Hungary March 3 ,1882 . After completing secondary school he studied at theLviv Polytechnic in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He graduated in 1907 and soon became an assistant in Descriptive Geometry. By 1914 he was a professor at his alma mater.Conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army during
World War I , in 1918 he returned toLviv . In 1919, as commander of railway troops, he fought in the defense ofLviv against the Ukrainiansiege .Appointed minister of railways in 1919, in 1922-1930 he was a member of
Poland 's "Sejm " (parliament). AfterJózef Piłsudski 'sMay coup d'etat (1926) he became prime minister and held this post for four years. In 1930 he gave up politics and returned to academia. In 1930 he became rector of the Lviv Polytechnic and was soon awarded an honorary doctorate and membership in the Polish Mathematical Association.In this period he published his most important writings, among them a series of lectures on perspective in European painting throughout the ages. In 1937 he was appointed a senator of Poland and held this post until the war broke out.
After the Soviet occupation he was allowed to continue giving lectures at the Lviv Polytechnical Institute. In 1940 he was appointed to
Moscow and offered a seat in the Soviet parliament. He refused and returned toLviv .Soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, on
June 30 1941 theWehrmacht enteredLviv . Kazimierz Bartel was arrested two days later and imprisoned inGestapo prison. He was offered to create a Polish puppet government. He refused and, by order ofHeinrich Himmler , was shot onJuly 26 ,1941 , shortly after the mass murder of his colleagues ended. His place of burial remains unknown.
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