Antoni Morbitzer as the President of the Krakow Municipal Council (1812–1815)

The article is devoted to the activity of Antoni Morbitzer (1757–1824), a Krakow merchant, economic and political activist and president of the Krakow Municipal Council in the years 1812–1815, that is the final years of the existence of the Warsaw Duchy. Contrary to the letter of the existing law, while standing at the helm of the Municipal Council, Morbitzer, managed to transform this rather superfi cial institution into an authentic organ of municipal authority which co-governed the city of Krakow. Despite a diffi cult political and economic situation (Napoleon’s war with Russia in 1812, the two-year occupation of Krakow by the Russian army in the years 1813–1815), he tried to realize an investment program in the city (charting out new roads, paving the streets, laying down sewage pipes, demolishing derelict buildings); he supported Krakow’s activity as a trading center and opposed the city’s excessive supplies for the Polish and then the Russian armies which according to him ruined the city budget. Thanks to his own industriousness and cooperation with the city mayor and department prefect, as well as his ability to impose his own point of view on the Municipal Council, he contributed to a relatively effi cient functioning of the city and to continuing modernization work in this difficult period. Due to the different political system, (which operated in the city at the time of the Austrian rule and in the period of the Free City of Krakow), he was the only president of Krakow municipal self-government in the first half of the 19th c.

The article is devoted to the activity of Antoni Morbitzer (1757–1824), a Krakow merchant, economic and political activist and president of the Krakow Municipal Council in the years 1812–1815, that is the final years of the existence of the Warsaw Duchy. Contrary to the letter of the existing law, while standing at the helm of the Municipal Council, Morbitzer, managed to transform this rather superfi cial institution into an authentic organ of municipal authority which co-governed the city of Krakow. Despite a diffi cult political and economic situation (Napoleon’s war with Russia in 1812, the two-year occupation of Krakow by the Russian army in the years 1813–1815), he tried to realize an investment program in the city (charting out new roads, paving the streets, laying down sewage pipes, demolishing derelict buildings); he supported Krakow’s activity as a trading center and opposed the city’s excessive supplies for the Polish and then the Russian armies which according to him ruined the city budget. Thanks to his own industriousness and cooperation with the city mayor and department prefect, as well as his ability to impose his own point of view on the Municipal Council, he contributed to a relatively effi cient functioning of the city and to continuing modernization work in this difficult period. Due to the different political system, (which operated in the city at the time of the Austrian rule and in the period of the Free City of Krakow), he was the only president of Krakow municipal self-government in the first half of the 19th c.