Miron Urbaniak

The Poznań and Lwów gasworks were established in the 1850s; the former being an urban enterprise, the latter a private company. At the beginning of the 20^th century, the gasworks and the entire gas infrastructure in Lwów were seriously outdated as compared to Poznań in terms of the volume of production and technology. After the municipalization of the plant in 1898, Galicia’s capital quickly began to reduce a backlog using the effects of technical progress in Europe. As part of the modernization and expansion of both gasworks in the first decade of the 20^th century, modern water-gas plants with Humphreys & Glasgow systems were commissioned in Poznań (1900) and Lwów (1906). Moreover, the gas network and public lighting system were intensively developed in both cities. In 1910, 11.3 million cubic meters of gas flowed into the municipal network in Poznań, whereas 6.1 million cubic meters did so in Lwów. The number of gas street lights amounted to 3456 and 3541, respectively. In both cities, major extensions of their gasworks were planned in the very years preceding the outbreak of World War I. In Poznań, the investment was implemented to a large extent during World War I, when a unique and innovative Koppers retort house and a dry-seal gas holder with a capacity of 50 thousand cubic meters were built. In Lwów, due to the Russian occupation of the city between 1914 and 1915, ultimately the works had to be stopped. Due to wartime hardships, the planned Glover-West vertical retort house was eventually replaced by the Dessau vertical retort furnace. The retort house was completed in 1917, but the rest of the investment was finalized in the first years of the Second Polish Republic. Nevertheless, when the Partitions of Poland ended, both gas plants were among the largest and most modern in terms of technology in the country, in which their directors at the time, Hans Mertens in Poznań and Adam Teodorowicz in Lwów, had considerable merit.

Established in 1919, the Poznań Province covered almost entirely the former Prussian Poznań Province (Provinz Posen) and initially comprised 118 cities, which decreased to 101 in 1938. On the eve of World War I, as many as 80 out of 129 cities had gas in Provinz Posen, and nearly 1/4 of them were supplied with gas from miniature gasoline gas plants. In the wake of World War I and immediately after its end, most small gasoline plants and numerous coal gas plants were shut down and eventually permanently closed down. In total, almost all gasoline and one acetylene gas plant (19 in total), as well as five coal plants, went bankrupt in the Interwar period. Of the latter type, there was a plant in Czempiń, which was shut down only around 1938, after the town was electrified. Ujście is another addition to the list, as it ceased to supply gas from Schneidemühl (Piła) in the mid-1930s. Ultimately, in 1939, gas was used in 43 out of 101 cities in the Province, which was also due to the fact that some of the gas-supplied cities had been moved to the Pomeranian Province a year before. In the Interwar period, several key factors influencing the gasworks in Greater Poland can be observed: the aforementioned liquidation of many gas plants and the transition from gas to electricity in many cities; reconstruction and relaunching of some coal gas plants; and – finally – modernization, combined with optimization of technological processes and expansion of existing gas plants. In the case of several cities, i.e. Międzychód, Nakło nad Notecią and Strzelno, the problem of communalization of plants owned by private German companies should also be noted, as well as Polish-German cooperation in terms of gas supply to the Polish Ujście gas plant from Schneidemühl (Piła).