Who was Paderewski, the composer who became Poland’s Prime Minister and signed the Treaty of Versailles?

22 April 2025, 11:15

From pianist to politician, Ignacy Jan Paderewski was one of Poland’s most extraordinary musicians and patriots.

What do Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ronald Reagan and Ignacy Jan Paderewski have in common? Before they became leaders of their countries, these men were all entertainers.

Though it might seem like a modern trend, with actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cynthia Nixon also running for different political positions in the US, over 100 years ago, a Polish pianist and composer became the country’s Prime Minister.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was born in 1860 in Kuryłówka, a village in the Podolia region of the Russian Empire, which is now part of Ukraine. He joined the Warsaw Conservatory aged just 12 and went on to become a tutor there.

It was then that he met his wife Antonina Korsakówna and by the age of 21 he was a father to a boy called Alfred, who was disabled. Sadly, though, Antonina died in childbirth and he decided to leave his son in the care of friends and, in 1881, went to Berlin to study composition with Friedrich Kiel and Heinrich Urban.

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After a chance meeting in Krakow with Polish actress Helena Modrzejewska, she organised a fundraiser to send Paderewski to Vienna to study with Theodor Leschetitzky. This was ultimately the catalyst for this piano career, as three years later he made his Vienna debut and his career took off. He then remarried a woman called Helena Paderewski, who cared for his son for over two decades.

He was known for his striking looks, with long arms and large hands and untamed red, curly hair. He had a free and Romantic playing style, full of heavy pedalling, deep shades of colour and a dramatic rubato.

Paderewski toured America over 30 times during his 50 year career, where he eventually settled in 1913, and often performed his own piano composition. He also wrote an opera, Manru, which premiered in Lviv in 1901 which became the only opera by a Polish composer that the Metropolitan Opera in New York City has ever performed.

Paderewski plays "Menuet" in G - 1937 movie

Paderewski was always extremely engaged in politics, and during the First World War became an active member of the Polish National Committee in Paris and was committed to creating the state of Poland. He became the committee’s spokesman and formed other organisations in Europe and the US, including in London where he met Edward Elgar, who used a theme from Paderewski’s Fantasie Polonaise in his work Polonia, which was written for a Polish Relief Fund concert in 1916.

As part of his patriotic mission, he encouraged Polish immigrants to join the Polish armed forces in France – known as The Blue Army – and as his public speaking and radio appearances ramped up, he completely gave up music. He urged US President Woodrow Wilson to support the cause of Polish independence, and Wilson included Poland’s cause as the 13th of his famous Fourteen Points in January 1918.

After the war, in January 1919, the provisional head of state, Józef Piłsudski, asked Paderewski to form a government of experts free from party tendencies and appointed him as Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland.

Paderewski represented Poland at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and signed the Treaty of Versailles, which recognised Polish independence won after World War I.

His tenure as Prime Minister did not last long, however. His aptitude as a politician did not match his virtuosity as a musician and, in November of the same year that he took up the Prime Ministerial reins, he resigned the premiership – and his ultimate goal of becoming the President of Poland was decimated. He never returned to Poland again.

Paderewski - Fantaisie polonaise in G sharp minor, Op. 19 (WarsawPhil Orchestra, Boreyko, Avdeeva)

In 1922, Paderewski retired from politics and returned to his musical career. His first concert at Carnegie Hall was deemed a momentous success and he went on tour of the US in a private train car. He briefly re-entered public political life and in 1940 became the head of the National Council of Poland, which was a Polish parliament in exile in London and advocated for aid to Europe and the defeat of Nazism.

While on tour in 1941, he fell ill with pneumonia and died in New York on 29 June, aged 80. His funeral took place in the magnificent St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was attended by 4,500 with 35,000 outside the church.

President Roosevelt allowed Paderewski’s body to be temporarily laid to rest at the Arlington National Cemetery before it could be returned to Poland.

50 years later, in 1992, the composer’s remains were returned to his motherland – and they now lie in Warsaw, in St. John’s Archcathedral. But while his body is in Poland, his heart is encased in a bronze sculpture in Pennsylvania, USA, at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa near Doylestown.