Topics of coins
Stanisław Głąbiński
In his public activity, Stanisław Głąbiński (1862–
1941) combined the roles of an economist,
politician, lawyer and columnist. He studied at
Lwów University, where he received the title of
Professor of Law and held the post of its rector.
During the partitions of Poland, he served as
member of the Austrian parliament and the Diet
of Galicia for many years, and was briefly Railway
Minister in the Austrian government. After Poland
regained independence, he held a seat in the Sejm
from 1919–1927, and afterwards in the Senate for
the next seven years. In the second government
of Wincenty Witos, he served as Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister of Religion and Public
Enlightenment for several months in 1923.
Głąbiński was one of the co-founders of
the National Democratic Party and played
a leading role in the national democratic camp
throughout the interwar period. After the outbreak
of World War II, he was arrested by the Soviet
NKVD near the Romanian border. He died in the
Kharkiv prison for deportees.
As a thinker, Głąbiński drew inspiration from the
work of his teacher, Leon Biliński, and the German
historical school – the ideas of Gustav von
Schmoller in particular.
He perceived economics as a domain inseparably
linked to politics and sociology, where certain
widely-held laws and facts are treated in
a pragmatic and common sense manner. At first, he defined his economics as “social”, while later he
preferred to call it “national”. The scholar rejected
excessive theorising, methodological individualism
and subjectivism. In his “The Science of Public
Finances and Taxes” (Nauka skarbowości), economics
is the study of knowledge of real society, constituting
a coherent whole. Hence, it is wrong to divide its rules
and principles into constituent parts and elements.
Głąbiński believed that the foundation of social order
was the existence of private ownership with, however,
a number of activities set aside for state institutions
fostering the public welfare. The key is the “household
of the nation” forming a living community whose
individual members pass away and are reborn in the
generational cycle. Meanwhile, the long-term aim
of economic policy is achieved through continual
development, which sustains social balance and
political order.
The most important work by Głąbiński was
the two-volume “National Economics”. His
other major works include “The Science of
Public Finances and Taxes” and “The History of
Economics”.
The obverse of the coin presents a fragment of
the text of Stanisław Głąbiński’s speech entitled
“The Socio-Economic Programme of the Popular
National Union”.
The reverse of the coin features an image
of Stanisław Głąbiński and an outline of an
image of the eagle established as the state
emblem of the Republic of Poland in 1919–
1927. Below the eagle, the dates of Stanisław
Głąbiński’s birth and death are shown.
Grzegorz Jeż