Elections to the Łódź City Council in Poland were held in January 1917, under German occupation and in the midst of World War I. The elections were organized by the German occupation authorities who applied an electoral system of unequal curiae. The election produced a City Council in which neither the Polish nor Jewish blocs held majority, with the German councilors tipping the balance. According to Hofmann (2021) "the election campaign called forth a plethora of political groups that corresponded to the complex social, ethnic, and confessional divisions of the city", aggravating urban tensions in Łódź.Endangered Cities: Military Power and Urban Societies in the Era of the World Wars. BRILL, 2021. p. 89
Background The 1917 Łódź City Council election was the first local election held in the city since 1863. The Łódź City Council election followed a similar election held in Warsaw in mid-1916.Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts, Vol. 5. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2006. pp. 200-201 Across Congress Poland the retreat of Russian forces in 1914 had produced a power vacuum in local governance. Citizens Committees emerged to fill the gaps and provide a sort of municipal governance. However, after the issuing of the June 19, 1915 municipal law by the German occupation authorities, new City Councils and Magistrates began taking over the functions of municipal governance on the left bank of the Vistula river from July 1, 1915. In Łódź was appointed city mayor. During the period of 1915-1916 socialist parties, such as the General Jewish Labour Bund, organized protests calling for a democratic city government. Dawid Szwarcman, the leader the campaign, was persecuted by the German occupation authorities.
On November 1, 1916, the German Governor-General Hans Hartwig von Beseler issued an ordinance for municipal elections in the cities of the Government General of Warsaw. In Łódź, immediately following this announcement, the different political groupings immediately began setting up electoral committees and preparations for an electoral campaign were under way.
Electoral system and preparations Just like in the mid-1916 Warsaw City Council election, the German occupation authorities divided the Łódź voters into six curiae. The curiae system guaranteed a majority for wealthiest segments, an arrangement that the German occupation authorities hoped would ensure a friendly city administration. But the organization of the curiae was slightly different compared to the Warsaw election — First Curia gathered the intellectuals, the Second Curia the representatives of heavy industry and big business, the Third Curia the lower tier of merchants and craftsmen, the Fourth Curia consisted of property owners, the Fifth Curia gathered payers of housing tax and the Sixth Curia was the general category gathering the working class of the city.
On December 3, 1916, the Łódź Police Presidium set up under German control announced the appointment of Captain Harbig as the Łódź City Election Commissar and Count Bnin-Bniński as the Deputy Election Commissar.Telma Tadeusz. Pierwsze wybory do Rady Miejskiej m. Łodzi, in Rocznik Łódzki, Vol. 11 (14). Państwowe Wydawnictwu Naukowe, 1966. pp. 134, 138-146 Harbig constituted an Election Commission consisting of Dr. A. Tomaszewski, Rabbi , (banker), Karol Steinert (industrialist), E. Ereciński (artisan), Dr. J. Lewin, A. Vogel (lawyer), M. Manteuffel (bank director), (publicist), (engineer), (worker) and Izrael Schwarzman (civil registrar).
On December 4, 1916, Harbig and Bnin-Bniński announced that electoral rolls would be prepared between December 9 and 22, 1916. On December 5, 1916, a listing of 24 electoral district offices was published. The First Curia (intellectuals) was not divided geographically into electoral districts, but would instead all vote at the main Electoral Commission site on 14. By December 22, 1916, a total of 32,127 voters had registered — 778 in the First Curia (intellectuals), 568 in the Second Curia (industrialists and businessmen), 6,459 in the Third Curia (smaller merchants and artisans), 3,224 in the Fourth Curia (property owners), 3,442 in the Fifth Curia (payers of housing tax) and 17,656 in the Sixth Curia (working class). It was estimated that some 48,000 people in the city would have been entitled to register to vote, meaning that about two-thirds of the potential voters had registered. There was a lower degree of voters registration in the Fourth Curia (property owners), as the German authorities requested to see receipts of tax payments to register voters in that curia.
Committees in the fray Once the Łódź election had been announced the different political groups of the city began assembling electoral committees to contest the polls.
Polish committees The two main Polish groups were the Polish Electoral Committee (PKW) and the Central Polish Democratic Electoral Committee (PCDKW). The former adopted an approach of neutrality in the war between Germany and Russia, the latter had an 'activist' approach calling for cooperation with the Central Powers for the sake of obtaining Polish independence. PKW was formed by the National Democrats.Antoni Knot. Roczniki biblioteczne, Vol. 19. Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe., 1975. p. 228 Compared with Warsaw, the National Democrats were politically stronger in Łódź.Antony Polonsky. The Jews in Poland and Russia: Volume III: 1914 to 2008. Liverpool University Press, 2012. p. 15 The PKW announced its electoral manifesto on December 7, 1916, and the PCDKW issued theirs on December 14, 1916. The other Polish electoral committees aligned themselves with either the PKW or the PCDKW.
In the working-class Sixth Curia the counter-parts of the Polish committees were the Polish Central Workers Electoral Committee (PCKRW) organized by Christian Democrats and the National Workers Electoral Committee.Kurja VI-ta, in Gazeta Łódzka, January 20, 1917. pp. 4-5 The National Workers Electoral Committee was set up by the National Workers Union (NZR) and the (PZZ), and confronted both the socialist candidatures and, notably, the National Democratic-Christian Democratic bloc.Teresa Monasterska. Narodowy Związek Robotniczy, 1905-1920. Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe, 1973. p. 151
Contesting independently from the Polish committees, the Radical-Democratic Electoral Committee was organized by the 'Poles of Mosaic faith'.
German committee Łódź had a large ethnic German population, with about a fifth of the inhabitants being Germans it had been one of the largest urban German communities in the Russian Empire. As of 1916 the Łódź Germans were divided into two political groupings. There has the 'passivists', which were supported by the wealthy industrialists of the city. And then there was a nationalist movement, organized into the German Association for Lodz and Surroundings founded in March 1916 and led by Adolf Eichler. The German nationalists had the support of the police chief of Łódź .Jesse Kauffman. Elusive Alliance. Harvard University Press, 2015. pp. 134-138 Notably von Oppen had proposed that a system of separate national curiae be implemented for the Łódź election, which would have guaranteed the Germans a certain number of seats.
But the two rival German groupings joined forces ahead of the election and formed a single bloc, the United German Electoral Committee.Laura Ann Crago. Nationalism, Religion, Citizenship, and Work in the Development of the Polish Working Class and the Polish Trade Union Movement, 1815-1929: A Comparative Study of Russian Poland's Textile Workers and Upper Silesian Miners and Metalworkers. Yale University, 1993. p. 224 On December 10, 1916, a German mass rally was held at the Łódź Men's Choral Society grounds with Eichler as the main speaker. The event gathered some 2,000-3,000 people. The resolution read out at the meeting stated that the Łódź Germans accepted the said Act of November 5 but asked that the German Imperial government safeguard interests of the Germans in Poland. The newspaper supported the electoral campaign of the United German Electoral Committee.
Jewish committees The main grouping among the Łódź Jews was the Jewish Central Electoral Committee, which originated from the Zionist movement and positioned itself as the defender and promoter of Jewish interests. The group called for the formation of a separate Jewish bloc in the City Council. The Jewish Central Electoral Committee ran an active campaign, even canvassing for votes at synagogues. The main leaders of the Jewish Central Electoral Committee were , and Dawid Rabinowicz.
Another smaller Jewish committee, the Committee of Poles-Jews, was set up by the assimilationists. The Committee of Poles-Jews could count on a handful of skilled organizers, most notably Dr. and . Whilst the Committee of Poles-Jews suffered fierce pressure from both Polish and Jewish sectors, they maintained a conciliatory discourse. In the Polish press the Committee of Poles-Jews was condemned for organizing separately from the Polish committees, whilst Zionists broke up their campaign meetings and bullied their representatives as traitors of the Jewish cause. On December 21, 1916, the Jewish assimilationists held a rally at which large rowdy crowd showed up and heckled the speakers as traitors.
Other Jewish committees being organized to contest the election were the Electoral Committee of Orthodox Jews, the Electoral Committee of Jewish Teachers and the Electoral Committee of Jewish Craftsmen.
Socialist committees Five socialist committees would compete for the working class votes in the Sixth Curia – the Electoral Committee of Polish Socialists, the Electoral Committee of Polish Left Socialists, the Social Democratic Electoral Committee, the Jewish Social Democratic Electoral Committee and the Jewish Social Democratic Workers Electoral Committee (Poale Sion). The socialist committees would spend much of their energy and attention during the election campaign squabbling between each other.
Polish Left Socialist Electoral Committee Among the socialist committees, the Polish Left Socialist Electoral Committee ran the most extensive electoral campaign. Its candidate list, List 2, had 20 Polish Socialist Party – Left (PPS-Lewica) party members as its candidates. It could rely on the support from the newspaper Głos Robotniczy, which was published in Warsaw but distributed in Łódź. The Polish Left Socialist Electoral Committee had sought to form a pre-electoral pact with the Bund and SDKPiL, but such a united bloc never materialized. Głos Robotniczy blamed SDKPiL for the failure of the electoral pact. The leader of PPS-Lewica in Łódź was Ignacy Gralak. PPS-Lewica propaganda leaflets denounced that women were not allowed to vote and labelled the electoral ordinance imposed by the German occupation authorities as undemocratic. The PPS-Lewica propaganda denounced the National Democrats and Christian Democrats as the representatives of the capitalists, clergy and nobility, that under Czarist rule they had instigated pogroms and repressed the labour movement. The PPS-Lewica likewise denounced the NZR for instigating conflicts between workers, the Polish Central Democratic Electoral Committee for striving to establish a dictatorship and the PPS-Frakcja as false friends of the working class. In regards to the SDKPiL, PPS-Lewica had some differences on the question of national independence.
The Polish Left Socialist Electoral Committee campaign raised demands for 8-hour working day, minimum wages, cancellation of rent arrears for workers in the context of the ongoing war, secular educational system and linguistic rights for national minorities. The Polish Left Socialist Electoral Committees organized mass rallies, where their leaders gave speeches on ideological questions and then opened up for debates.
Electoral Committee of Polish Socialists