War and Diplomacy in East and West

A Biography of Józef Retinger

M. B. B. Biskupski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315437637
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

The New York Times said of Józef Hieronim Retinger that he was on intimate terms with most leading statesmen of the Western World, including presidents of the United States. He has been repeatedly acknowledged as one of the principle architects of the movement for European unity after the World War II, and one of the outstanding creative political influences of the post war period. He has also been credited with being the dark master behind the so-called "Bilderberg Group, " described variously as an organization of idealistic internationalists, and a malevolent global conspiracy.

Before that, Retinger involved himself in intelligence activities during World War II and, given the covert and semi-covert nature of many of his activities, it is little wonder that no biography has appeared about him. This book draws on a broad range of international archives to rectify that.

1
The formative years, 1888–1914

Retinger was born in Kraków, which was under Austrian rule, in 1888. Despite his German name (his ancestors spelled it Röttinger), and original Bavarian ancestry, the family was completely polonized after their arrival in the late eighteenth century.¹ Retinger described his family as “ardent patriots and very ardent Catholics” with “a very strong anti-Russian and anti-German complex … maybe reactionary … and not without an anti-Jewish bias.”² According to his grandson, the rumors that Retinger was of Jewish origin were created and circulated by his detractors and have no basis in fact, but is little more than an anti-Semitic invention.³ However, Podgórski has uncovered documents which indicate that Retinger’s great-grandfather was, indeed, Jewish but he and his family converted to Catholicism in 1827.⁴ If this were a conversion to polonism it was rapid and profound: Retinger’s grandfather was killed in the 1846 Galician jacquierie aimed at the Polish elite.⁵

Retinger’s possible Jewish ancestry, despite his many denials, and the blunt rejection by his last secretary, Jan Pomian, has considerable support. In his papers, a French-language notation describes him as being “a good Jewish bourgeoisie family, Polish by façade.”⁶ Jan Hulewicz says virtually the same thing.⁷ There are similar references sprinkled about, however the dispositive evidence was possibly provided by Retinger’s own guardian Władysław Count Zamoyski, who referred to Retinger’s father as a convert to Roman Catholicism from Judaism. Zamoyski, by way of explanation, noted that he had known Retinger for years and that Retinger’s father was his attorney, until the former’s death.⁸

Retinger’s mother’s family was not Jewish, and Retinger was raised a Catholic, hence the ultimate answer to the question whether Retinger was Jewish is: not by any reasonable standard. Zamoyski noted in what may serve as the final word on this subject: “On peut être absolument sûr de ses sentiments polonaises.”⁹ Retinger returned the compliment: Zamoyski was “a saint.”¹⁰

Both Retinger’s parents died when he was young, leaving five children.¹¹ From an early age, Retinger was intended for the priesthood. After initial preparations in Poland, he was sent to Rome at eighteen. Due to the influence of Cardinal Rampolla, he was admitted to the Academie dei nobili ecclesistici. Soon after he left: in his own words “to serve my faith and my country as part of the laity.”¹²

Retinger’s father was an intriguing personality. Born in Tarnów, and the descendant of successful merchants, the elder Józef was a devoted Polish patriot and fought in the Polish anti-Russian rising of 1863–1864 (the so-called January Insurrection). A lawyer by education, he was a prominent member of the Kraków urban patriciate and was decorated by the Habsburg government. He became a member of the city council and president of the advocates’ society. He was a member of the literati: translator of German works, and a playwright as well, indeed man of many parts.¹³ He was also a landowner – a category the significance of which is difficult to convey apart from its Polish context but it is more of symbolic than financial significance.¹⁴ It denotes membership in the traditional elite of Polish society. He was closely connected to Kraków’s famous Jagiellonian University, a relationship immensely strengthened when he married Marynia Czyrniańska, daughter of the rector of the university. The elder Czyrniański was a distinguished chemist and the co-founder of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Umiejętności), there is a bust of him in Kraków’s famous university church of St. Anne.¹⁵

The elder Retinger had a close relationship with Zamoyski which was of vital significance in his son’s life. Retinger Sr. was the attorney for Zamoyski in the territorial dispute with Hungary over the territory of Morskie Oko.¹⁶ Retinger won the complex legal battle and the territory has remained Polish ever since. The premature death of Retinger’s father made young Józef the unofficial ward of the count, scion of one of the wealthiest families in Poland. Zamoyski supported Retinger generously, allowing him to complete his education at the Sorbonne, from which he received a doctorate in 1908, perhaps the youngest contemporary European to earn that distinction.¹⁷ He later studied in Germany, Italy, and England, preparing his for his later continental career including the mastery of many languages. Zamoyski was also politically active in France in support of the Polish cause.¹⁸

Retinger later recalled the Zamoyski family as his “link to the legitimist tradition of European aristocracy from the era before Napoleon III … the living example of the famous encyclical of Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum.”¹⁹ Beyond their profound intellectual imprint, the Zamoyskis allowed Retinger immediate access to the highest circles of European wealth and distinction; a world of influence that expanded rapidly over the next few years. In Paris, he became acquainted with the French cultural elite. Cousins of Retinger, the Godębski family (similarly French citizens of Polish origin) maintained a well-known Parisian salon to which he was at once admitted. Thus, in the years before World War I, Retinger established an extensive assortment of influential “contacts”: Cardinal Alfred-Henri-Marie Baudrillart,²⁰ Marshal Hubert Lyautey, and the bizarre dandy, Marquis Boni de Castellane – of whom more later. This relationship was most fruitful, for de Castellane was on close terms with the then Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, whereas Boni’s wife, the American Annie Gould, was reputed to be the wealthiest heiress in the world, the daughter of the financier Jay Gould.²¹ De Castellane himself served briefly in the French parliament and had very powerful friends in both British and French political circles, especially on the left. In the world of the arts, Retinger became acquainted with André Gide,²² Jean Moréas, François Mauriac, Arnold Bennett, Léon-Paul Frague, Valéry Larbaud, Paul Valéry, Maurice Ravel, Pierre Bonnard, François Poulenc, Léon-Paul Fargue, Claude Terrasse, Manuel de la Falla, Jean-Aubry (with whom Retinger wrote articles about Poland), Eric Satie, Edward Vuillard, and, from the political world: the aforementioned de Castellane, Prince Sixte de Bourbon-Parma (the exact date of their acquaintance is unclear), Charles-Louis Philippe, the press magnate Lord Northcliffe, and publisher Bernard Gasset, among innumerable others.²³ Retinger inherited 100,000 francs from his family but squandered it. Zamoyski described Retinger as having “too much self-assurance and too much imagination.” He had powerful friends, but enemies as well.

After brief periods in London, Munich, and Italy, about which little is known, Retinger returned to Kraków, published a literary review which enjoyed a success d’éstime, and created thereby a network of friends among the Polish literary establishment.²⁴ The authors he published included such literary giants as Leśmian, Morstin, Staff, Strug and many others. It is probably during this brief stay (1911–1912) that Retinger’s political career began.

Retinger had, apparently, been approached by the representatives of the National Council (Rada Narodowa, RN), a nationalistic organization of the Polish political right, headquartered in Galicia, (Austrian Poland) which was attempting to establish a network of filial organizations throughout Europe and North America.²⁵ The RN was militantly anti-German and emphasized that in any future war, Berlin would be the principal enemy of Polish independence. This meant that the geo-strategic disposition of the RN followed the line of the founder of modern Polish nationalism, Roman Dmowski.²⁶ This reflected Retinger’s youthful rightist views which later moved dramatically to the left.²⁷

Retinger was to establish an information office in London (1911) and, acting in the spirit of the RN’s anti-German orientation, distribute propaganda in the English-speaking world in favor of the Polish cause.²⁸ Significantly, the anti-German position of the RN was coupled with a rather indulgent view of the Habsburgs; hence anti-Austrian propaganda was decidedly not one of Retinger’s tasks.²⁹ His pamphlet – The Poles and Prussia – denouncing German policy towards Poland made him persona odiosa in Germany.³⁰ At the same time it endeared him to the Polish nationalist right.

The work argued to its British audience that the conclusion that the “Polish Question” was a closed chapter in European history was mistaken. The British did not realize that Prussia really had an incorporated Polish history and that the population there was “swallowed, but never digested.”³¹ To prove his point, Retinger essayed a highly emotional aperçu of Prussia’s history. We may summarize this briefly to grasp the basis for Retinger’s attitudes towards the Germans.

In Europe of the ninth and tenth centuries, the area northeast of an imaginary line drawn between Hamburg to Leipzig was populated by two equally uncivilized people: the “kindly and peaceable” Slavs and the “violent” “aggressively cohesive” Germans. The Germans used their penchant to “accept leadership” to conquer most of the land by “massacre and rapine.” Then Poland emerged.³²

Distractions to the east prevented Poland from “doing justice” to this problem in the north. The barbaric paganism of the “Borussians”, that is, native Prussians, forced the Poles to seek to “repress the murderous raids,” hence the appearance of the Order of Teutonic Knights and the long, complex and controversial epic of Polish relations with the Order.³³ Soon after moving to historic Prussia, the Knights became “monsters of greed and ambition.”³⁴ The local population, suffering under their rule, rebelled and was virtually annihilated in response.

The Polish-Lithuanian union of 1385 brought powerful forces into the field against the Knights. The result was the crushing Polish victory at Grünwald (Tannenberg) of 1410, which Poland did not exploit because the “tolerant Pole” never takes “full advantage of his victories.” Subsequently the Order became secularized, adopted Protestantism, a...