Born: April 1, 1750 , Dederkaly Wielkie, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Died: February 24, 1812 , Warsaw, Duchy of Warsaw.
Early days. He was born to a noble family (coat of arms Kotwica). Father, Antoni; mother: Marianna nee Mierzenska He started his education in schools of Pinczow. and after studying at the Krakow Academy (the later Jagiellonian University), where, in 1768 he got PhD in philosophy, he took holy orders, then spent time in Vienna and Rome, where he got acquainted with the Enlightenment philosophy.
Career. Returning to Poland, Kollataj became active in the Commission for National Education and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the Krakow Academy, of which he was a rector (president) in 1783-1786. He introduced , among others, courses of life sciences and of Polish literature. Kollataj was also active politically. He became prominent in the reform movement, heading a group called "Kollataj's Forge" (Kuznia Kollatajska). As a leader of the Patriotic Party, he set out its program in Several Anonymous Letters to Stanislaw Malachowski (1788-1789) and in The Political Law of the Polish Nation (1790). Kollataj co-authored the Constitution of May 3, 1791, and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation. In 1791-92 he served as Crown Vice Chancellor (Podkanclerzy Koronny). During the Polish-Russian war that broke out over the May 3rd Constitution, Kollataj, along with other royal advisers, persuaded King Stanisław August Poniatowski, himself a co-author of the Constitution, to join the Targowica Confederation that had been formed to bring it down. In 1792, upon the Confederates' victory, Kollataj emigrated to Leipzig, Saxony, where he co-authored a work with Ignacy Potocki, On the Adoption and Fall of the Polish May 3 Constitution (1793). In exile, his political views radicalized. In 1794 he took part in the Kosciuszko Uprising, co-authoring its Uprising Act and Polaniec Manifesto, heading the Supreme National Council's Treasury Department, and backing the Uprising's left wing of Polish Jacobins. After the suppression of the Uprising in 1794, Kollataj was imprisoned by the Austrians until 1802. In 1805, with Tadeusz Czacki, he organized the Krzemieniec Lyceum in Wolyn (Volhynia). In 1807-1808 he was interned by Russian authorities. In the Duchy of Warsaw, barred from public activity, he sought to present a program for rebuilding and developing Poland. Borrowing the physiocratic idea of a "physico-moral order", in The Physico-Moral Order (1811) Kollataj created a socio-ethical system emphasizing a natural interdependence between people's rights and obligations. In A Critical Analysis of Historical Principles regarding the Origins of Humankind, published posthumously in 1842, he essayed the first Polish presentation of concepts of social evolution and of geological concepts. In The State of Education in Poland in the Final Years of the Reign of Augustus III, published posthumously in 1841, he pioneered Polish studies on the history of education and culture. Kollataj died forgotten and was buried in Warsaw's Powazki cemetery.
Ideas. Kollataj was in favor of: a strong hereditary monarchy, abolition of the liberum veto, general taxation, abridgement of the influence of the magnates, rights for city dwellers, freedom for the peasants (replacement of the servitude by the rent).
Awards. 1786 Order of St.Stanislaw; 1791 Knight of the White Eagle Order.
Sources:
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Hugo Kollataj" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
Wikipedia
Other sources:
Wikipedia (in Polish)
Wiem (in Polish)
English translations of some of his works:
Constance J. Ostrowski
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