page_title: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz / Career
caption_attribution_description: Ursyn Niemcewicz - a portrait from CBN Polona
context_page_description: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz was a Polish poet, playwright and statesman. He was a leading advocate for the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
context_section_description: After graduating from the Corps of Cadets, he subsequently served as aide to Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and visited France, England and Italy.  Niemcewicz served as a deputy to the Great Sejm of 1788–1792 and was an active member of the Patriotic Party that pushed through adoption of the historic Constitution of 3 May 1791.  He was subsequently a founder of the Friends of the Constitution, formed to support the implementation of that progressive document. After the victory of the Targowica Confederation in 1792 and the consequent overthrow of the May 3 Constitution, Niemcewicz, along with other Patriotic Party members, emigrated to Germany.
  During the Kościuszko Uprising in 1795, Niemcewicz served as aide to Tadeusz Kościuszko.  Both were captured by the Russians at the Battle of Maciejowice in 1794 and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress at St. Petersburg along with Niemcewicz's aide-de-camp named Kuźniewski.  In 1796, on the death of Tsaritsa Catherine the Great, they were released by Tsar Paul I and made their way together to the United States, where he visited Niagara Falls.
  Niemcewicz was upset when Kościuszko decamped for Europe without giving him any notice.
  After Napoleon's 1807 invasion of Poland, Niemcewicz returned to Warsaw and was made secretary of the senate. After the Congress of Vienna, he was secretary of state and president of the constitutional committee in Poland. In the years of the Kingdom of Poland Niemcewicz was the central figure of Polish cultural life and his moral influence was sometimes compared with political and military strength of Grand Duke Constantine.
  On 11 May 1830, he unveiled a new landmark before the Staszic Palace, the seat of the Society of Friends of Science in Warsaw — a monument to Nicolaus Copernicus sculpted by Bertel Thorvaldsen. During the failed November Uprising of 1830–31, Niemcewicz was a member of the insurrectionary Polish government.  In the final months of the Uprising the poet went on a diplomatic mission to London (as the last Polish envoy to Britain) and he remained in exile, first in Britain, then in France, until his death in 1841.
caption: Niemcewicz, by Barwicki.
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