page_title: Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Der Sitz des galizischen Landtages in Lemberg. Heute beherbergt das Gebäude die Lemberger Universität. English: Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria in Lwov, constructed during the Austro-Hungarian reign. After World War I it was turned into the building of Lviv University.
context_page_description: The Diet of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and of the Grand Duchy of Cracow was the regional assembly of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, a crown land of the Austrian Empire, and later Austria-Hungary. In the history of the Polish parliaments, it is considered the successor of the former sejm walny, or general sejm of the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and also of the sejmik, or local councils, in the territories of the Austrian Partition. It existed from 1861 until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918.
context_section_description: Parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Lesser Poland territories were included in the Austrian partition as early as the First Partition of Poland in 1772. From about 1775 to 1848, with several gaps, the crown land of Galicia had a relatively powerless parliamentary body, known originally as the Postulate Sejm (Polish: sejm postulatowy), and from 1817, as Estates of Galicia (Polish: stany galicyjskie). The Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria, which was formed in 1861 following the promulgation of the October Diploma by Emperor Franz Joseph I, had more real power than its predecessors. In Polish parliamentary tradition, it is considered to have continued the history of the general sejm and regional sejmiks on the lands of Lesser Poland and Ruthenia.
  The Diet was initially dominated by Polish nobles, but in time, it saw the emergence of a strong peasant faction. Another notable change over time included the emergence of a Ruthenian (modern Ukrainian) bloc, changing the balance of power within the body. Overall, the Diet preserved the Polish parliamentary tradition during a time in which it waned in the Prussian Partition and the Russian Partition, and saw the emergence of the major political parties and groupings that were to dominate the political life of the Second Polish Republic after World War I. The leader of the Polish peasant movement in the Second Polish Republic, Wincenty Witos, gained his experience in the Diet, elected for the first time in 1908. Similarly, the National Democrats, and the Polish socialists, had their political blocs in the diet around that time.
caption: The seat of the Diet of Galicia from 1881–1918, currently owned by Lviv University
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