A plaque dedicated to Gabriel Narutowicz in Zurich

The life of Gabriel Narutowicz is the story of a career as an engineer and inventor, an entrepreneur and visionary, a pioneer of Switzerland’s electrification using natural energy sources, and the first President of the Republic of Poland.

Childhood, youth, university – Gabriel Narutowicz’s educational journey

Gabriel Narutowicz, born into a landowning family in Samogitia, never knew his father (who died when the boy was one year old). His mother therefore took charge of raising him and his elder brother, Stanisław, and was their first teacher. Wishing to protect her sons from attending a Russified school, she moved with them to the coastal town of Liepāja in Latvia.

Between 1873 and 1883, Narutowicz attended the local classical Nikolaus Gymnasium, where lessons were taught in German. In 1884, he began his studies at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of St Petersburg. He interrupted his studies in the spring of 1886 due to pulmonary tuberculosis, which he treated in Davos, Switzerland. From that point on, he forged ever-stronger ties with that country. In the autumn of 1886, he began his studies at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH, often referred to as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).

Commemorating Gabriel Narutowicz in Switzerland

It was at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology that Gabriel Narutowicz built his career as an engineer and a pioneer of Switzerland’s electrification, utilising energy derived from flowing water. Thanks in part to his achievements, a country devoid of natural resources became an exporter of energy. It is therefore no surprise that, as well as Poles, the Swiss also remember Gabriel Narutowicz, who gave up a comfortable life to serve his resurgent homeland as a professional civil servant and the first President of the Republic of Poland.

A marble plaque commemorating Gabriel Narutowicz, designed by Hans Gisler, was unveiled on 20 February 1932 and is located in the main building of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Initially, the plaque was placed in a building temporarily occupied by the ETH Department of Hydrogeology. Following its relocation to the main building, there were plans to store the plaque in the storerooms. However, thanks to the intervention of the Polish Society ‘Zgoda’ in Zurich, the plaque was moved to the main building of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 2016.

Funded by the Committee for the Commemoration of Engineer Narutowicz (chaired by Engineer Karol Brodowski), it consists of a bas-relief bust (in left profile) and an inscription in German and Polish:

GABRJEL NARUTOWICZ / *17 March 1865–† 16 December 1922 / 1908–1920 PROFESSOR OF HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING AT THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. 1920–1922 MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND. FROM SWISS AND POLISH FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS.

On national holidays, flowers are laid at the plaque, accompanied by events organised by the local Polish community.

Let us also take a brief look at the career of Gabriel Narutowicz, who was regarded as Europe’s foremost expert in hydroelectric power and a brilliant authority on geological matters.

Gabriel Narutowicz – a world-renowned engineer

Narutowicz, as a newcomer from the Kaunas region, was fortunate. When he arrived in Switzerland, a hydrotechnical construction boom was just beginning there (there are currently 677 hydroelectric power stations in operation; data from 2021). He graduated with distinction in 1891. He combined his studies with evening lectures on history, literature and political economy at the Faculty of Philosophy. As a volunteer, he completed a special military course at ETH, covering both theory and practice.

He began his professional career at the railway construction office in St. Gallen, and subsequently worked at the municipal water supply and sewerage office (1892–1895). In 1895, he acquired Swiss citizenship and supervised the construction of a section of a navigable canal in the Rhine Valley, with the aim of making the areas above Lake Constance arable through drainage. As he himself put it: ‘An engineer experiences the same pleasure as God.’ He joined the technical office of engineer Louis Kürsteiner in St. Gallen, first as an engineer, later as a manager, and finally as one of the owner’s closest associates, particularly on projects relating to hydroelectric engineering. The projects co-created by Kürsteiner and Narutowicz received an award at the 1896 International Exhibition in Paris.

Gabriel Narutowicz and hydroelectric power

The Polish engineer’s first major achievement was the hydroelectric power station at Kubel near St. Gallen (1898–1900), at that time one of the most important in Switzerland. He later oversaw the construction of a facility in Andelsbuch, Austria, to which water was channelled via a tunnel over 1.5 km long (1905–1908). His contribution to the development of global hydropower lay in the construction of a reserve reservoir, which supplied the power-generating equipment, ensuring continuous operation.

At the Refrain hydroelectric power station (1906–1908) on the Swiss–French border, he utilised the waters of the River Doubs alone for the first time, without the need for any diversion. His magnum opus was the plant at Mühleberg on the River Aare near Bern, at that time one of the largest and most modern hydroelectric power stations in Europe. He radically improved the original design and oversaw its construction (1917–1920). Despite the war and economic difficulties, he saw the work through to completion once the conflict had ended.

Gabriel Narutowicz – expert, engineer, visionary

Engineer Gabriel Narutowicz’s projects in Switzerland were accompanied by renown and acclaim. As a result, his design office produced plans for hydroelectric power stations in response to commissions from other countries as well, including Italy (the Montjovet power station on the River Dora Baltea in Piedmont, 1912–1914) and Spain (the Buitreras power station on the River Guadiaro in Andalusia, 1917–1919; the refurbishment of the Corchado power station). In total, he oversaw the construction of over a dozen European hydroelectric power stations. The Polish engineer was also the author of designs and expert reports in Finland, Portugal, Turkey, Italy and the Austrian partition (design of the Szczawnica-Jazowsko hydroelectric power station, 1911).

He served as Switzerland’s delegate to the International Commission for the Regulation of the Upper Rhine (1915 and 1919 – chairman). He was a visionary; amongst other things, he advocated harnessing the energy of water from melting Alpine glaciers (which was done in the second half of the 20th century).

Naruti – that is what the students called Gabriel Narutowicz

For a year, Narutowicz was urged to return to ETH as a lecturer. He was persuaded by the argument that he would be of greater benefit to society in this role. From 1907, he was a lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and from 1908 to 1919 he was a professor and head of the Department of Hydraulic Engineering; from 1913 to 1920, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. His students held him in high esteem as a man of exceptional integrity, often asking him, for instance, to settle disputes of honour. He combined his university duties with membership of a Swiss water management commission and the running of his own engineering practice, which he had founded (1908; his move to Zurich necessitated his resignation from his post at Kürsteiner).

Gabriel Narutowicz was a workhorse and a boss who demanded a great deal from both himself and his staff. He earned a reputation as the foremost expert in his field in Europe and a brilliant authority on geological matters.

With the outbreak of the Great War, he became involved in relief work (as founder, and later director, of the Swiss Committee for Aid to War Victims in Poland) and in politics – as an advocate for the Polish cause, which he brought to the attention of the international community through his lectures and articles.

I would like to thank Professor Maria-Jolanta Zagalak, long-standing President of the Polish Society ‘Zgoda’ in Zurich, for her assistance in writing this text.