Paweł Stalmach
* 1824, † 1891,
He was born in Bażanowice, the son of Jan Stalmach, a minor clerk in the service of the Archduke, and Zuzanna neé Cichy. After leaving the Lutheran elementary school he joined the Lutheran gymnasium in Cieszyn, where in 1842 with friends he founded an association for learning Polish. In 1843-1845 he studied in Bratislava, where his contacts with the Slavophile Ludovit Štur strengthened his convictions about his Polish origins. He studied Lutheran theology from 1845 in Vienna, remaining in contact with his circle of Polish friends in Cieszyn and persuading them to found a Polish newspaper. In June of 1848 Stalmach took part in the Prague Slavic Congress, declaring that Silesians from Cieszyn Silesia belonged to the Polish, rather than the Czech, nation. After returning to Cieszyn in August 1848, he took over the editorship of the weekly, the Tygodnik Cieszyński, whose first issue had come out in May of that year. From August 1849 he was the sole publisher and editor of the magazine. He was also behind the founding of several Polish organisations, such as; the Polish Library (Czytelnia Polska), the Polish Library for the People of the Duchy of Cieszyn (Biblioteka Polska dla Ludu Księstwa Cieszyńskiego). After the collapse of the Springtime of Nations he published the magazine more erratically, from 1851 under the name of the Gwiazdka Cieszyńska. He remained its editor almost to the end of his life, and the Polish nationalist movement which was linked to it became successively stronger and stronger with time. After the Polish Library was closed in 1854, the remaining Polish organisations were the Casino founded by Stalmach, followed by the Kasa Oszczędności Savings Bank. After Austria became a constitutional monarchy in 1859, Stalmach was the undisputed leader of the Polish nationalist movement, and the Gwiazdka Cieszyńska its organ. In it could be found the expression of all the most important issues of the local population fighting for the right to assert their own identity, and ultimately their own place in political, social and economic life. Thanks to personal contacts with politicians in Galicia, Stalmach managed to interest them in the issue of Poles in Cieszyn Silesia, gained the support of influential Poles in Vienna for the Polish nationalist lobby and enlarged the readership of the Gwiazdka Cieszyńska. He founded or co-operated with practically every Polish initiative, the most important of which was the founding of the Macierz Szkolna dla Księstwa Cieszyńskiego. Stalmach became its president in 1885 and worked hard to raise funds and achieve its goal, which was the establishment of Polish primary and secondary education.
In 1887 in exchange for a pension for life he handed over the Gwiazdka Cieszyńska to the Committee of the Catholic Clergy, acting as an advisor and assistant to new editors. He spent the last years of his life writing his memoirs and publishing his own literary works, e.g. Księga Rodu Słowiańskiego (the Book of the Slavs) in 1889 and Cieszymir.