They tried with all their might to save his life: 41 gobs of blood, each about 500 milliliters, the doctors Danzig's mayor, after a 27-year-old had stabbed him with a knife on Sunday evening. But all efforts could not save Pawel Adamowicz. He died on Monday.
The perpetrator is in custody. On Sunday evening he had stormed the stage of a charity event, in his hand his weapon with 14.5 centimeters long blade. Adamowicz had no chance. His name is Stefan, the murderer shouted, the civic platform, a liberal party, had "tortured" him and put him in prison innocently. Only: Adamowicz belonged to the civic platform for a long time no longer.
With him died one of the most popular politicians of Poland, a champion for Europe and against nationalism, a pragmatist, not a polarizer. Since 1998, he was mayor of the Hanseatic city, elected with approval ratings that politicians in Warsaw can only dream of.
"I am the mayor of all Gdansk"
Adamowicz was 53 years old. His family had been relocated after the war from the area around the Lithuanian Vilnius to Danzig. He studied law and became involved in opposition to the communists. In the 1990s, Adamowicz was first elected to the City Parliament, he founded the Civic Platform, the party that also today's EU Council President Donald Tusk, also from Gdansk, belongs.
"I am the mayor of all Gdansk", that was one of his political principles. Although he was chosen by young, well-educated people, he was also concerned with the more conservative shipyard workers. These were the people who once founded the first free trade union in the Eastern Bloc, Solidarnosc, which finally negotiated the peaceful revolution of 1989. Many of them were among the first whose jobs were in danger after the fall of the Wall. Under Adamowicz, Gdańsk was booming, and the employment offices have reported full employment for years.
His office had been hung by Adamowicz with the oil-painted portraits of his Hanseatic predecessors. Many of them spoke German. But the mayor just liked that: "We are not turning our backs on the German heritage today," he once told SPIEGEL. A courageous sentence back in 2007, when the National Conservatives had already ruled in Warsaw and the relationship with their western neighbors was deteriorating.
Adamowicz resisted the nationalist mainstream
Adamowicz was even more reluctant to resist the nationalist mainstream later on. For example, in recent years he has repeatedly stated that his city is prepared to accept refugees - while Warsaw refused to allow the European distribution mechanism for people in need. "Poland has been a multiethnic and multicultural country for centuries, hospitable to newcomers of other nationalities," wrote Adamowicz in 2017.
In video: After knife attack on open stage - mayor of Danzig died
GRZEGORZ MEHRING / EPA-EFE / REX
A shadow falls on this brilliant career: Adamowicz is considered extremely wealthy. He was repeatedly investigated for wrongly filling out a Legislative Declaration. Such a public statement must be submitted by every Polish person in a public office. A process was in progress. In connection with this suspicion, Adamowicz withdrew in 2015 from the Civic Platform.
In Poland, a discussion has now begun: Does the murder on the stage have something to do with the country's deep political turmoil? The National Conservatives in the government and the Liberal opposition argue in the strongest terms. Or is the culprit insane?
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the gray eminence of the National Conservatives, expressed in a public statement "deep pain" about the death of Adamowicz. The government sent Adamowicz's wife a government machine to London. She had landed there on her way home from the USA.