Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Paderewski rose as a touring virtuoso in the late 1880s, composing orchestral works, an opera (Manru, the only Polish opera ever staged by the Met), and building a following that opened doors in Western salons and presidential offices. When World War I came, he largely stopped performing and threw his celebrity into the cause: fundraising, speeches, meetings with Wilson, work with the Polish National Committee in Paris. That pressure helped secure an independent Poland in the postwar settlement. Józef Piłsudski made him prime minister and foreign minister in January 1919; Paderewski went to the Paris Peace Conference, signed Versailles, oversaw elections and minority-protection laws - but faced criticism as an administrator and resigned by December. He returned to the concert stage and lived mostly abroad, dabbling in 1930s opposition politics with the Front Morges circle in Switzerland. After the 1939 invasion he came back one more time, leading Poland's parliament-in-exile in London, broadcasting appeals, giving benefit concerts for the Allied effort. He died in New York in 1941, buried at Arlington, repatriated to Warsaw fifty-one years later.