Henryk Łubieński

Henryk Jan Nepomucen Łubieński, Pomian coat of arms, (11 July 1793, in Prague – 17 September 1883, in Wiskitki, Poland) – was the scion of a Polish magnate family, landowner, financier, lawyer, early industrialist, economic activist, and co-founder of the Towarzystwo Kredytowe Ziemskie w Królestwie Polskim, a banking credit institution in Congress Poland. He was elected to the Sejm of Congress Poland and became a government counsel. He rose to the rank of vice president of Bank Polski, the national bank of Poland during the Kingdom of Poland. He was one of the co-founders of the Mill town of Żyrardów and its textile industry in 1832 and a participant in the creation a new industrial and rail infrastructure in Poland.

He is considered an economic pioneer and visionary, along with several of his brothers, in welcoming the Industrial Revolution, through their own entrepreneurial initiatives into their then partitioned, occupied and agrarian country during the first half of the 19th century. Łubieński's brilliant industrial career and activism came to an abrupt end in 1842, when he was arrested and charged with misappropriating public funds for personal use. It is said that the charges were entirely politically motivated by the then occupying authorities. In 1848 the year his own father died, he was finally convicted and sent into Russian exile in Kursk for six years. On his return to Poland, a victim of Russian political repression, he never again participated in public life.