The year 1846 did not presage any momentous changes in the life of Hipolit Cegielski, a gifted linguist, talented high-school teacher and social activist. Something was about to happen, however, that would change his life forever – on 3 March, an attempt to free three Polish conspirators failed. Several of the pupils at St. Mary Magdalene College in Poznań, where he taught, had taken part in this operation. The director in chief of the province therefore ordered the tutors of the most senior class of the school, in the company of a second teacher, to search the students’ lodgings for weapons on 6 March. Hipolit Cegielski immediately opted for defiance and declared straight out that, as a teacher and a Pole, he could not comply with the order.
He was shortly dismissed from his post, along with several other teachers. They all returned to their profession later, thanks to the amnesty announced after the Revolutions of 1848. Cegielski, who suffered most throughout the entire episode, was different. He found himself in straightened circumstances and had to support a senile father-in-law, a sickly wife and a small child. Cegielski tried appealing to the minister and the matter went as high as the Royal Chancery. Returning to the teaching profession, however, was contingent on making a declaration of loyalty. Cegielski thanked them for their offer and decided to take up commerce.
He started at the bottom and learned the ropes of his new profession in a Berlin company. He opened his ironmongery in the Bazar Building in autumn. Cegielski soon opened a agricultural machinery repair business and, three years later, had a small factory producing agricultural machinery. The plant was later considerably extended and, in 1919, the company relocated to Wilde (a suburb of Poznań) were it still operates. And that’s how H. L. Cegielski – Poznań S. A., commonly known as “Ceglorz” in Poznań, got started.
Pure happenstance provoked a talented linguist and capable teacher to patriotic and civic action and made Cegielski famous as an organic worker, i.e. a person who, with his own ideas and through hard, strenuous work, permanently wrote himself into the economic and patriotic annals of Wielkopolska. He was one of the pioneers of Polish industry in the Grand Duchy of Poznań.