President of the Polish Circle in Vienna. Son of an Austrian cavalry captain, Feliks, and Józefa from the Grzymała family. As a law student in Lviv, he belonged to the Freemasonry; in 1853 he was a delegate of the Lviv section to the dykasteria. In the Polish People’s Association, he was a member of the Lviv district council and chairman of the Academic Committee: in this capacity, he opposed radical tendencies among the youth. After obtaining his doctorate (1839), he was an intern at the Treasury Prosecutor’s Office in Lviv from 1840 to 1842. In 1843 he married Aniela Kossowska. Arrested for participating in conspiracies, he was soon released from prison, and the investigation against him was discontinued on January 1, 1845. He then settled in his wife’s estate in Bułaszów in Volhynia, but in 1847 he returned to Galicia, acquiring the Rożyska estate in the Ternopil district. In 1848 he belonged to the Ternopil district national council; delegated from Ternopil to the Central Council in Lviv, he did not join it due to the collapse of the movement. On December 11, 1848, he filed a protest to the Ternopil circuit against entrusting rural communities with tax collection. During the years of reaction, he was engaged in farming, was a court appraiser of tabular estates in his district (1850–1871), and a member of the Agricultural Society (from 1851). At the Society’s congress in 1855, he spoke against the consolidation of peasant lands, denying the possibility of progress in peasant farming. In 1858 he published a detailed instruction for the nobility on preparing the cadastre for the land tax.
He entered the political arena in 1861. He was one of the founders of the liberal-landowning newspaper “Głos”. Elected to the first parliament by the large property of the Ternopil district, he served as the parliament’s secretary until 1866 and became a deputy member, and from 1867 to 1869 a member of the National Department. In the Department, he led the municipal department, distinguished by exceptional diligence and meticulousness. He was also a member of the parliamentary delegation to the State Council in Vienna and the first president of the Polish Circle. Avoiding participation in the secret organization of the “whites” (1862), G. After the outbreak of the uprising, however, he established contact with the Lviv committee. On June 25, 1863, he publicly defended the January Uprising in parliament, calling on Austria to take up the Polish cause. Again on December 4, he warned the government from the rostrum against maintaining neutrality in the upcoming international conflict. A year later (December 1864), he questioned the government about lifting the state of siege in Galicia. He then took a leave from parliament and went on a long trip abroad. He actively participated in the parliamentary session of 1865-1866, although not yet prominently. On March 2, 1867, he voted against the convening of the State Council, but elected to the delegation, he accepted the choice and led the opposition in the Polish Circle against Ziemia?kowski’s conciliatory policy. He gained popularity among the Podolian landowners as a defender of Galicia’s noble autonomy, threatened by Viennese centralism. He was elected president of the Agricultural Society (1868-9) and as a reporter of the motion from which the so-called Galician resolution of September 24, 1868, emerged. Defending its text from amendments imposed by both wings of the chamber, Grocholski, popularly known as the “father of the resolution,” was to fight for it in Vienna again as the president of the Circle. He conducted this struggle not very skillfully and gradually lost confidence in it, concluding that the already obtained scope of autonomy was sufficient to maintain landowner rule in the country. The Central Electoral Committee, organized for the first time by Grocholski in 1870, was to serve the same purpose. In the State Council, hand in hand with the extreme right, Grocholski contributed to the overthrow of the Buergerministerium and became the first minister for Galicia in the Hohenwart cabinet (April 11 – October 25, 1871). As a minister, he carried out, among other things, the Polonization of lectures at the University of Lviv. Finding himself in opposition again, he acted as one of its leaders in defense of the concordat and clergy endowment, and against divorces and the legalization of Freemasonry (1874).
Resigning (1873) from the fight for the resolution, he resisted attempts to further narrow autonomy; despite his dislike for the liberal government, he maintained the principle that the Polish Circle votes for the discretionary fund. Involved in work in various national institutions, such as in Krakow’s Florianka (member of the supervisory board 1861–1874), Krakow Savings Bank (board member 1868–1870), and in the Land Credit Society (delegate 1869–1870), Grocholski focused mainly on parliamentary work. In the parliament, he chaired the most important committees: administrative, municipal, address.
He contributed to the drafting of laws: municipal, educational, propinatory, road, hunting, which shaped Galician reality for a long time. He was also to defend this landowner legislation against the slightest changes, asserting in a famous speech from 1878 the principle: “let it be as it was.” In the Polish Circle, Grocholski maintained iron discipline, not allowing independent deputies to speak in the plenary. During the Eastern crisis of 1877-8, he restrained the Circle and the Parliament from acting; in the State Council and joint delegations, he began to question the government on foreign policy only from December 1877, when the outcome of the war was already decided. This policy, sharply condemned in the country, led to the temporary secession of Otto Hausner and companions from the Polish Circle. However, Grocholski maintained the majority of the Circle with him and forced it in November 1878 to vote for the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this way, he accelerated the rise to power of the right-wing coalition, in which he became one of the leaders. After the Berlin Congress, he received the dignity of a secret councilor. From 1877 he was a deputy to the parliament from the rural district of Ska?acki. As the leader of the Podolians, he thwarted in 1881 an attempt to consolidate national administration, after which he led to the merger of the Podolians with the Sta?czyk faction, heading the entire right-wing bloc. In the Polish Circle, he continued to exercise dictatorial rule. He consistently supported the Taaffe government, and was ready to raise the Polish issue in Vienna only to the extent that it was convenient for the dynasty.
In 1884, he suffered his first apoplectic attack. From then on, Grocholski began to withdraw from work, taking leaves from the parliament, spending winters in Abbazia or Meran, rarely attending sessions of the State Council. Once more in 1888, he managed to overcome the opposition of his closest Podolians and forced the Polish Circle to vote for the vodka law needed by the government. On October 18 of that year, he delivered his last major speech in parliament, warning against accelerating the “disastrous for the country” redemption of propination rights. He died suddenly on December 10, 1888, in Abbazia. He was childless.
“Polish Biographical Dictionary” volume VIII, Ossolineum National Institute, Wrocław – Kraków – Warsaw, 1959 – 1960
auth. Stefan Kieniewicz, pp. 585-587