He was born into a family of miners in a settlement near Katowice on the 20th of April, 1873. In 1895, shortly before receiving the final certificate, he was expelled from the German secondary school in Katowice for publicly demonstrating his Polishness. He passed the exam in extern format and took up studies at the Institute of Technology in Charlottenburg (now the Technical University of Berlin), which he then continued at the Department of Law and Economy of the University of Wrocław. In 1898 he joined the Association of the Polish Youth ‘Zet’, and two years later became a member of the National League with which he remained connected for seven years. Towards the end of the year 1901 he began to build up his press syndicate. He edited the following magazines: “Górnoślązak”, “Praca”, “Polak”, “Kurier Śląski”, and “Polonia”. In 1903-1911 he held a seat at the Reichstag, and, having obtained it once again in 1918, during one of the sessions demanded that all the Polish lands of the Prussian Partition be annexed to the reborn Poland. From the beginning of 1920, as a plebiscite commissioner in the Upper Silesia, he headed the plebiscite campaign and conducted negotiations with the international commission. He was the organizer and leader of the Third Silesian Uprising. In 1922 Korfanty was elected to the Sejm of the Second Polish Republic (on behalf of the Christian Democracy), and to the Silesian Sejm. For a short time he was even a deputy prime minister in the second cabinet of Wincenty Witos. After the May Coup, he was among the opponents of Józef Piłsudski’s regime. In 1930 he was arrested and detained for a month in the Brest Fortress prison. In January 1932 he became the president of the Executive Board of the Polish Christian Democratic Party (PSChD); he was re-elected in 1934. Faced with the threat of another arrest, he left Poland in the spring of 1935. He stayed in Czecho-Slovakia, and then, from the autumn of 1938, in France. He was an originator of the ‘Front Morges’ (1936), as well as the founder of Polish Labour Party (SP; 1937), and first president of its Executive Board. Korfanty returned to Poland in 1939, only to be arrested immediately and put in jail in Warsaw. He was released when he was already terminally ill. He died in Katowice on the 17th of August 1939. His funeral, attended by more than 250 thousand people, turned into a great national manifestation.