Political commentator, politician, Minister of the Treasury in the Second Polish Republic.
He was born on September 10, 1891 in Warsaw, to an intelligentsia family. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, architecture in Milan, law in Dorpat and agricultural sciences in Warsaw. During World War I he served in the Russian army, joined Józef Piłsudski's camp and took part in the organization of the Polish Corps in Russia and its operations. From 1918 he was a member of the POW (the Polish Military Organization), and in February 1918 at the head of Polish troops he captured Minsk. In May 1918 he took part in an attempt to deprive General Józef Dowbór-Muśnicki of his command and begin fighting the Germans. He left for Kyiv and took command of the POW in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. From November 1918 he served in the Second Unit of the General Staff as deputy chief, and from August 1920 as chief (until 1923). He took part in the negotiations with the Bolsheviks in Riga as a military expert. In 1924-1926 he was a military attaché in Rome, in 1928-1929 a Polish envoy in Budapest, in 1929-1931 in several successive cabinets he was Minister of the Treasury, in 1932-1936 he was editor-in-chief of the government-funded newspaper Gazeta Polska and monthly Polityka Narodów.
He gained recognition as one of the most prominent Polish political commentators and geopolitics experts of the interwar period. A right-wing supporter of Józef Piłsudski, after the Marshal's death he was in opposition to the ruling Sanation camp, was a close associate of Walery Sławek and an opponent of Józef Beck and Edward Rydz-Śmigły, and associated himself with conservative circles. In September 1939 he directed the evacuation of the Bank of Poland's gold to France. Attacked by opponents of Sanation, he was prevented from engaging in any activity – despite his requests, he was not given a military assignment. After the defeat of France, he made his way to Portugal through Spain, where he was imprisoned for several months, and then to the United States. He settled in New York, where he began his journalistic activities, mainly in Nowy Świat and Dziennik Polski, criticizing the line of the government of Władysław Sikorski and his successor Stanisław Mikołajczyk, especially the concessions to the USSR and the Western Allies, and demanding the adoption of an independent Polish policy. He turned out to be right in pointing to Stalin's consistent policy towards Poland and he foresaw the disloyalty of the Western Allies. He was viciously attacked by enemies of Sanation, especially the leftist circles, as well as by the American press; his journalistic activities, critical of the Allies, were subjected to restrictions by the American administration. He co-founded the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America in New York and the National Committee of Americans of Polish Extraction. He died on August 3, 1946 in New York.
Matuszewski's collected articles were published in the books Próby syntez (1937) and Wybór pism (1952).