the states, which made him one of the leaders of the krajowcy movement, a group of Polish Lithuanians loyal to the legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and supporting reconciliation of divided loyalties of local Poles between Poland and Lithuania. In his vision, the Polish minority in Lithuania would gain a status similar to the Walloons in Belgium: with separate culture and language, but united with Lithuanians by what he called "state patriotism". At the same time he also supported close ties between the nations formerly constituting the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and took part in various Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian enterprises. At the 1905 Great Seimas of Vilnius, he suggested that all estates be disbanded and the land distributed amongst poorer peasants. It was a quite unexpected proposal for most of the deputies. During the 1917 Vilnius Conference he stated his primary goal as "An independent Lithuania within ethnic Lithuanian lands". In September 1917 Narutowicz joined the Council of Lithuania (Lietuvos Taryba), a Lithuanian governing body established by the Germans as part of their Mitteleuropa plan, yet largely independent and striving for establishment of Lithuania as an independent state. As a member of that body, Narutowicz became one of twenty signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania. However, following the conflicts within the Taryba he took a more anti-German stance than most of his colleagues. After the body asked the government of Germany for protection and help and vowed for a stable and strong alliance with the German Reich, Narutowicz protested. When, on 26 January 1918, 12 of the Taryba's members voted for compromise with Germany, Narutowicz and three of his social-democratic colleagues (Steponas Kairys, Jonas Vileišis and Mykolas Biržiška) resigned their posts. Lithuania and Poland came into increasing intense conflicts in the years that followed. Narutowicz continued to actively support a rapprochement but met with little success. Death and legacy Narutowicz committed suicide on 31 December 1932 in Kaunas. Polish historian Krzysztof Buchowski of the University of Białystok attributes his suicide to alienation resulting from the futility of his endeavors, denounced on both sides of the border, as well as to the increasingly hostile stance of the Lithuanian government towards the Polish minority in Lithuania. His biography published by the National Museum of Lithuania attributes his suicide to depression, family issues, and economic hardship. Narutowicz's son Kazimierz Narutowicz (1904–1987) was also an activist in the interwar period, engaged in