Anton Radziwiłł

Anton Radziwill is a redirect to this article. On the general of the artillery see Anton von Radziwill .

Prince Anton Radziwiłł

Prince Anton Heinrich ( Antoni Henryk ) Radziwiłł , 12th Duke of Nieśwież and (since 1813) 11th of Ołyka (born June 13, 1775 in Vilnius ; † April 7, 1833 in Berlin ), was a Polish and Prussian politician , landowner , Patron composer and music . He is an advocate of a German-Polish rapprochement.

Youth and Marriage

Nieborów Castle

Descendant of the Radziwiłłs , the richest and most powerful aristocratic family of the 1st Polish Republic , who belonged to the nine families who had been imperial princes since 1515 and had the title of prince in the otherwise untitled aristocratic republic, Anton studied with his brothers in Göttingen from 1792 and in 1794 received an invitation to the Prussian court of Friedrich Wilhelm II. During the visit of the Prussian royal couple Friedrich Wilhelm II and Louise to the Radziwiłł-Gut Nieborów not far from Warsaw in 1795 (after the third partition of Poland , as Warsaw was Prussian for a few years Anton got to know the niece of Frederick II and sister of the later famous Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia , Princess Luise of Prussia , fell in love with her and married her after tough negotiations with the Prussian court on March 17th, 1796. The marriage lasted 37 years and was considered very happy.

Early political activity

Luise of Prussia and Anton Radziwiłł

Anton Radziwiłł commuted his life between Berlin, Poznan , Warsaw , Nieborów and Saint Petersburg , always trying to promote the rebuilding of Poland in personal union with the Kingdom of Prussia, which, however, met with little approval in Poland. As long as the so-called South Prussia with Warsaw remained Prussian, he had plans to create a new Kingdom of Poland under the King of Prussia. From 1802 to 1805 he was close to Prince Josef Anton Poniatowski , but won no support for his Polish-Prussian plans.

In 1806, Friedrich Wilhelm III. Determined to carry out Radziwiłł's conception and gave him the task of drafting a constitution for Prussian Poland: It was to be proclaimed a Kingdom of Poland, with its own administration and its own army, with Radziwiłł himself acting as viceroy and Tadeusz Kościuszko as commander-in-chief of the army. The Prussian defeat in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt in the same year ruined all these plans.

As a Prussian and Russian landowner

Antonin Castle , Poznan Province

From 1815, the situation of Prince Anton changed radically: Although he resided in Berlin in his rococo - Palais on Wilhelmstrasse 77 (later the Reich Chancellery), but had relatively few goods within the borders of Prussia: The primogeniture Przygodzice with that of Karl Friedrich Schinkel built the Antonin hunting lodge not far from Ostrowo in the province of Poznan between 1822 and 1824 , and later also the Ruhberg forest estate (now part of Schmiedeberg in the Giant Mountains ) , which was purchased in 1825 . The goods Nieborów and Arkadia near Łowicz were now in Congress Poland . A few scattered goods were also in Galicia , in the Austrian part of Poland.

Nyasvish Castle

Olyka Castle

The main holdings of the Radziwiłł house, the huge estates of the older line in Belarus (then called Lithuania) and Ukraine , the majorates Njaswisch (now Nieśwież), Olyka and Mir , were in Russian-controlled areas. They had belonged to his cousin Dominik, who fell on Napoleon's side as an officer of the Polish Legion in the Battle of Hanau in 1813 . Tsar Alexander I found it inadmissible that one of his subjects fought on the opposing side and then confiscated Dominik Radziwiłł's entire property. Anton Radziwiłł tried to save these properties for the family. He therefore acted as an advisor to the Tsar at the Congress of Vienna . Above all, however, the family relationship with the Prussian king was helpful to him: Tsar Alexander allowed himself to be softened, Anton reimbursed the bound property of his cousin and his heir Stefanie the uncommitted property, provided that she marries a Russian; In 1828 she married the son of a Russian field marshal, Ludwig zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn , and received an area of ​​around 12,000 km² with numerous towns and cities in the area of ​​the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania , including Mir Castle . (The last owner approximately km² included 18,000 of these goods were thus greater than many German small states, Stephanie's daughter, Princess Marie Hohenlohe (was 1829-1897), wife of the Chancellor Prince Clovis Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst . She had against property Sold at the end of the 19th century, as new Russian laws did not allow foreign land ownership in Russia.) Anton Radziwiłł, however, received his cousin's family affidavit and was now head of the house and one of the largest landowners in the Russian part of Poland. He sold the splendid Radziwiłł Palace in the center of Warsaw to the state in 1818, and since then it has remained the residence of the governor and now the state president. The huge but dilapidated Njaswisch Castle (with around 350 rooms) was only made habitable again by Anton's grandson Friedrich Wilhelm Anton (* 1833). The two majorates Njaswisch and Olyka remained with the descendants of Anton Radziwiłłs until 1939. Because foreigners were not allowed to own land in Russia, he temporarily considered moving to Russia. However, his relationship with the Prussian royal family helped him to keep the goods in the Russian territory unobjectionable and to return to Berlin.

Governor in Poznan

By resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, the Poznan area came to Prussia as the Grand Duchy of Poznan , where the Polish population made up the majority of the population. In the spring of 1815, Prince Anton Radziwiłł was appointed Prussian lieutenant general and governor and later a member of the Prussian State Council. He also became a Knight of the Black Eagle Order . On July 20, 1815, he came to Poznan and moved into his official residence in the former Jesuit college , an imposing baroque building. On August 3 of the same year he received homage from 700 representatives of the nobility, clergy, officials and peasants in the name of the king. His main task was to reconcile the Poles with Prussia and to bind them to the Hohenzollern dynasty, while the Poznan Poles primarily sought self-government.

As governor he only had representative and advisory functions: he was allowed to act as chairman at the meetings of the two governments of Poznan and Bydgoszcz and to veto all decisions affecting subjects of Polish nationality, the final decision being made by the King of Prussia. His relations with the first chief president of the province, Joseph von Zerboni di Sposetti , worked out well, but he was totally enemies with General Friedrich Erhardt von Röder , who was responsible for the Prussian troops ( 5th Army Corps ) in the Grand Duchy. He did a lot for the Poles: he always intervened in the appointments of higher officials and clergy, supported the petitions of the Poznan state parliament to the king and financially helped the rising talents of the Polish community. He was widely valued for his high culture, courtesy and human treatment. His wife, Princess Luise, was also sympathetic to the Poles and engaged in charity. She often helped through her contacts to the Berlin court and to Chancellor Hardenberg , with whom she corresponded for years, to reverse anti-Polish measures by the Prussian civil servants. In Poland, however, he is still seen today as a weak and dependent politician.

Anton Radziwiłł (1824)

Anton Radziwiłł's political career ( weakened earlier by the unsuccessful negotiations about the marriage of his daughter Elisa Radziwiłł with Prince Wilhelm ( Wilhelm I ) between 1822 and 1824) was finally ended in 1830 with the outbreak of the November Uprising in Congress Poland. The role of his brother Michał as the last commander-in-chief of the rebellious Polish troops played a role . In February 1831, the Poznan governorship of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. suspended. Two years later, on January 27, 1833, Prince Radziwiłł was dismissed from civil service. He spent the last years of his life in Teplitz in Bohemia on his forest estate in Ruhberg and in Berlin.

Anton Radziwiłł died in Berlin in 1833 and was buried in Poznan Cathedral . His wife followed him three years later. After his death, the majorats were divided between the sons, so that there were now two main lines of the sex, the dukes of Nieśwież (now Nyaswisch , Belarus ) and those of Ołyka in Volhynia in what is now Ukraine . It was not until 1960 that both titles de iure were reunited in the person of Anton's descendants in the 6th generation, the Warsaw doctor Prince Ferdinand Radziwiłł (* 1935 in Ołyka, † 1992 in Warsaw), who however only owned the titles and no more goods .

Anton Radziwiłł as a composer

Radziwiłł was a good singer, an excellent cello virtuoso, and composed a number of compositions that received a lot of attention from professional circles. Frédéric Chopin , to whom Radziwiłł dedicated his trio for piano, violin and cello in G minor, Op. 8, indirectly testifies to his abilities as a cellist .

His most important composition was the setting of Goethe's Faust (1811-1830), to which he was inspired by Carl Friedrich Zelter . Prince Anton got in touch with Goethe, who informed him of his wishes and ideas. The first performance of the finished scenes took place on the 50th birthday of his wife Luise on May 24, 1820 in the family's Berlin palace; it followed a fortnight later in the Berlin pleasure palace Monbijou . The work was only finished three years before his death and was performed annually until around 1860 by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin , of which he himself was an active member and worked as a singer. After a break of more than 140 years, the work was performed again for the first time on July 27, 2003 as part of the Darmstadt Residence Festival by the Frankfurt Dramatic Stage and the Darmstadt Concert Choir under Wolfgang Seeliger . On October 25, 2005, the Sing-Akademie performed a new performance after the vocal material with the archive of the choir, which had been lost for decades, had been returned to Berlin from the Ukraine. Radziwiłł also created many songs for French, Polish and German texts and some piano compositions.

progeny

With Princess Luise Friederike of Prussia he had a. a. the following children and grandchildren:

Radziwiłł Palace in Berlin

• Wilhelm Paweł (1797–1870), Prussian general of the infantry
  • Anton (1833–1904), Prussian general of the artillery
  • Wilhelm (1845–1911) ⚭ Katarzyna Rzewuska
• Ferdinand Friedrich
• Boguslaw (1809–1873), Prussian lieutenant general and politician
  • Ferdinand , politician
  • Edmund , theologian
• Wladyslaw
• Elisa (1803-1834)
• Wanda Augusta Wilhelmina

literature

• Almanac de Gotha. Perthes, Gotha.
  • 77th year (1840)
  • 124th year (1887)
• Robert Eitner:  Radziwill, Anton Heinrich Prince of . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 27, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, p. 154 f.
• OttoTschirch: Prince Anton Heinrich v. Radziwil and its house music . In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins , 24/1907, pp. 229–234.
• Ingvar Holm: Industrialismens scen. Ur revolutionernas och varumässormas teaterhistoria. Gebers, Stockholm 1979, ISBN 91-20-06030-0 .
• Bogdan Graf von Hutten-Czapski : Sixty Years of Politics and Society. Mittler, Berlin 1936 (2 vol.)
• Szymon Konarski: Armorial de la noblesse polonaise titrée. Self-published, Paris 1957.
• Tadeusz Nowakowski: The Radziwills. The story of a great European family. dtv, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-423-01102-5 .
• Thekla von Schober: Under five kings and three emperors. An old woman's apolitical memories. Flemming, Glogau 1891.
• Andrzej Tomaszewski : Polish aristocrats and the Berlin culture of the 19th century . In: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin yearbook 1981/82 . Quadriga Verlag , 1983, ISBN 3-88679-300-1 , p. 290-302 .
• Lech Trzeciakowski: Prince Anton Heinrich Radziwiłł. An advocate of Polish-German rapprochement. In: K. Ruchniewicz / M. Zybura (ed.): "Who you are my distant brother ..." Polish friends of Germany in portraits. Fiber Verlag, Osnabrück 2015, pp. 11–30.

Web links

Commons : Antoni Radziwiłł  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• http://www.nieborow.art.pl/
• http://www.przygodzice.pl/

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lech Trzeciakowski, Prince Anton Heinrich Radziwiłł. An advocate of Polish-German rapprochement, in: K. Ruchniewicz / M. Zybura (ed.): "Who you are my distant brother ..." Polish friends of Germany in portraits. Osnabrück 2017, pp. 11–30.
2. ^ Alfons Clary-Aldringen : Stories of an old Austrian. Ullstein, Frankfurt 1977, ISBN 3-550-07474-3 , page 28.
3. ↑ Schering Foundation - Music, compositions for Goethe's Faust ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.