New Castle (Grodno)
The New Castle in Grodno , also called the Royal Palace in Grodno , (now Hrodna , Belarus ) was built from 1737 to 1742 at the behest of King August III. built as a meeting place for the Polish-Lithuanian Reichstag ( Sejm ). The castle was the site of the so-called Sejm of Grodno , where the Second Partition of Poland was sealed in 1793 . On November 25, 1795, the last King Stanislaus Poniatowski renounced the throne here and ratified the Third Partition of Poland , with which the kingdom fell. The palace construction is considered to be one of the most important examples of Saxon architecture in old Poland-Lithuania .
prehistory
Since 1673 the Sejm has met every third year in Grodno. The old castle in Grodno , built under Stephan Báthory , was no longer suitable to accommodate the king and the members of the Reichstag due to damage from the Great Northern War . In 1726 August the Strong had a new Senator's Hall installed in a palace belonging to the Sapieha family on the Grodno market square , in which the Sejm has been meeting ever since. Joachim Daniel von Jauch directed the renovations for the Senator's Hall in the Palais Sapieha .
The baroque palace complex
The New Palace or Royal Palace was built between 1737 and 1742 as a baroque three-wing complex under the direction of Carl Friedrich Pöppelmann south of the Old Palace on the right bank of the Memel , on the site of the palace of Crown Treasurer Ossoliński . The main wing of the palace accommodated the king's apartments on the right and the senator's hall on the left. The Landbotensaal, the kitchen and other service rooms were located in the left side wing. In the right side wing, which emerged from the old Ossoliński Palace, there were the rooms of Queen Maria Josepha and (on the upper floor) the rooms of the Saxon Prime Minister Heinrich Graf von Brühl, as well as other rooms of the king . The open courtyard side of the complex closed with two small buildings (bakery, guard) and a lattice fence, in the middle of which is the entrance. In 1743/44, Pöppelmann erected additional farm buildings and accommodation for the courtyard on the east side of the palace next to the left side wing. In 1752 the complex was supplemented by a palace chapel built by Jauch and Johann Friedrich Knöbel on the outer central axis of the main wing facing the Memel.
Further usage history
After the death of August III. (1763) the New Castle became the property of the Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic republic; the royal furniture was immediately acquired by the bishop of Vilna . The Reichstag halls of the palace were still used for the regular meetings of the Sejm in Grodno. The Grodno Sejm of 1793 was the last session of the Reichstag in the Kingdom of Poland before the fall. When Poland was broken up in 1795, the castle and the city of Grodno fell to Russia and only returned to the Republic of Poland for the period from 1918 to 1939 .
In the 19th century the castle served as a Russian military hospital. It was heavily changed through several renovations, as a result of which the complex lost much of its baroque appearance and barely had the character of a palace. The New Castle was badly damaged in the air force bombing raids on Grodno / Hrodna in June 1941. After the end of the Second World War, the layout of the complex was restored, but heavily reshaped by the Stalinist Art Deco of the Communist Party, which had its district committee here until 1991. Today it houses the State Historical-Archaeological Museum, the Karsky District Library and the former party archive - today the archive of the social organizations of the Grodno District.
The only parts of the original palace complex that survived all wars are two sandstone sphinxes above the entrance and the sculpture of a helmet to the left.
literature
- Walter Hentschel: The Saxon architecture of the 18th century in Poland . Volume 1. Berlin (East) 1967, pp. 189 f., Pp. 285-297, Fig. 58; Vol. 2, Figs. 217-220b, 369-399.
- Walter May: The Saxon building industry under August II. And August III. from Poland . In: Poland and Saxony - between proximity and distance . Dresden 1997, pp. 17-26, (= Dresdner Hefte , No. 50).
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 40 ′ 34.5 " N , 23 ° 49 ′ 30.8" E