Atanazy Raczyński

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Athanasius Graf Raczyński
painting by Carl Wilhelm Wach , 1826

Atanazy Raczyński (German Athanasius Raczynski ; born May 2, 1788 in Posen , † August 21, 1874 in Berlin ) was a Polish count and Prussian diplomat .

Life

He came from the historically important Raczyński family , which belonged to the old nobility of Greater Poland . Raczynski and his brother Eduard enjoyed the princely education typical of the high European nobility at the family seat in Rogalin .

During the Wielkopolska Uprising of 1806 , he fought in Napoleon's Vistula region and took part in the siege of Danzig . When the Duchy of Warsaw was attacked by Austria in the spring of 1809 , Raczynski joined the army of the Duchy of Warsaw and took part in the campaign under Poniatowski .

After an extensive trip to Germany, he took up diplomatic work for the Duchy of Warsaw at the embassy of the King of Saxony in Paris in early 1811 , which resulted in further trips to Petersburg. From January 1813 he was chamberlain to his king in Dresden and in the summer again at the legation in Paris. Because of the dissolution of the duchy, the stay in Paris ended in November 1814. In the following years Raczynski lived several times for longer periods in Paris and toured France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

In November 1816 he married Annette , a daughter of the Radziwill family, and began to build up his own majorate in Wyszyny near Chodzież in the Grand Duchy of Poznan , which now belonged to Prussia. Since 1825 Majoratsinhaber, Raczynski went for the years 1830-34 as Prussian charge d'affaires to Copenhagen , 1842-48 as ambassador to Lisbon and 1848-52 to Madrid . From then on he lived mostly in Berlin.

He was a member of the Provincial Parliament of the Province of Poznan and took part in the first United State Parliament in 1847

Raczynski lived in "higher circles" and had access to the courts of Europe. He was wealthy and independent. Raczyński had already started buying paintings in his youth. During his diplomatic travels and numerous long private stays in major European cities, he used a large part of his wealth to build up a collection of pictures. In addition, he wrote several art historical works.

tomb

He is buried in the old cathedral cemetery of the St. Hedwigs parish in Liesenstrasse in Berlin. His grave is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave .

Raczyński Palace

Palais Raczynski on Königsplatz (1876), today the
Reichstag building is located there
Eastern part of Königsplatz with Palais Raczyński around 1880, view from the (later relocated) Victory Column

In 1834, Count Raczyński bought a palace on Unter den Linden 21 in Berlin as a residential building. From 1836, his gallery was housed in a courtyard building. He had rented the upper floor to the widowed Bettina von Arnim . The picture gallery initially comprised around sixty older paintings, mostly Italian masters, but later also increasingly contemporary art.

For the construction of a gallery building, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV gave him a piece of land on Königsplatz in Berlin on condition that his pictures be made accessible to the public. The "Palais Raczynski" was built by Heinrich Strack in 1842–44. Raczyński left the southern pavilion of the palace to the painter Peter von Cornelius as a studio, the so-called "Cornelius House", which then housed the New Academy of Music . There were also master studios of the Akademie der Künste in the palace, one of which was used by Gustav Graef .

His son sold the building in 1874 to the state, which had earmarked the property for the construction of the Reichstag building . Raczynski had handed over the administration of the painting collection to the Prussian state in his will. The pictures were exhibited in the Berlin National Gallery until they went on permanent loan from the family to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Posen in 1903 . The collection formed the basis for today's National Museum in Poznan with the largest collection of 19th century German painting in Poland.

Fonts

  • Histoire de l'art modern Allemagne. Renouard, Paris 1836–1841, 3 volumes,
    • Tome premier: Dusseldorf et les Pays du Rhin, excursion a Paris. Renouard, Paris 1836. Digitized edition
    • Tome second: Munich, Stuttgard, Nuremberg, Augsbourg, Ratisbonne, Carlsruhe, Prague, Vienne, excursion en Italie. Renouard, Paris 1839. Digitized edition
  • in German translation by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen : History of modern German art. Berlin 1836–41
    • Volume 1: Düsseldorf and the Rhineland: with an appendix: a trip to Paris. Berlin 1836. Digitized edition
    • Volume 2: Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Karlsruhe, Prague and Vienna: with an appendix: excursion to Italy. Berlin 1840. Digitized edition
    • Volume 3: Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Mecklenburg, Weimar, Halberstadt and Göttingen: with an appendix: trips to Holland, Belgium, England, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and North America. Berlin 1841. Digitized edition
  • Les arts en Portugal. Paris 1846.
  • Dictionnaire historico-artistique du Portugal. Paris 1847.
  • Historical research. 2 volumes. Berlin 1860/62.

literature

Web links

Commons : Atanazy Raczyński  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Landtag of the Grand Duchy of Posen, Volume 5, 1841, p. 23, digitized
  2. Address calendar for the members of the united state parliament, p. 21 ff., Digitized .
predecessor Office successor
Charles-Gustave de Meuron royal Prussian envoy in Copenhagen
1830–1842
August Schoultz from Ascheraden
- royal Prussian envoy in Lisbon
1842–1848
vacant
- royal Prussian envoy in Madrid
1848-1852
Ferdinand von Galen