Atanazy Raczyński
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.
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
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
- Deux diplomates: le Comte Raczynski et Donoso Cortés , Marquis de Valdegamas; dépéches et correspondance politique 1848–1853. Paris 1880.
- Lionel von Donop : Raczynski, Athanasius Graf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 27, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, p. 106 f.
- Joseph A. Graf Raczynski (Ed. And transl.): Poland is not lost yet. From the diaries of Athanasius Raczynski. 1788 to 1818. Siedler, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88680-035-0 .
- Konstanty Kalinowski, Christoph Heilmann (eds.): Collection Graf Raczyński. Late Romantic painting from the Poznań National Museum. Hirmer, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7774-5950-X .
- Uta Kaiser: collector, connoisseur, art writer. Studies on the “History of Modern German Art” (1836–1841) by Count Athanasius Raczyński . Olms, Hildesheim 2017 (= Studies on Art History; Vol. 207), ISBN 978-3-487-15536-4 , Zugl .: Dresden, Techn. Univ., Diss.
- 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 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Atanazy Raczyński in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature by and about Atanazy Raczyński in the catalog of the SWB, Southwest German Library Association
- Der Tagesspiegel: Polish Count and Prussian Diplomat , accessed on November 30, 2012.
Individual evidence
- ^ The Landtag of the Grand Duchy of Posen, Volume 5, 1841, p. 23, digitized
- ↑ 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 |
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Raczyński, Atanazy |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Raczynski, Athanasius von |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish nobleman and Prussian public servant |
DATE OF BIRTH | May 2, 1788 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Poses |
DATE OF DEATH | August 21, 1874 |
Place of death | Berlin |