Skowronek (horse)
Skowronek | |
Race: | Arabian thoroughb ... |
Father: | Ibrahim |
Mother: | Jaskolka |
Mother, father: | Rymnik |
Gender: | stallion |
Year of birth: | 1908 |
Year of death: | 1930 |
Country: | Poland |
Colour: | Mould |
Breeder: | Count Józef Potocki |
Owner: | Lady Wentworth |
Skowronek (* 1908 ; † February 1930 ) was an Arabian thoroughbred stallion , bred by Count Józef Potocki at Antoniny stud. Its Polish name means something like lark or skylark . Skowronek was a gray stallion who was praised for his Arab type, fine head and correct feet and legs.
Young years
There are different records regarding the year of Skowronek's birth. The Polish and English Stud Books for Arabs give 1909 as the year of birth, but the General Stud Book and the original pedigree of Count Potocki give 1908.
The British painter Walter Winans bought Skowronek in 1913 as a young horse from Count Potocki and imported him to England . Winans originally traveled to Poland to hunt in the Count's private animal park in Piławin, north of Antoniny. There he saw the gray stallion and bought him from Count Potocki for 150 English pounds. Winans rode Skowronek but also took him as a model for some bronzes the artist made before selling him to Mr. Webb Wares.
Wares used Skowronek as a riding horse and then presumably sold him to Mr. HV Musgrave Clark, where Skowronek first came into contact with show creatures and breeding. This was probably also when Skowronek first caught Lady Wentworth's attention.
Lady Wentworth acquired Skowronek through a ruse from Clark that led to a long-term cool relationship between the two breeders. Since both parties were competitors in the breeding and show of thoroughbred Arabian horses, Lady Wentworth probably assumed that Clark would drive up the price of the stallion or not sell the animal to her at all. She therefore put forward an American exporter as agent who was supposed to complete the purchase with Clark. Clark fell for the bluff and only realized too late that Lady Wentworth was behind the purchase.
Breeding history
Lady Wentworth used Skowronek as a breeding stallion at her Crabbet Park stud . He was often used with the daughters and granddaughters of the stallion Mesaoud - also a stallion at Crabbet Park - and produced a large number of offspring who followed Lady Wentworth's breeding efforts for larger-framed horses with Arabian type and elegance. Skowronek's offspring were not only sold in Great Britain , they were also exported all over the world: Egypt , Argentina , Australia , Chile , Denmark , Germany , France , Israel , Canada , New Zealand, the Netherlands , Pakistan , Poland , Spain , South Africa , Russia , Turkey and the USA .
Looking back, one can rightly claim that Count Potocki far underestimated the value of the stallion when he sold it to Winans. Lady Wentworth once turned down an offer from the Russian stud Tersk for $ 250,000.
Descendants of Skowronek
In addition to a large number of offspring, some famous names are listed below, which in turn had a great influence on the breeding of the Arabian thoroughbreds in each country:
- his son Raffles , sold to the American breeder Roger Selby
- the stallions Raswan and Raseyn , exported to the USA to the well-known breeding of WK Kellogg - the former stallion also played a decisive role in the life of Carl Raswan
- Another son, Naseem , considered by many to be the best offspring of Skowronek, was sold to the Tersk Stud in Russia and is probably the most influential Skowronek son in the world. His name can be found in the pedigrees of numerous successful horses today.
- his daughter Jalila , sold to the Duke of Veragua , a descendant of the family of Christopher Columbus in Spain, who later gave birth to the famous stallion Nana Sahib
family tree
Father Ibrahim db Schimmel 1899 |
Heijer db | unknown | unknown |
unknown | |||
unknown | unknown | ||
unknown | |||
Lafitte db | unknown | unknown | |
unknown | |||
unknown | unknown | ||
unknown | |||
Mother Jaskolka Schimmel 1891 |
Rymnik Schimmel 1876 |
Kortez Rappe 1870 |
Cercle 1863 |
Gonta Schimmel 1855 |
|||
Hama Schimmel 1868 |
Kohejlan Abu Argub db mold |
||
Caramba db brown 1863 |
|||
Epopeja mold 1875 |
Derwisz db Schimmel 1865 |
unknown | |
unknown | |||
Lira Braun 1868 |
Obejan-Maciuk 1857 |
||
Kreolka 1858 |
- The abbreviation db stands for desert bred , the original Arabs raised in the desert
Pedigree controversy
Concerning the parentage of Skowronek there were controversial discussions that upset the community of breeders and their associations.
Lady Wentworth assumed that Skowronek was a pure-blooded stallion called asil , so his pedigree can be traced back in all lines to the original Arabs of the desert Bedouins and therefore does not have any foreign blood. In the studbook, Skowronek's pedigree ends with three grandparents, which made some enthusiastic Arab breeders question the purity of Skowronek's blood. His father Ibrahim was beyond doubt, he was an original Arab imported to Poland in 1907. His mother Jaskolka - also known as Yascolka or Yaskolka - was a mare bred in Poland.
In Poland Arab horses had been bred for a long time and it was quite common to cross-breed with English thoroughbreds and other Polish horses of non-Arab descent in addition to pure breeds. For a long time, advocates of the purity of the Polish thoroughbred Arabs referred to studies that had traced the two grandparents Rymnik and Epopeja - also known as Epopeia or Epopya - to horses bred by Abbas Pasha , as well as linguistic misunderstandings regarding a letter from Prince Roman V. of Sanguszko . In this letter, Prince Roman, who inherited the Sławuta Stud from his uncle in 1860, wrote that all horses still in the stud had some non-Arab blood. In the letter published in 1900 he wrote:
- “I don't currently have any purebred Arabs (i.e. horses descended from imported parents); the last purebred Arabian was the stallion 'Attyk', which was sold in 1899. "
The statement regarding horses descending from imported parents is interpreted by the advocates of purity as a linguistic misunderstanding, as this can mean horses that have been brought into Poland. Those who doubt the purity assume a cross-breeding of foreign blood.
A work by Ursula Guttmann in collaboration with Dr. Foppe Bonno Klynstra, who claims to be able to prove that Skowronek carried foreign blood through his mother Jaskolka , namely:
- 5 times full English blood
- 2 times Turkmen
- 16 times Polish country mares.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Eustachy_Erazm_Sanguszko.jpg/220px-Eustachy_Erazm_Sanguszko.jpg)
Other authors, u. a. JE Flade, have questioned these conclusions from the pedigree studies. The term “Polka”, which frequently appears in the mother lines in Polish pedigrees, is neither a proper name nor to be equated with “Polish country mare”, but means something like “mare bred in Poland”, in contrast to the numerous imported original Arab stallions that are also appropriately named. The written pedigrees of Polish Arabs go back further than those of any other breed in the world. Traditionally, less importance was attached to the dam line in horse breeding, which is why the mares in the very early pedigrees were often simply referred to as “Polka”, “Kobyla” (Polish word for mare) or “Matka” (Polish word for mother). However, these designations do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about their ancestry, nor are the so-called dams necessarily identical. One example is the black Szumka II ( also Shumka ) appearing in the 7th generation in Skowronek's pedigree , whose mother and grandmother are referred to in the same line as “Polka”. There are several watercolors of Szumka II by the Polish painter Juliusz Kossak , which show an extremely typey thoroughbred Arab. Such a horse certainly had no “Polish country mare” for its mother. Other regional designations of origin for mares were also common, such as B. Pruszyna (Preussin), who, as the name suggests, was bought from Prussia, but was therefore not a Prussian country mare, as her father Gniady db proves.
However, the aforementioned work by Guttman / Klynstra led to heated discussions between breeders and within the associations, which until then had all defined a “thoroughbred Arabian” as pure-blood. See the original VZAP studbook definition :
- "Thoroughbred Arabs in the sense of the breeding goal are horses that can be proven to be traced back to original Arabians ... Horses are entered that have a perfect ancestral record."
An identical principle can also be found in The Arab Horse Society , founded in 1919 , in whose stud book Skowronek was listed:
"Arabian horses are those in whose pedigrees there is no other then pure arab blood."
"Arab thoroughbred horses are those whose pedigrees contain nothing other than pure Arabian blood."
This view was reiterated by the former President of The Arab Horse Society in his book:
“... alein blood is unknown; indeed should it be introduced, the result is that it at once becomes either Anglo-Arab or Part-bred-Arab. "
"... she knows no foreign blood; should any actually be introduced, the result is suddenly either an Anglo-Arab or a half-blood "
Maintaining this definition would mean, however, that a significant part of the horses previously listed as thoroughbred Arabs would no longer meet this definition and would have to be removed from the stud books. A publication by the World Arabian Horse Organization can be found:
- “… The most important point is: the AHRA's claim that all horses registered there can be traced in any line to Arab desert horses is nowhere near true. In fact, nothing is as far from the truth as this claim.
Of the 8,771 Arabs born in 1970 and registered with the AHRA, only 2% had a pedigree that could be traced back to the Orient in every line. "
The consequences of this reached such an extent that the associations subsequently adjusted their definition of a thoroughbred Arabian - cf. Reasons for the establishment of the ASIL Club .
“The breeding program serves to maintain and promote the breeding of the Arabian thoroughbred (AV).
...
All breeding horses that are entered in the stud book for AV of the VZAP or another breeder association for Arab thoroughbreds recognized by the WAHO take part in the breeding program. "
death
Skowronek died at the age of 22 in February 1930. Lady Wentworth donated his skeleton, which sometimes shows the deviation of 17 instead of 18 pairs of ribs and 5 instead of 6 lumbar vertebrae in Thoroughbreds , to the British Museum in London .
Individual evidence
Translated from the English Wikipedia
- ↑ Edwards, Gladys Brown. The Arabian: War Horse to Show Horse . Arabian Horse Association of Southern California, Rich Publishing, Revised Collector's edition (1973).
- ↑ a b http://www.crabbet.com/articlepics/skowronek.html ( Memento from December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Mulder, Carol W., “Skowronek” 1989
- ^ A b Wentworth, Judith Anne Dorothea Blunt-Lytton. The Authentic Arabian Horse , 3rd ed. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1979
- ↑ "Skowronek"
- ^ Pedigree database of the Janów Podlaski State Stud
- ↑ Report about Skowronek on thearabianpalace.com ( Memento from March 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ ASIL ARABER xx, Olms Verlag, ISBN yyy, chapter: Asil Araber: Diamonds without inclusions - Are thoroughbred Arabs asil ?, page 683 ff.
- ^ The Lineage of the Polish Arabian Horses - The descent of the Polish Arabs, Hildesheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-487-08464-0
- ↑ Janów Podlaski and the Polish Arabian breed of Dr. Dr. hc Johannes Erich Flade
- ↑ Reasons for founding the Asil Club ( Memento from January 10, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Dr. Foppe Bonno Klynstra: "Wüstenadel"; Page 140 ff. Olms Verlag 1978 - ISBN 3-487-08173-3
- ↑ Excerpts from the WAHO publication: "Is Purity the Issue?"; January 21, 1998
- ^ Articles of Association of the VZAP of April 4, 2009