DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29195#0063
The Palace’s history
equally inestimable sketches presenting his original idea for a fine arts museum in
Warsaw (Miziolek 2007). Today only a handful of researchers are familiar with the
ambitious design which Potocki and his accomplished draughtsmen committed to
paper around 1780, when he was still a young man. With its five thousand books and
magnificent collection of drawings now in the Krasinski Palace, the Wilanow library
is unique in its class for Poland, giving us a fair idea of what the Count’s library was
like at Number 15 on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie under the Duchy of Warsaw and
the first years of the Congress Kingdom (Rudnicka 1967, Fig. 53).
Alas, the revival of Warsaw Skarbek had written about was short-lived. The hopes
pinned on Napoleon soon faded, and in 1815 a Kingdom of Poland, generally known
as the Congress Kingdom, was established in place of the Napoleonic Duchy of War-
saw. Until his death in 1825 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia and “King of Poland”, acted
as the guarantor of that unilateral Polish-Russian “union”. On the succession of his
brother Nicholas I, who turned out to be a despot, the constitution Alexander had
granted the Congress Kingdom was constantly being infringed, which eventually trig-
gered the outbreak of the November Uprising of 1830. While Alexander I, who had
been a fairly frequent visitor at the Potocki Palace, used to say that Warsaw should be
made as beautiful as a jewel and indeed did a lot to turn it into un bijou (see Niemce-
wicz 1871, Vol. 2,p. 307), Tsar Nicholas did not trouble to hide his indifference and
treated Warsaw like a provincial town. Natalia Kicka made a record in her memoirs
of an incident in May 1830, when the Tsar told one of the ambassadors that officially
he only received diplomatic missions in St. Petersburg. He added words of great con-
sequence: that although he bore the title ofKing ofPoland, the Kingdom ofPoland was
(for him) equal in status to theprincipalities ofthe nomadic tribes ofAsia whose armorial
bearings were spreadout on the wings ofthe Double-HeadedEagle (Kicka 1972, p. 176).
A few months later the Uprising broke out, followed by a couple of victories and
eventually defeat. On 7th September 1831 Russian troops under Field-Marshal Ivan
Paskevich took Warsaw and on the following day the act of capitulation was signed
(although the last of the Polish forces did not surrender until 23rd September). The
city was submitted to the most severe repressive measures. Paskevich was appointed
Prince of Warsaw and Governor of the Kingdom of Poland. He moved into the Gov-
ernor’s (now the Presidential) Palace, opposite the Czartoryski-Potocki Palace. Rav-
aged by the war, the tiny Kingdom of Poland was made to pay a tribute amounting
to twenty million roubles (equivalent to approximately a hundred and twenty-four
million Polish zloty in the contemporary currency).
As we have already said, after the sudden death of Count Stanislaw Kostka in 1821 his
wife Aleksandra left for a fairly long stay in Italy, the country she and her husband had
treated almost as a second homeland. In 1831, after the fall of the November Uprising,
she left Warsaw for Krakow, where, grief-stricken like many other patriotic women who
may be called the Mothers of Poland, she died shortly (see t^towski 1952, p. 144). The
Palace was inherited by the only son of Stanislaw and Aleksandra, Aleksander Potocki
(1778—1845), who does not seem to have cared very much for it. His two unhappy mar-
riages, first to Anna nee Tyszkiewicz, to whose memoirs we have often been referring,
and secondly to Izabella Mostowska, who was thirty years younger than he, could well
have exerted an influence on his attitude to his parents’ residence. Aleksander, to whom
The times of
Stanistaw and
Aleksandra's
son and
grandchiidren
"The city [Warsaw] is of great extent, but with
its decayed grandeur and the horrible memo-
ries it calls up at every turn, it makes a mourn-
ful impression. In the last century, next to
Paris, it was the most brilliant city in Europe;
now it is a Russian provincial town. It then had
the character of prodigal splendour; now it
is a forlorn, neglected place, which declines
more and more every day, not the least thing
being done by the authorities for its appear-
ance and improvement. It cuts one to the
heart to see the wretchedly paved streets, or
the terrible old sandstone figures in the Saxon
garden, on coming from a luxurious city like
Vienna, or one which has blossomed out with
such rapidity as Berlin"
George Brandes, Poland. A Studyofthe Land,
People and Literature, London 1903, p. 11
67
equally inestimable sketches presenting his original idea for a fine arts museum in
Warsaw (Miziolek 2007). Today only a handful of researchers are familiar with the
ambitious design which Potocki and his accomplished draughtsmen committed to
paper around 1780, when he was still a young man. With its five thousand books and
magnificent collection of drawings now in the Krasinski Palace, the Wilanow library
is unique in its class for Poland, giving us a fair idea of what the Count’s library was
like at Number 15 on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie under the Duchy of Warsaw and
the first years of the Congress Kingdom (Rudnicka 1967, Fig. 53).
Alas, the revival of Warsaw Skarbek had written about was short-lived. The hopes
pinned on Napoleon soon faded, and in 1815 a Kingdom of Poland, generally known
as the Congress Kingdom, was established in place of the Napoleonic Duchy of War-
saw. Until his death in 1825 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia and “King of Poland”, acted
as the guarantor of that unilateral Polish-Russian “union”. On the succession of his
brother Nicholas I, who turned out to be a despot, the constitution Alexander had
granted the Congress Kingdom was constantly being infringed, which eventually trig-
gered the outbreak of the November Uprising of 1830. While Alexander I, who had
been a fairly frequent visitor at the Potocki Palace, used to say that Warsaw should be
made as beautiful as a jewel and indeed did a lot to turn it into un bijou (see Niemce-
wicz 1871, Vol. 2,p. 307), Tsar Nicholas did not trouble to hide his indifference and
treated Warsaw like a provincial town. Natalia Kicka made a record in her memoirs
of an incident in May 1830, when the Tsar told one of the ambassadors that officially
he only received diplomatic missions in St. Petersburg. He added words of great con-
sequence: that although he bore the title ofKing ofPoland, the Kingdom ofPoland was
(for him) equal in status to theprincipalities ofthe nomadic tribes ofAsia whose armorial
bearings were spreadout on the wings ofthe Double-HeadedEagle (Kicka 1972, p. 176).
A few months later the Uprising broke out, followed by a couple of victories and
eventually defeat. On 7th September 1831 Russian troops under Field-Marshal Ivan
Paskevich took Warsaw and on the following day the act of capitulation was signed
(although the last of the Polish forces did not surrender until 23rd September). The
city was submitted to the most severe repressive measures. Paskevich was appointed
Prince of Warsaw and Governor of the Kingdom of Poland. He moved into the Gov-
ernor’s (now the Presidential) Palace, opposite the Czartoryski-Potocki Palace. Rav-
aged by the war, the tiny Kingdom of Poland was made to pay a tribute amounting
to twenty million roubles (equivalent to approximately a hundred and twenty-four
million Polish zloty in the contemporary currency).
As we have already said, after the sudden death of Count Stanislaw Kostka in 1821 his
wife Aleksandra left for a fairly long stay in Italy, the country she and her husband had
treated almost as a second homeland. In 1831, after the fall of the November Uprising,
she left Warsaw for Krakow, where, grief-stricken like many other patriotic women who
may be called the Mothers of Poland, she died shortly (see t^towski 1952, p. 144). The
Palace was inherited by the only son of Stanislaw and Aleksandra, Aleksander Potocki
(1778—1845), who does not seem to have cared very much for it. His two unhappy mar-
riages, first to Anna nee Tyszkiewicz, to whose memoirs we have often been referring,
and secondly to Izabella Mostowska, who was thirty years younger than he, could well
have exerted an influence on his attitude to his parents’ residence. Aleksander, to whom
The times of
Stanistaw and
Aleksandra's
son and
grandchiidren
"The city [Warsaw] is of great extent, but with
its decayed grandeur and the horrible memo-
ries it calls up at every turn, it makes a mourn-
ful impression. In the last century, next to
Paris, it was the most brilliant city in Europe;
now it is a Russian provincial town. It then had
the character of prodigal splendour; now it
is a forlorn, neglected place, which declines
more and more every day, not the least thing
being done by the authorities for its appear-
ance and improvement. It cuts one to the
heart to see the wretchedly paved streets, or
the terrible old sandstone figures in the Saxon
garden, on coming from a luxurious city like
Vienna, or one which has blossomed out with
such rapidity as Berlin"
George Brandes, Poland. A Studyofthe Land,
People and Literature, London 1903, p. 11
67