Palace in Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie: A Renaissance and Baroque Estate
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Prussia
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page13 sections
History
The palace in Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie, Poland, is an aristocratic residence that developed from a fortified fifteenth-century estate into a Renaissance manor and then a Baroque palace. The village first appears in records in 1217, while a fortified residence and its associated estate existed by at least the fifteenth century. An earlier date of 1304 has also been associated with the residence.
From fortified residence to Renaissance manor
From 1506, the manor belonged to Hans von Eichholz and later passed to the von Tunckel family. In 1602, Wenzel von Zedlitz, governor of the Duchies of Liegnitz and Brieg and guardian of the Piast princes, purchased the estate for 11,000 thalers. He replaced the fortified residence with a Renaissance manor surrounded by broad water-filled moats. The Renaissance was a European cultural and architectural period that revived classical forms.
Wenzel von Zedlitz left the property to his third wife, Anna von Canitz. She sold it in 1639 to the Austrian imperial colonel Baron Johannes Sieghofer von Siegenberg. After his death in 1649, his wife Eva inherited the estate. Through her second marriage to Baron Karl Heinrich Zahradecky von Zahradek, ownership passed to the Zahradek family.
The Baroque transformation
The Barons von Zahradek sold the palace in 1736 to Carl Ferdinand von Seherr-Thoss. Between 1748 and 1762, he commissioned a Baroque transformation, concentrating the work inside the residence while changing the exterior mainly through alterations to the portal and triangular gable. Baroque architecture developed later than the Renaissance and is associated with elaborate decoration, movement, and theatrical effects.
Carl Friedrich von Seherr-Thoss sold the palace and estate farm in 1782 to Gotthard Oswald von Tschammer. Count Carl von Roedern became the owner in 1790. After his death in 1795, his widow sold the property to Count Hartwig Ludwig Anton von Hoym, a senior Prussian finance councillor and president of the South Prussian War and Domains Chamber.
The Olszewski family and the 1813 headquarters
Shortly before his death, von Hoym gave the palace in 1811 to his relative Fanny Biron von Curland, née Countess von Maltzahn. She sold it in 1812 to Prussian first lieutenant Louis Seraphim von Olszewski. His family originated in Podlachia and retained the estate for more than a century.
On 26 August 1813, Prussian field marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher established his headquarters at the palace during the Wars of Liberation, the conflict in which Prussian forces fought Napoleonic France. The Silesian Army under his command subsequently defeated French forces at the Battle of the Katzbach, a major engagement of that conflict. An obelisk in front of the palace commemorates the event.
The Sienkiewicz inheritance episode
Alfred von Olszewski, the last male representative of his family at the estate, admired the Polish novelist and Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz and supported the Polish national cause. His will required his children, by the age of 30, to show that they spoke Polish and knew Polish history and culture. It also required them to adopt Polish citizenship before inheriting the family property.
Because Alfred’s children did not accept these conditions, the will directed that the palace, its eight-hectare park, and the estate farm with 287 hectares of land should pass to Sienkiewicz. Alfred’s widow, Gabriele, unsuccessfully challenged the will after his death in 1909, while Sienkiewicz declined the inheritance.
In 1932, Gabriele transferred the estate to her daughter Draga von Olszweski, who had been married since 1913 to Heinrich Baron von Zedlitz and Neukirch, general director of the Silesian landed estates. The property thereby returned to the von Zedlitz family, which had held it from the late sixteenth century until 1639. In February 1998, the village was renamed Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie in memory of the inheritance episode.
War, decline, and restoration
During the Second World War, Günther Grundmann, the provincial conservator for Lower Silesia, used the palace as a depot for art objects threatened by bombing. From 1944, it also housed the large numismatic collection of the Breslau City Museum. That collection is now missing.
Russian troops plundered and devastated the palace complex after entering the area in spring 1945. The owners had fled west only a few days earlier and later lived in Bavaria. From 1945, people forcibly resettled from the former Polish eastern territories occupied the palace. A state-owned agricultural enterprise used the property in the 1960s, after which the complex stood empty and deteriorated. Plans made in the 1970s for a Sienkiewicz memorial site with catering facilities were not implemented.
The Rabkowski family purchased the estate in 1995 and restored the palace over several years. The village received the name Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie in 1998. The palace, garden pavilion, park, and farm complex are legally protected as monuments. Protection covers the palace from 31 July 1960, the pavilion from 5 September 1961, the park from 22 September 1976, and the farm complex from 24 May 1991.
Remains
The palace complex lies about nine kilometres southwest of Legnica and is organized around a two-storey residence on an island, a broad moat, a bridge, a landscape park, and farm buildings to the east. The former farm buildings enclose a courtyard on three sides, which also serves as the palace forecourt. The ensemble combines the surviving form of the Renaissance manor with Baroque alterations and later landscape and estate features.
The island palace and designed landscape
The palace
The rectangular palace stands on an island surrounded by a broad moat. A stone bridge leads to the entrance, and its balustrade continues around the moat as an enclosing parapet. The two-storey building has a high half-hipped roof. Its entrance facade is divided into eight window bays, but the elaborate portal occupies the fourth bay rather than the exact centre. This uneven arrangement preserves evidence that the Baroque residence was remodelled from an earlier Renaissance house.
The stone entrance portal is framed by pairs of Ionic columns and carries a cartouche, an ornamental panel for heraldic display, with the coats of arms of the von Seherr-Thoss and von Kreckwitz families. Above the entrance bay and the two adjoining bays rises a dormer-like gabled structure at roof level. It incorporates a large clock tower with a lantern and onion dome, a bulbous dome that narrows toward its crown.
A carved inscription from the Renaissance construction period survives in the building. Until 2007, another inscription beneath the coats of arms recorded the ownership and building history of the Zedlitz, Sieghofer, Zahradek, and Seherr-Thoss families and invoked God’s blessing on the house. It is now covered by a sandstone plaque bearing the Silesian eagle. Historic interior elements include a Baroque-painted wooden beam ceiling dating from the Renaissance period and an upper-storey ballroom.
Park and garden pavilion
The palace stands within a 19-hectare landscape park containing 58 tree species. Laid out in the late nineteenth century, the park incorporated woodland west of the residence that had previously served as an animal park. A circuit path follows the outer edge of the designed landscape in the manner of an English belt walk, a route around the perimeter of a park or woodland.
An octagonal garden pavilion from the eighteenth century forms part of the complex and was probably built around the time of the palace’s Baroque remodelling. The structure is also described as a garden chapel.
Farm buildings
Eighteenth-century buildings
The protected farm complex includes a storage building and a residential building from the second half of the eighteenth century. Together with the palace, these structures form the estate ensemble around the courtyard and forecourt.
Nineteenth-century agricultural buildings
Two barns, a stable, a cowshed, and an agricultural building date from the nineteenth century. The former cowshed has been converted into a function hall, while former guest rooms in the palace have been adapted for use as a small hotel.
