This is the Schaffgotsch Palace that dominates the town of Cieplice [ in Lower Silesia, Poland] which I am currently staying in. The House of Schaffgotsch is the name of an old and influential Silesian noble family which dates back to the thirteenth century. This mainly focuses on the Silesian branch of the family.
The old Silesian-Bohemian nobility – the Schaffgotsch – with the headquarters in today’s Polish Cieplice (Bad Warmbrunn) was until the dissolving of the German empire 1945 one of the most important and second richest noble families of Germany. The war defeat and the dissolving of the German Empire as well as the loss of Silesia in 1945 marks a break in the history of the Schaffgotsch. The year 1974 is dated as a definite date for the disintegration of the “Schaffgotsch empire”.
History
Source: https://wikimili.com/en/Schaffgotsch_family
Around 1240, the first Schaffgotsch appears in a Silesian document as “Sibotho de nobili Familia Ovium” (“ovium” is the Latin word for “sheep”, the translation of the German word Schaf(f)). According to tradition, Sibotho came in the entourage of Hedwig of Andechs and Henry I the Bearded.
One of Sibotho’s successors, the knight Gotsche II Schoff (who died in 1420), bought extensive possessions in the foreland of the Riesengebirge Giant Mountains and Iser Jizera Mountains at the end of the fourteenth century: the Kynast and Greiffenstein dominions. The Schaffgotsch family thus became the most important noble family in the Jelenia Góra Valley (Hirschberger Tal). In 1403, Gotsche II donated the church* at Warmbrunn to the Cistercian provost. His family cherished the memory of Gotsche II Schoff, the originator of their wealth, by adopting the sobriquet “Gotsch”. Later, both names were connected as Schaffgotsch.
Gotsche II’s son Hans (who died in 1469) was the first of the family to be chancellor, court judge, and governor (German : Landeshauptmann) of the Principality of Świdnica–Jawor (Schweidnitz-Jauer). With his sons Anton, Kaspar, and Ulrich, the Schaffgotsch family split into three branches.
Christoph (1552–1601), grandson of Kaspar (1476–1534), had already succeeded to Ulrich’s domain of Greiffenstein as early as 1578. Christoph, a Protestant, was the first ancestor of the Silesian branch of the family, which in 1766 split into the lines of Kynast-Warmbrunn and Wildschütz; Wildschütz, which resided in Austrian Silesia, died out in the first half of the twentieth century.
Christoph’s son, Hans Ulrich (1595–1635), a Protestant like his father, was the only Schaffgotsch who married into a dynastic house: his wife, Barbara Agnes was a princess of Liegnitz Brieg. Hans Ulrich received all rights of a Silesian sovereign and was awarded the title Semperfrei by the Holy Roman emperor. As an imperial general, he served under Wallenstein but signed the first Pilsen Revers, which the emperor considered a betrayal. Hans Ulrich was beheaded and the family were deprived of all their possessions; his son Christoph Leopold (1632–1703) converted to Roman Catholicism and recovered all estates except Trachenberg. In 1654, Christoph Leopold became a count and was made imperial legate in Poland. In 1683, he accompanied John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna as the ambassador of the emperor. He was court tutor and court judge in Schweidnitz and Jauer, and chamber president and upper governor (German: Oberlandeshauptmann) of Silesia. His son Johann Anton Gotthard (1665–1742), created an imperial count (German: Reichsgraf), was director of the Silesian district authority (German: Oberamt).
After Kynast Castle had burnt down, struck by lightning in 1675, the family moved to nearby Warmbrunn Castle, an early 17th-century renaissance building. It also burnt down in 1777 and was replaced from 1784 with a large neoclassicism palace which remained the main residence of the head of the family until 1945.
After the Prussian capture of Silesia, Philipp Gotthard von Schaffgotsch (1715–1795) became bishop of Breslau, proposed by Frederick the Great who also made him a prince. When, during the Seven Years’ War, the bishop went into exile in Bohemia, the king banned him for lifetime from returning.
In the following generation, Johann Nepomuk Gotthard (1732–1808) received the title of “Erblandhofmeister”. The family gained a seat in the Prussian House of Lords. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the family again split, into the Lower Silesian line of Warmbrunn-Kynast and the Upper Silesian of Koppitz. Due to the hot springs at Warmbrunn, the counts built a spa house and a theater in the early 19th century which became a fashionable retreat. When the Cistercian provost that Gotsche II Schoff had founded at Warmbrunn in 1381 was secularized in 1810, it became owned by the comital family and housed their 80,000 volume library and other collections.
The Lower Silesian line, with its large possessions in and around the Riesen– and Iser Gebirge (Giant and Jesera Mountains), was considered the second wealthiest family of the region before World War I. In the 1930s, the last lord of the Warmbrunn-Kynast estate, Friedrich (1883–1947), owned 27,668 hectares, the sixth largest enterprise in Prussia. In 1923 Anna Schaffgotsch inherited Niederleis Castle in Lower Austria, which is still owned by her descendants.
After World War II, most members of the Schaffgotsch family were expelled from their homes because they were ethnic Germans, and the Communists confiscated their properties*.
Video
The Cieplice Palace
An impressive residence with an elongated 81-meter façade has been the branch of the Wrocław University of Technology since 1975. In the three-story palace, decorated stuccos, antique stoves, as well as some of the saved furniture have survived. The most interesting palace room is the magnificent, richly decorated ballroom with antique furnaces, crystal chandeliers and mirrors. In the vicinity of the palace there is a carefully maintained English park, and in its vicinity – a classical pavilion, the Empire Spa Theater and the classical building of the former Gallery.
This magnificent residence was built by the princely Schaffgotsch family. Until 1977, in the location of today’s building, there was a guest house and a Renaissance manor house, which were destroyed in a fire. A few years later, using the remaining fragments of burned buildings, today’s three-winged structure was created, arms turned towards the garden. The baroque palace with early Classicist forms fortunately survived the years of World War II. In the years 1949-1951 the building was completely refurbished and since then it has been the pride of the Cieplice-Zdrój district.
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24 July 2019: Friedrich Graf Schaffgotsch died
On 6 June, Friedrich Count Schaffgotsch, known as Semperfrei von und zu Kynast and Greiffenstein, the head of the Schaffgotsch family, died in Hamburg. He was the son of Count Gotthard Schaffgotsch (1914-1997) and his wife Marie-Rose née Princess von Croy (1916-2001) and grandson of Count Friedrich Schaffgotsch (1883-1947), the last lord of Warmbrunn (Cieplice).
The deceased was born on 22 January, 1943 in Warmbrunn, the family seat. He had been married to Jennifer Swaisland since 1970, with whom he had two children, Philip and Jane. The Schaffgotsch are probably the most important noble family in Silesia. First mentioned there in 1287, they acquired rich property in the Duchy of Schweidnitz-Jauer in the Middle Ages, held high state offices and ecclesiastical dignities and helped determine the fortunes of the Oderland.
Johann Anton Reichsgraf Schaffgotsch (1675-1742), as director of the Silesian Oberamt, was the deputy of the emperor in Silesia, his son Philipp Gotthard (1715-1795) became bishop of Breslau in 1747.
The Upper Silesian family branch
With the marriage of Hans Ulrich Graf Schaffgotsch (1831-1915) to Johanna Gryczik (1842-1910), adopted daughter of the zinc king Karl Godulla, which took place in 1858, a branch of the Schaffgotsch became Upper Silesian industrial magnates.
The company owned shares in 60 coal mines and calamine mines (zinc ore mines). On this basis, the couple created the largest zinc production in Germany and expanded coal production. The Schaffgotsch works were among the four largest mining companies in Silesia around 1900. In 1891, almost five thousand workers were employed in the factories and mines. In 1904 the transition to a corporation as “Graeflich Schaffgotsch’sche Werke GmbH” was completed. In 1912, Schaffgotsch had assets of 79 million marks and an annual income of 4 to 5 million marks. He was one of the ten richest Prussian residents. The entrepreneurial couple built the village of Godullahütte for the workers and also had a church built there.
In 1859, Schaffgotsch and his wife Johanna bought Koppitz Castle and had it remodeled and expanded into their stately residence by the architect Karl Lüdecke from Breslau in the years up to 1864 . After this elaborate redesign in an eclectic style, it had the character of a fairytale castle.
Grodków / Grottkau in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland here
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An interesting video [in Polish] that can be viewed on Facebook…
The Valley of Palaces and Gardens of the Jelenia Góra Valley
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Joseph Stalin, Harry S. Truman, and Winston Churchill
*The Potsdam Conference – the Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on 26 July by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from 17 July to 2 August, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. After the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed to meet following the surrender of Germany to determine the post-war borders in Europe.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks at Potsdam were the post-war fate of Poland, the revision of its frontiers and those of Germany, and the expulsion of many millions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. The question of Poland had loomed large at both the Teheran and Yalta conferences. In exchange for its territory lost to the Soviet Union, Poland was to be compensated in the west by large areas of Germany up to the Oder-Neisse Line – the border along the Rivers Oder and Neisse.
The Poles, and also the Czechs and Hungarians, had begun to expel their German minorities and both the Americans and British were extremely worried that a mass influx of Germans into their respective zones would destabilise them. A request was made to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary that the expulsions be temporarily suspended and when resumed should be ‘effected in an orderly and humane manner’.
On the vexed question of what constituted a ‘democratic Poland’, the Russians and the Western Allies were never going to agree. But, as with a number of other issues raised at Potsdam, it was turned over to the Council of Foreign Ministers to try and resolve.
