Karolina Lanckorońska

Countess Karolina Maria Adelajda Franciszka Ksawera Małgorzata Edina Lanckorońska (Polish pronunciation: [ka.rɔˈlʲi.na lant͡skɔˈrɔɲska] 11 August 1898 — 25 August 2002) was a Polish noble, World War II resistance fighter, philanthropist, and historian.

Countess

Karolina Lanckorońska
Lanckorońska in 1945
Pronunciation[ka.rɔˈlʲi.na lant͡skɔˈrɔɲska]
Born(1898-08-11)11 August 1898
Buchberg am Kamp (de), Gars am Kamp, Austria-Hungary
Died25 August 2002(2002-08-25) (aged 104)
Rome, Italy
Burial placeCampo Verano, Rome
NationalityPolish
Occupation(s)Philanthropist, educator, and historian
Known forAnti-Nazi resistance

Lanckorońska bequeathed her family's enormous art collection to Poland only after her homeland became free from communism and Soviet domination during the Revolutions of 1989. The Lanckoronski Collection may now, for the most part, be seen in Warsaw's Royal Castle and Kraków's Wawel Castle.

Life

Lanckorońska was born in Gars am Kamp, Lower Austria, the daughter of Count Karol Lanckoroński, a Polish nobleman from a Galician family, and his third wife, Countess Margarethe Lichnowsky von Woschütz, the daughter of Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky.

Lanckorońska's parents, by Jacek Malczewski

Reared and educated in Vienna (capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which much of partitioned Poland was a part), where she attended university. She lived at her family's palace, the Palais Lanckoroński. After Poland regained independence in 1918, Lanckorońska taught at Lwów University. She earned her Ph.D. in History of Art in 1934, habilitated in 1936 by Poland's Ministry of Education.[1]

Following the invasion of Poland, including Lwów, by the Soviet Red Army along with the attack on Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939, she witnessed at first hand the terror and atrocities committed by the Soviets and Nazis, which she later described in her War Memoirs.[1][2]

Lanckorońska was active in the Polish resistance and was arrested, interrogated, tortured, tried and sentenced to death at Stanisławów prison. During her stay there, the local Gestapo chief Hans Krueger (also spelled Krüger), confessed to her that he had murdered 23 Lwów University professors, a war crime that she made it her mission to publicize.

Karolina was liberated from the Stanisławów prison through the fortuitous intercession of her distant cousin the Italian nobleman and musician Roffredo Caetani, who having heard of her arrest, interceded with the wife of the heir to the Italian throne. Himmler himself then ordered her arrest after being embarrassed by the remonstrations of the Italian government about her mistreatment.[3]

Lanckorońska was then sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. She somehow survived and, immediately after release in 1945, wrote her war memoirs. After the war, she left Poland and lived in Fribourg, Switzerland, and later, until her death, in Rome.

She did not want her war memoirs published in her lifetime. After much persuasion, however, she consented to publication in Poland, by Znak Publishing of Kraków, in 2001, just a year before her death. The book, whose British version is titled Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis, sold over 50,000 copies in the Polish original and is now selling well in English. The U.S. edition was published in hardback in Spring 2007 by Da Capo Press (Perseus Publishing Group) under the new title Michelangelo in Ravensbrück.

In 1967, Lanckorońska established the Lanckoroński Foundation, which promotes and supports Polish culture, awarding over a million zlotys per annum (US $330,000) for scholarships, publication of learned books, research into Polish archives in countries such as Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, and similar projects.

Tombstone of Professor Karolina Lanckorońska at the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome

Countess Karolina Lanckorońska died in 2002 in Rome, Italy, aged 104, and is buried at the Campo Verano. Her final resting place is located in the 38th quarter (also called foreigners quarter - riquadro stranieri) of the XIX Vecchio Reparto sector. 

Works
Coat of arms of Counts Lanckoroński
  • Karolina Lanckorońska, Wspomnienia wojenne (War Memoirs), Kraków, Znak Publishing, 2001, ISBN 83-240-0077-1
  • Karolina Lanckorońska, Mut ist angeboren (Courage Is Inborn), Vienna, Boehlau Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-205-77086-2
  • Karolina Lanckorońska, Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis, Pimlico, 2006, ISBN 1-84413-417-2, 366 pp.
  • Karolina Lanckorońska, Michelangelo in Ravensbrück: One Woman's War against the Nazis, translated from the Polish by Noel Clark, Merloyd Lawrence Books / Da Capo, 2007, 341 pp., ISBN 978-0306816116

Honours and awards

See also

Notes
  1. Jurij Smirnow (24 December 2004). "Rzecz o Karolinie Lanckorońskiej..." Gazeta Lwowska. Culture.pl. Archived from the original on 11 September 2017. Retrieved 22 July 2017.
  2. Ewa Prządka (31 October 2002). "Karolina Lanckorońska – obrończyni kultury polskiej". Historia. Polskie Radio. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
  3. Lanckoronska, Karolina (2007). Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Womans War Against the Nazis. Cambridge, MA, USA: Da Capo Press. p. 149.
  4. "Honorary Doctorate - Jagiellonian University - Jagiellonian University". en.uj.edu.pl. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  5. "Kobieca twarz Uniwersytetu". uni.wroc.pl (in Polish). 7 March 2018. Archived from the original on 2019-03-28. Retrieved 2019-03-28.

References
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