Załuski Library

The Załuski Library (Polish: Biblioteka Załuskich, Latin: Bibliotheca Zalusciana) was built in Warsaw in 1747–1795 by Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, both Roman Catholic bishops. The library was the first Polish public library, the largest library in Poland, and one of the earliest public libraries in Europe.[1][2]

Załuski Library
Załuski Library's original home: now "House of the Kings" (dom Pod Królami), Warsaw
General information
Architectural styleRococo
Town or cityWarsaw
CountryPoland
Construction started1621
Completed1624
DemolishedAfter 1939
ClientJózef Andrzej Załuski,
Andrzej Stanisław Załuski
Design and construction
ArchitectFrancesco Antonio Melana (1736-1745)

After the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), Russian troops, acting on orders from Czarina Catherine II, seized the library's holdings and transported them to her personal collection at Saint Petersburg, where a year later it formed the cornerstone of the newly founded Imperial Public Library.[2]

In the 1920s the government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic returned some of the former Załuski Library holdings to the recently established Second Polish Republic thanks to the Treaty of Riga. These holdings were deliberately destroyed by German troops during the planned destruction of Warsaw in October 1944, following the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising.[2][3]

History
Załuski Library under construction, by Vogel
"House of the Kings" today (ul. Daniłowiczowska 14, corner of ul. Hipoteczna 2, Warsaw)

The Załuski brothers' greatest passion was books. Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother Andrzej Stanisław Załuski acquired the collections of earlier Polish bibliophiles such as Jakub Zadzik, Krzysztof Opaliński, Tomasz Ujejski, Janusz Wiśniowiecki, Jerzy Mniszech and Jan III Sobieski (the latter, from his granddaughter, Maria Karolina Sobieska).

From the 1730s the brothers planned the creation of a library, and in 1747 they founded the Załuski Library (Biblioteka Załuskich). Located in the 17th-century Daniłowicz Palace in Warsaw (built for Mikołaj Daniłowicz of Żurów),[2][4] the library building had two stories (the large reading room was on the second floor) and was topped with a small tower containing an astronomical observatory.[2] The building's reconstruction in rococo style was accomplished in 1745 by Francesco Antonio Melana and his brother.[5]

The Załuski Library was considered the first Polish public library[6] and one of the largest libraries in the contemporary world.[2] In all of Europe there were only two or three libraries that could boast such holdings.[7] The library initially held some 200,000 items, which grew to some 400,000 printed items, maps and manuscripts[2][8] by the end of the 1780s. It also accumulated a collection of art, scientific instruments, and plant and animal specimens.

This library, open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., asked patrons to be quiet and to say a prayer in the intention of the Załuski brothers.[7] It was prohibited to take the books outside the library, as the book theft was a growing problem, to an extent that the bishop patrons decided to ask the pope for help.[7] Responding to their request, in 1752 pope Benedict XIV issued a papal bull that threatened to excommunication individuals taking the books from this library; even that did not eliminate the problem completely.[7]

Załuski Library exlibris

After the brothers' deaths, the newly formed Commission for National Education took charge of the library, renaming it the Załuski Brothers' Library of the Republic.

Twenty years later in 1794, in the aftermath of the second Partition of Poland and Kościuszko Uprising, Russian troops, on orders from Russian Czarina Catherine II, emptied[2][9] the library and dispatched the whole collection to Saint Petersburg, where the books formed the mass of the Imperial Public Library on its formation, a year later.[2][10] Parts of the collections were damaged or destroyed as they were mishandled while being removed from the library and transported to Russia, and many were stolen.[2][7] According to the historian Joachim Lelewel, the Zaluskis' books, "could be bought at Grodno by the basket".[2]

The collection was later dispersed among several Russian libraries. Some parts of the Zaluski collection came back to Poland on two separate dates in the nineteenth century: 1842 and 1863.[2] In the 1920s, in the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War and the Treaty of Riga[8][11] the RSFSR's government returned around 50,000 items from the collection to Poland,[2] yet German soldiers deliberately destroyed these items during the Planned destruction of Warsaw in October 1944, after collapse of the Warsaw Uprising.[2][3][7] Only 1800 manuscripts and 30,000 printed materials from the original library survived the war.

In 1821 the library's original home was altered into a tenement house.[4] During the building's reconstruction, the busts of Polish monarchs that had originally adorned the library's interiors, and which had been hidden during the Partitions of Poland, were discovered and placed on the building's facade; hence the building came to be called the "House of the Kings" (Dom pod Królami).[4]

The building was destroyed by the Germans during World War II. After the war, it was rebuilt under the Polish People's Republic.[4]

Today's Polish National Library (Biblioteka Narodowa), founded in 1928,[2] considers itself the descendant of the Załuski Library.

See also

Notes
  1. S. D. Chrostowska. "Polish Literary Criticism Circa 1772: A Genre Perspective". utoronto.ca. Archived from the original on 2008-02-03. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  2. Maria Witt (September–October 2005). "The Zaluski Collection in Warsaw". The Strange Life of One of the Greatest European Libraries of the Eighteenth Century. FYI France. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  3. Rebecca Knuth (2006). Burning books and leveling libraries: extremist violence and cultural destruction. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 166. ISBN 0-275-99007-9.
  4. "Dom pod Królami". warszawa1939.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  5. Witold Stankiewicz, ed. (1984). 50 lat Biblioteki Narodowej, Warszawa, 1928-1978 (50 years of the National Library, Warsaw, 1928-1978) (in Polish). Biblioteka Narodowa. p. 16. ISBN 83-7009-000-1.
  6. "Bygone Warsaw". polbox.pl. Archived from the original on 2008-03-14. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  7. Lech Chmielewski. "In the House under the Sign of the Kings". Welcome to Warsaw. Archived from the original on 2009-02-03. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  8. Kent, Allen; Lancour, Harold; Daily, Jay E. (1978-01-01). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 23 - Poland: Libraries and Information Centers in to Printers and Printing. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-8247-2023-0. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  9. Katarzyna Czechowicz (August 14, 2007). "The 260th anniversary of opening the Załuski Library". eduskrypt.pl. Archived from the original on 2017-08-14. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  10. Nicholas A. Basbanes (2003). A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World. Warsaw: HarperCollins. p. 155. ISBN 0-06-008287-9. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  11. Jonathan Rose (2001). The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation. Warsaw: Univ of Massachusetts Press. p. 145. ISBN 1-55849-253-4. Retrieved 2008-02-17. Zaluski library.

References
  • Jan Kozłowski, Szkice o dziejach Biblioteki Załuskich. Publisher: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław, 1986. Retrieved October 23, 2011.
  • Heinz Lemke, Die Brüder Zaluski und ihre Beziehungen zu Gelehren in Deutschland und Danzig, Berlin 1958
  • Marian Łodyński, Z dziejów "Biblioteki Rzeczypospolitej Załuskich zwanej" w l. 1785-94, Warszawa 1935
  • Jan Kozłowski, Biblioteka Załuskich w dwunastu odsłonach, "Roczniki Biblioteki Narodowej" 33:2001
  • Jan Kozłowski, Źródła do rekonstrukcji Biblioteki Załuskich, Z badań nad polskimi księgozbiorami historycznymi, 15(1993)
  • Stanisław Roszak, Środowisko intelektualne i artystyczne Warszawy w połowie XVIII w. Między kulturą Sarmatyzmu a Oświecenia, Toruń 1997
  • Tadeusz Zarzębski, Biblioteka Rzeczypospolitej Załuskich zwana (Fakty z dziejów), "Roczniki Biblioteki Narodowej" 27/28:1991/92
  • Pamiątki dziejów Biblioteki Załuskich, opr. Joanna Płaza i Bożena Sajna, Biblioteka Narodowa, Warszawa 1997
  • Piotr Bańkowski, Ze studiów nad rękopisami byłej cesarskiej biblioteki publicznej w Petersburgu Nakładem "Przeglądu Bibliotecznego", Kraków 1937
  • FYI France Essay The Strange Life of One of the Greatest European Libraries of the Eighteenth Century: the Zaluski Collection in Warsaw
  • Welcome In the House under the Sign of the Kings

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