Museum of Cieszyn Silesia

About

The Museum of Cieszyn Silesia (Polish: Muzeum Śląska Cieszyńskiego) in Cieszyn is one of the oldest public museums in Central Europe and the oldest public museum in Poland, set up by father Leopold Jan Szersznik in 1802.

The town palace of the Counts of Larisch was built after the great fire of Cieszyn in 1789. Jan Józef Antoni count Larisch von Mönnich - founder of the residence, decided to build for himself a seat that would reflect his social status and property. In 1796 count Jan Larisch bought a small bourgeois house neighbouring with a gentry house at the then Konwiktowa Street - currently Tadeusza Regera Street) that was owned by the Larisch family since the 18th century. Combining the two properties allowed him to start the planned project and build the elegant residence of counts Larisch in 1790-1796.

In 1805 the emperor Francis I invited to Cieszyn his two allies – tsar Alexander I, the grand duke Constantine, marshal Kutuzov and duke Biron of Courland. This was the time when in the Palace of the Larisch family, especially in the so-called Egyptian Hall, concerts and balls were organised for the guests of emeperor Francis. In 1809 the palace became the seat of Albert Duke of Saxony and Teschen, and then the archduke Karl Ludwig Habsburg. In 1817 the palace hosted the emperor Francis I and his wife Caroline Augusta and their retinue. In 1831 the palace was sold to duke Philip Ludwig Saint Genois d’Anneaucourt, who in 1839 sponsored the construction of the third wing of the palace designed by a Vienesse architect Joseph Kornhäusel. In this wing a circular stable was designed (currently a café) over which a ballroom called a Roman Hall was located.

In 1840 the palace was purchased by a barrister dr Antoni Demel (from this moment the palace was called Demel's tenement house), later on it was assigned to subsequent mayors of Cieszyn - Johann Demel von Elswehr (Antoni's son) and Leonard Demel von Elswehr (Antoni’ grandson). The Demel's tenement house was sold to the town in 1918 and on 21 June 1931 became the seat of the City Museum. The new institution was created from the collection of the public museum of father Leopold Jan Szersznik (founded in 1802), ethnographic Silesian Museum (founded in 1903 by the Polish Ethnographical Association in Cieszyn), the municipal Town Museum and private collections.

In 1942 a fire broke out in the Roman Hall that destroyed the entire roof and damaged rooms on the second floor. On 24 January 1966 the museum was closed pursuant to a post-inspection requisition of the Work Inspector of the Culture and Art Officers Trade Union. After an overhaul the museum reopened on 1 May 1969. Due to poor technical condition of the building, museum exhibitions were closed in 1983 and a general overhaul was initiated that included adjustments to modern needs of the museum. The overhaul was finished in 2002. In 2004, the museum received the Wojciech Korfanty Award from the Upper Silesian Union.

The building bears traces of Baroque-neoclassical style. The two storey and three wing building is made of brick and broken stone in cellars. It is plastered. The cellars of the palace are partially bricked up and vaulted in line with a barrel style. The interior design is based on two tracts. On the ground floor there are two arterial hallways: the first one with a cross-barrel vaulting and a barrel one with a lunette, the second one with a barrel vaulting with lunettes. Most of the rooms in plinth have barrel and sail vaulting.

In the south wing there is a former stable (currently a café) based on a circular plan, two storeys high, crowned by a domed vault with lunettes, based on a Tuscan stone column.

The rooms on the first floor located in the front tract of the north wing have cross-barrel and barrel vault with lunettes, with four fields of sail vault with corners. A room in the east wing has a barrel vault. A room on the second floor of the north and south wing have hollow vault (the Egyptian Hall), the remaining rooms have ceilings.

Stairways on the second floor are equipped with forged railings from the eighteenth century.

The front façade has seven axes. The ground floor part is bossaged and is separated from the first floor by a profiled moulding. The first and the second floor are separated by vertical pairs of slender panels. On the axis of the building there is a stone portal with cones, which is crowned by a triangle pediment with a semi-circular arch. A two wing stave gate leading to the courtyard comes from the end of the 18th century. Rectangular windows have profiled frames. The windows on the second floor of the middle part are extended and topped with a basket arch. Between the columns of the windows there are fluted panels with the themes of tears and rosettes.

The side façade (as seen from the Park of Peace) has twelve axes. The ground floor part is buttressed, based on the remains of defence walls and separated from the first floor by a mould. The windows of the second floor are decorated by long-eared envelope-shaped frames. The palace is covered by a saddle, mansard and shingled roof with dormer-windows.

The rooms on the second floor are of a representative character. Some of them (eight front ones and a corridor of the second floor) are decorated with neo-classical polychrome. The notable rooms are: The Chinese Study, decorated with oriental themes (dragons, a paradise bird) and the Egyptian Hall being a ballroom. The painting decoration of the latter hall is composed of six landscapes with themes of ancient Egyptian architecture and genre scenes located on the Egyptian columns. The landscapes include the interwoven and repeated theme of the Piast Tower and the Rotunda of St. Nicholas in Cieszyn. One of landscapes has polychrome dating back to 1796 placed there by its creator - "an academic painter" Joseph Mayer. A suite of apartments located on the second floor of the Palace has been enhanced by a set of neoclassical and eclectic furnaces located in semicircular niches.

A small French garden with an octagonal pavilion (currently the Park of Peace) was attached to the palace.

Leopold Jan Szersznik statue in Park of Peace

- archaeology (and medieval monuments discovered in the centre of the town) - based on the collection of Leopold Szersznik, the so-called antiquity collection (archaeological sites); Roman coins and clay vessels of the Lusatian Culture (1800-1750 BC) including: Ashes urns with ashes of the deceased, painted vessels of ancient Greece and Rome, the collection of father Berger (being a part of Szersznik's collection); spearheads of spears, tools and ornaments mainly from Silesia. The collection is also based on antiques gathered by the Town Museum in Cieszyn and antiques gathered by the Polish Ethnographical Association (incorporated to the collection of the museum in 1930). The Archaeological Section was founded in 1969, inspired by the Region's Enthusiasts Association that brought into being the so-called Association of Gravediggers and Other Hole-explorers. Members of this association contributed to numerous archaeological discoveries in the area of the Old Town. Other materials came from excavations at Castle Hill in Cieszyn, as well as the settlements in Międzyświeć and Old Bielsko.

- ethnography - consists of 6415 items, the majority of which are inherited from the Polish Ethnographical Association that has operated since 1901 and the Polish Association of Folk and Domestic Industry in Cieszyn that has operated since 1931. Among the exhibits there are boxes and painted drawers, pictures on glass, parish feast art, elements of folk costumes and jewellery, folk ceramics and everyday use objects.

- photography - separated in 1981 with approx. 20000 items that include photographic iconography of Cieszyn and Cieszyn Silesia, portraits of burgher citizens, artistic photography of Cieszyn, glass negatives, stereoscope pictures, postcards and photographic equipment, photographic frames and albums. The collection of the Photography Section of the Cieszyn Silesia Museum shows a broad, over sixty year long, panorama of the history of photography in Cieszyn Silesia. It illustrates the landscape, culture, human stories and the transition in this part of Europe. The set comes from the collection initiated by Oskar Weismann, the creator of the Town Museum set up in 1901. Another sets came from donations of citizens of Cieszyn and collectors and comprised daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, ferrotypes, pannotypes and contemporary pictures as a documentary of the past. An equally interesting collection is 1500 photographic portraits of almost all social and professional groups of Cieszyn taken between 1860 and 1900. Part of the collection are illustrations of the ethnographic collection of the Silesian Museum, derived from the Polish Ethnographical Society in Cieszyn. Another part of the collection is approx. 400 catalogue-museum photos that document development of the museum exhibition. In the inter-war period the Museum received a set of photograms from the Museum of School Association in Orlová that documented the Polish educational system, cultural and educational life as well as folk culture on Trans-Olza.

- history - comprises almost 14 thousand articles. It was set up at the beginning of the 20th century and in the seventies and focused on the history of Cieszyn Silesia on the basis of the collection of the founder of the museum - father Leopold Szersznik, as well as other exhibits from the last two hundred years. The collection includes, inter alia: pistons and seals of Cieszyn and other towns (starting from Medieval times), badges of various associations, medals and military distinctions, commemorative medals, posters and placards, uniforms, collections of banknotes, militaria, a collection of historic banners.

- cartography - composed of 3456 items which are maps and plans created from the second half of the 16th century until contemporary times. The section was set up on the basis of father Szersznik and the collection of the Ethnographic Society, the Town Museum and a bibliophile from Cieszyn Wincenty Zając. The oldest objects include chalcographic maps of, inter alia, sky, world, Europe, the countries of the Austrian monarchy, Silesia and Poland. Moreover, the collection includes 19th century cadastral maps of Cieszyn, hand-painted and printed maps of particular parts of Cieszyn Silesia as well as Polish, Austrian, German and Czech maps and atlases of Poland and Europe.

- scientific - education section - created in the 1980s. The section organises broadly understood educational events, which are, inter alia: co-operation with schools and educational centres in Cieszyn and outside the city, preparation and giving museum classes, organisation of lectures and discussions concerning operations of the museum and presented exhibitions.