The Hunting Palace
A Habsburg residence, e.g. the hunting palace, is where we start visiting buildings and monuments connected with the history of the rule of Cieszyn Dukes from the Habsburg dynasty in Cieszyn. The lodge was situated at the bottom of the Castle Hill. The Hunting Palace 1 Zamkowa street
After the death of the last Princess from the Piast dynasty, Princess Elisabeth Lucretia, new Cieszyn Dukes from the Habsburg dynasty stayed in Cieszyn very rarely. It was only prince Albert of Saxe - Teschen who was planning, in the second half of the 18th century, the restoration of the castle and the placing in it of his impressive collection of drawings and graphics, which comprised the core of what later became the magnificent Albertina collection in Vienna. All these plans were shattered because of the death of his beloved wife , Marie Christine in 1798.
His successor, Archduke Charles Ludwig Habsburg, set about tidying up the Castle Hill. In 1838 he brought Józef Kornhäusel, an outstanding representative of the Viennese classicism, to Cieszyn.
Born in Vienna in 1782, the son of a bricklayer, Kornhäusel studied architecture there with J.F. Hohenberg and Peter von Nobile, well-known representatives of Viennese classicism. In 1808 he became member of the Viennese Academy. He died in Vienna in 1860. The following features were characteristic of his style: the use of broad plains in walls, modest architectural decoration that was limited to the use of pilasters, pilaster-strips and arches, placing windows in semispherical flat niches and the use of very high attics. His architecture is characterized by a gentleness, a spare quality of articulation and good taste in composing different masses to create an organic whole. He was a representative of the declining phase of Viennese classicism called the Biedermeier, which left its impression especially on Austrian architecture.
In 1812-1818, while working as the building director for the Liechtenstein Princes, he was active primarily in Baden near Vienna and there he erected, among other buildings, a public theatre, a town hall, palaces for the Liechtenstein Princes and the Esterhazy Counts and a number of town houses. In a later period he joined the court of the Archduke Charles Ludwig Habsburg, for whom he built the impressive Weilburg castle near Baden and a town palace in Vienna. In the following years it was Vienna itself that became the area of his activity. It is manifested by the following realizations (apart from a number of houses for townspeople): the façade of the Scottish Monastery, a synagogue, a circus on the Prater, theatres in Josefstadt, Hietzing and Heiligenstadt and the remodeling of the monastery in Klosterneuburg near Vienna. He was also the creator of numerous palace foundations in Moravia and in Cieszyn Silesia.
Archduke Charles Ludwig commissioned Kornhäusel to remodel his residence on the Castle Hill. He ordered him to dismantle the ruins in the upper part of the castle (apart from the Romanesque rotunda and the Piast Tower) and to establish a romantic park there. The remains of the lower castle were used to build a so-called Hunting Palace and the adjacent Orangery, completed in 1840.
The Hunting Palace itself, a classicist piece of architecture, extremely simple and sparing in means, faces the town. The three-storey middle part of the palace, with its Palladian motif of ‘serliana’, typical of Kornhäusel (an arch flanked by flat moulds on both sides), and with a triangular fronton was framed on the sides by two two-storey wings with vestibules arranged symmetrically. In the south western corner of the palace, on a bastion dating from the Middle Ages, the architect constructed a classicistic temple – belvedere in the form of a Doric portico. From there there was a panoramic view of avenues that parted in a starlike manner - Saska Kępa, a new quarter of Cieszyn. By the palace Kornhäusel erected a one-storey classicist Orangery with a pillar portico supporting the ‘serliana’ arch, which was dismantled in 1966. He also gave the Romanesque castle chapel the look of a classicist pavilion, i.e. a chapel with big windows, vaulted in a semispherical way, framed with pairs of pilasters.
The ground of the whole Castle Hill was landscaped and an English park with a spare stand of trees, was formed. Thus the Cieszyn castle became a typical classicist and romantic establishment, modest in its design and skillfully fitted into the park landscape. The sentimental character of the park was emphasized by the last building enterprise in 1914, i.e. the arranging of the so-called artificial ruins by the Archduke Friedrich Habsburg. Under these ‘ruins’ a medieval fortified tower was recently discovered. From its beginnings the Hunting Palace functioned first of all as the site of Komora Cieszyńska’s head office. The Princess lived there only sporadically as it was Vienna where they stayed permanently. However, the palace played the function not only of the central administration for the vast latifundium of the Habsburgs. In its drawing-rooms artistic and social life flourished. The concerts given by Franz Liszt in the Orangerie in June of 1846 (following the invitation by Józef von Kalchberg, the manager of the Austrian monarchy’s properties) and Wagnerian performances given by artists from the Viennese Opera House (organized by archduke Eugen in the late eighties of the 19th century) had wide repercussions.
The visits of the Emperor Franz Josef I in 1880, 1890, and 1906 were of no lesser importance. Every time he stayed in the Hunting Palace. On the first floor a special suite was prepared, comprising a study, a drawing-room, a reception room, a dressing room and a very modest bedroom. Behind the palace a large tent was pitched, the so-called ‘Tent of Custoza’ (Custozzazelt), a present from the Archduke Albert for the Emperor. In it the monarch treated his numerous guests to meals.
Thanks to Archduke Friedrich, who was the commander-inchief of the Austrian army, Cieszyn became, in the wartime years of 1914-1916, almost a second capital of the Empire, by functioning as the Headquarters of the General Staff of the Army (AOK – Armeeoberkomando). The Archduke received the main allies of the Central Powers in the palace; among others, the Emperor Wilhelm II, the Bulgarian King Ferdinand, the marshal Hindenburg and numerous generals. The Headquarters were transferred to Baden near Vienna by the Emperor Karl I. It was for that reason that the young monarch came to Cieszyn on 3rd of December, 1916, three days after Franz Josef I’s funeral. That was the last visit of an Emperor to Cieszyn. In 1918 the Hunting Palace became the seat of the National Council for the Duchy of Cieszyn, the first Polish authority in Cieszyn Silesia after more than 600 years of foreign rule.
The last chapter in the history of the Cieszyn castle concerns the archaeological examinations carried out in 1941-42 and 1947-1955. It was then that the lower part of the Romanesque rotunda, buried up to then, was discovered. In 1955 it was restored. In 1988 the restoration works on the Castle tower that lasted for a few years were finished, and in 1993-2004 another archaeological examination was carried out during which the tower next to the front Gate and a cylindric tower from the 13th century with the former castle kitchens, dating back to the 16th century, were partly reconstructed.
At present part of the Hunting accommodates a State Music School, and the remaining part, after the renovation works and the building of a modern pavilion, (a so-called new Orangery) in place of the dismantled Orangery, accommodates ‘Śląski Zamek Sztuki i Przedsiębiorczości’ (Silesian Castle Of Art and Enterprise Initiative).
Photographs: Dominik Dubiel, Paweł Halama, Daniel Hryciuk, Magdalena Jańczuk, Renata Karpińska, Mariusz Makowski, Joanna Rzepka-Dziedzic, Anna Szostok-Fedrizzi, Henryk Tesarczyk
Translation from Polish: Lucyna Krzanowska and John Whitewood
Reproductions of exhibits, documents and photographs from the collections of:
- Museum of Cieszyn Silesia in Cieszyn,
- Cieszyn Historical Library,
- Cieszyn Branch of the State Archive in Katowice,
- Cieszyn Town Council,
- Museum of Beskidy in Frýdek-Mistek,
- private collection of Mariusz Makowski
- H. Wawreczka, J. Spyra, M. Makowski, ‘Cieszyn i Czeski Cieszyn na starych widokówkach i fotografiach’, WART, Nebory 1999