Czartoryski, Adam Kazimierz

Autor: Czartoryski, Adam Kazimierz
Rok: 1734-1823

Biogr./Hist. údaje: Polsko-litevský šlechtic, spisovatel, literární kritik a teoretik, politik.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski (1 December 1734 – 19 March 1823) was an influential Polish noble, writer, literary and theater critic, linguist, traveller and statesman. He was a great patron of arts and a candidate for the Polish crown. He was educated in England and after his return to Poland in 1758, he became a member of the Sejm (parliament), Crown General of Podolia and Marshal of General Confederation of Kingdom of Poland.The son of August Aleksander Czartoryski, governor of Ruthenia, who gathered a great estate and founded prosperous workshops, Adam Kazimierz was educated in England and prepared to take over the Polish throne. But in the period when Poland was left without an elected king, Adam Kazimierz refused the crown (1763), which was accepted by his first cousin Stanisław August Poniatowski, who reigned as Stanisław II August.The interests of Adam Kazimierz were mainly literary and pedagogical. He founded periodicals and schools and became the first minister of education in a European country. By his efforts and those of his ambitious wife, Izabella Elżbieta, née Countess Flemming (1746–1835), their palace at Puławy became an important center of culture competing with royal patronage in the support of Neoclassical architecture and Polish literature; this provided an excellent school for their sons and those of the local gentry. After the downfall and the third partition of Poland in 1795, Puławy, ruined in 1792–94 and rebuilt, became the shrine of the country’s past, mainly through Princess Izabella’s efforts.