Lanckoronska, Karolina, Countess 1898-2002

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Lanckoronska, Karolina, Countess 1898-2002

PERSONAL:

Born August 11, 1898, in Austria; immigrated to Italy; died August 25, 2002, in Rome, Italy; daughter of Karol (an art historian and archaeologist) and Malgorzata Lanckoronski. Education: Attended University of Vienna. Studied history of art under Max Dvorak and Julius von Schlosser. Received postdoctoral lecturing qualification from John Casimir University.

CAREER:

Professor, art historian, and researcher. University of Lvov, Lvov, Poland, art history professor; founder of the Polish Historical Institute, France, and the Lanckoronski Foundation, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Military service: Underground Polish Army, served in Poland, lieutenant; Polish Army of General Wladyslaw Anders, served in Italy.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Silver medal Cracoviae Merenti, Cracow, 1995; certificate of appreciation, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Recipient of honorary doctorate from Jagiellonian University.

WRITINGS:

Dekoracja kosciola "Il Gesu" na tle rozwo ju baroku w Rzymie, (Lvov, Poland), 1935.

(Editor) Studies on the Roman-Slavonic Rite in Poland, Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum (Rome, Italy), 1961.

(Editor) Documenta Ex Archivo Regiomontano Ad Poloniam Spectantia, Institutum Historicum Polonicum (Rome, Italy), 1973.

(With Stefan Badeni and Rafała Habielskiego) Swiat przedwczorajszy, Krupski (Warsaw, Poland), 1996.

(With Lech Kalinowski and Elzbieta Ormon) Wspomnienia Wojenne: 22 IX 1939-5 IV 1945, Znak (Cracow, Poland), 2001, translation by Noel Clark published as Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis, Pimlico (New York, NY), 2006, also published as Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War against the Nazis, Perseus Books Group (New York, NY), 2007.

(With Andrzej Biernacki) Szkice Wspomnien, Biblioteka "Wiezi" (Warsaw, Poland), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Countess Karolina Lanckoronska was the last descendant of the wealthy Lanckoronski family from Brzezie, Poland. Her father, influential art historian, collector, and promoter, Count Karol Lanckoronski, boasted one of the largest collections in Vienna, Austria, where the family lived at the turn of the twentieth century. Following in his footsteps, Lanckoronska became an art historian herself and specialized in the Italian Renaissance. After World War II she became one of the founders of both the Polish Historical Institute and the Lanckoronski foundation. She enriched Polish museum collections with many generous donations, among them pieces from her father's collection.

Lanckoronska's memoir, published in English as Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis, and, more recently, as Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War against the Nazis, is an account of her experiences during World War II. The memoir was published to expose the murders of twenty-five professors by a Schutzstaffel (SS) captain and to memorialize the courage and resistance of the Polish under Soviet and Nazi occupation. Lanckoronska wrote the memoir between 1945 and 1946, and it was first published in Polish in 2001. Publishers initially rejected it for being too anti-Soviet and too anti-German in tone.

Lanckoronska relates that before the war, she held a post as a professor of art history in Soviet-occupied Lvov. Many of her fellow professors disappeared and although she escaped death at the hands of the Soviet soldiers, life was hard for her under their occupation. She eventually escaped to German-occupied Polish territory, which offered a slightly better life for her. She makes it clear in her memoir that even though German occupation was less brutal, life under the occupation of both the Soviets and the Germans equaled destitution. Traveling around the country making sure people were fed, she also carried messages for the underground Home Army. In 1942, after she testified against an SS captain who admitted to killing the Lvov professors, the Germans arrested her and sentenced her to death. However, the authorities instead sent her to a concentration camp in Stanislawow and later to one in Ravensbruck. The captain was never tried or convicted for the murders of her fellow professors.

The book reveals that Lanckoronska's experience in the concentration camps differed from that of other prisoners, as she had protectors, including the Red Cross, the Italian royal family, and the powerful SS commander Heinrich Himmler. She was able to care for victims of medical experiments, share extra rations of food, teach art and Europeon history, and keep communication with the Polish Home Army while imprisoned. However, she rejected special treatment she received, believing that all the prisoners should be treated the same. After being given an apartment and privileges including walks in the garden and afternoon tea in Ravensbruck, she began a hunger strike until she was finally returned to the barracks with the other prisoners.

One reviewer felt that even though Lanckoronska shunned her upper-class treatment, this status hinders her from providing an account of what life was like for most concentration camp prisoners. Frederic Krome, a contributor to Library Journal, noted: "Unfortunately, Lanckoronska's upper-class experience may not have been typical, and her memoir suffers from the usual problems of recollection."

However, Lora Wildenthal, writing in the Sarmatian Review, felt that the author's "gift for sketching out how ruthless power imposed from above affects relationships among those it subordinates makes her descriptions of occupation and especially of Ravensbruck well worth reading." A contributor to Publishers Weekly remarked that "although the style is stilted and restrained," Michelangelo in Ravensbruck is "a worthy, unsentimental eyewitness account." Furthermore, Washington Post Book World reviewer Susie Linfield concluded that Lanckoronska's account "reminds us that war is an individual event, even when it involves millions, and that every victim is particular in her circumstance, her strength and her sorrow."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Wspomnienia Wojenne: 22 IX 1939-5 IV 1945, Znak (Cracow, Poland), 2001, translation by Noel Clark published as Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis, Pimlico (New York, NY), 2006, also published as Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War against the Nazis, Perseus Books Group (New York, NY), 2007.