HISTORY

We know the names and some facts from the lives of the descendants of Pretor and the families who inherited Korczew from them. However, they did not leave many physical traces. In particular, it is still unknown where the Korczew manor house was located at that time. It is possible that it stood in the place of today's palace or the Siberia villa but there are no traces of it.

The most important monument from this period is the Renaissance parish church in Knychówek, founded in 1631 by Krzysztof Wiesiołowski. Over the next centuries, successive owners of the Korczew estate exercised patronage over the church.

However, Jaszczołd introduced the biggest changes not in the palace itself but its surroundings. He re-planned the park, which he arranged in the English style which was fashionable at the time. He also built the second largest building on the site, known as Siberia, a summer villa in Jaszczołd’s signature neo-Gothic style.

Thus, the building reflected the romantic fantasies of the times in which it was built: from the north it resembles a medieval castle, and from the west a Polish manor house. He also designed a conservatory located at the back of the palace (now a chapel) and the nearby well of St. John of Nepomuk.

During Joanna Kuczyńska's stay in Paris in 1861, Norwid often visited her salon about which he said that he was coming to Korczew for tea. After one of these visits, the poet left three poems in the post box for Joanna Kuczyńska, her daughter Ludwika and teacher Józefa Koszutska: 'To the Lady of Korczew', 'To L.K.' ['Do L.K.'], and 'To Mrs Józefa from Korczew' ['Do Pani Józefy z Korczewa'].

During World War I, Zygmunt Mysłakowski, one of the poet's early researchers, was visiting Korczew when he accidentally came across the now-famous photograph of Norwid in an asymmetrical, peaked, four-pointed cap called konfederatka in the family album. The discovery prompted him to search further in the Korczew archives, as a result of which he found a large part of the correspondence. In the following years, more letters were discovered, which were handed over to the National Library in Warsaw according to the will of Krystyn Ostrowski, the last pre-war owner of the palace.

It is an interesting coincidence that Norwid's photograph in the konfederatka hat was found in Korczew because a hundred years earlier the ballroom had been a venue for meetings of the Bar Confederates. Unfortunately, no letters from Joanna Kuczyńska to Norwid have survived, so we can only deduce their content from what the poet wrote.

He refused because as a drawing theorist he did not as a rule create projects intended for realisation. However, he unexpectedly sent a sketch of the facade, imitating the style of the reign of the eighteenth-century king Stanisław August Poniatowski. To this day, the front façade of Korczew Palace is the only completed architectural project by Noakowski.

His wife Wanda, mother Helena and younger daughter Beata also joined the convoy. Renata, the elder daughter of the Ostrowskis, remained in Warsaw, where she worked as a nurse at the Maltese Hospital. After the mission, the Ostrowskis settled in Paris, moving to Lisobon after the invasion of Nazi Germany on France and finally arriving in London. Krystyn held various positions in the government in exile until his death in 1980. After emigrating, Wanda was active as an artist, painting portraits, Portuguese architecture and the ruins of London after the Blitz. She died at the age of 56 in 1951.

During the war, Korczew Palace was initially taken over as a border guard post and later as a sanatorium for German soldiers returning from the eastern front. The building did not suffer much damage but its contents did - the Germans stole most of the furniture and burned much of the palace library. Greater damage was later caused by Soviet soldiers and many years of neglect. The palace was nationalized as part of the agricultural reform and with each subsequent year it fell further into ruin. The ballroom was used to store fertilizers which destroyed the old oak floor. Broken windows were not repaired, and the elements contributed to the gradual devastation. The only original piece of furniture left was a heavy metal safe.