Fürst von Lichnowsky,

Graf zu Werdenberg.

 

 

In 1491 court judge Johann von Woschütz acquired by marriage with Sophie von Drahotusch, the estate and village of Lichten or Lichnow, which still exists, near the town of Jägerndorf. From that estate he called himself Lichnowsky (the man from Lichnow). This is what we see from the land register of Jägerndorf (I, 55) and also from a topographical and biographical dictionary of 1602, “Speculum Moraviae” by Paprocius.

It seems that former Johan von Woschütz retained his crest, two grapes, which ever since has remained the crest of the Lichnowsky family.

In 1608 the family bought the estate with the little castle of Kuchelna in the district of Troppau, and it became the main residence of the family from the First World War until the end of the Second World War.

In 1702 Franz Bernhard Lichnowsky was made baron and a member of the old Bohemian peerage (alter Herrenstand [ bömischer]), and in 1727, count.  His son added through marriage the title count of Werdenberg, and his grandson advanced to high positions in the Habsburg bureaucracy in Vienna.

In 1773, as a result of the War of Austrian Succession, the bulk of their properties passed under Prussian rule and Frederick the Great raised Johann Carl Lichnowsky to the titular rank of prince (Fürst).

It was Johann Carl who in 1788 bought the castle of Grätz with the estates belonging to it near Troppau, in what was then Austrian Silesia. The areas of these estates amounted to about half of the properties situated in what was now Prussian Silesia.

It is in Austria that the most notable chapter in the cultural history of the family is set; it concerns their patronage of Beethoven. His association with the Lichnowskys, which was intimate and involved the entire family, lasted from 1794 until his death. Prince Karl Lichnowsky (son of Johann Carl) was Beethoven’s most generous patron.

“It was Prince Lichnowsky who brought young Beethoven to Vienna (1792), who let him study under Haydn, Salieri and who treated him like a friend and a brother, and induced the whole of the higher aristocracy to patronize him”, wrote Carl Czerny.

 For two years after his arrival in Vienna from Bonn, the young musician lodged with the Lichnowskys who gave him the comforts of family life. Later Prince Karl granted him an annual pension of six hundred florins. Beethoven was twice in residence at Grätz, where there is still a large collection of Beethoven memorabilia. Most of the Master’s early Vienna works were first heard at the Lichnowsky Friday evening musicales, and many of his compositions were dedicated to Prince Karl or other members of the family.

Prince Karl had only one son, Eduard (right), who left a good many literary and historical writings. His most important work is the “History of the House of Hapsburg” in 8 volumes  (1836) which, although not completed, had a new edition, an unchanged reprint was published as recently as 1973.

Of Eduard’s four sons the elder ones, Felix and Karl, leaned towards Prussia, and the younger ones Robert and Othenio, towards Austria. The eldest, Prince Felix (left), assassinated by revolutionaries in 1848 at the age of 34 years, when a member of the National Assembly in Frankfurt, was also a faithful friend and Maecenas to Liszt.

It was under Prince Karl (1820- 1901), Felix’s brother and successor, that the Lichnowskys became definitively Prussian. Prince Karl lacked his father romanticism and his brother’s knight-errantry and was concerned to manage and develop the inherited properties. This he did with great success in spite of an almost ruinous hobby of building Gothic castles. After 1852 he held, by virtue of the Majorat, a hereditary seat in the Prussian Upper Chamber, the Herrenhaus.

His only son Karl Max , was born in the manor house at Kreuzenort, Upper Silesia, he wasthe German ambassador to London in 1912 and the heir to his father wealth and his family accumulated distinctions. In 1904 he married Countess Mechtilde Arco Zinneberg, also known as novelist Mechtilde Lichnowsky. They had two sons Wilhelm and Michael and a daughter, Leonore.

Wilhem emigrated to Brazil after the Second World War and the loss of his properties in Silesia. He died in 1975. His son Felix married Erica and lives in Búzios (Rio de Janeiro), with his three sons Robert, Eduardo and Michel.