Portrait of Count Władysław Ewaryst Broel-Plater

Count Władysław Ewaryst Broel-Plater (1806-1889) - participant in the November Uprising (1830/31) and uprising Sejm deputy in Zakroczym and Płock. After the failure of the November Uprising, he was forced to emigrate. Initially, he stayed in France, where he edited the Parisian “National Daily” and the monthly “Le Polonais”, and from 1844 he resided in Switzerland. On his initiative, the Aid Committee of Poles in Zurich was established, the secretary of which was the Swiss writer and poet Gottfried Keller.
In 1868, on the hundred-year anniversary of the establishment of the Bar Confederation, he founded a column of freedom on Lake Zurich in Rapperswil. Two years later, he undertook the renovation of the castle. In return, he received the right to lease it for a period of 99 years to create the Polish Museum there. This way, he laid the foundations for the greatest work of his life. The museum, created on his initiative, became for many years a sanctuary of national feelings for Poles, gathering among others: valuable collections of manuscripts and emigre prints as well as numerous national mementoes.
He died on 22 April 1889, in his Broelberg villa near Zurich. He was buried next to his wife in the castle courtyard in Rapperswil. Using lofty rhetoric, Zygmunt Miłkowski wrote about him: “Poland filled his heart and his head. He loved it and thought about it, wanting to serve it most effectively. And serve he did - as much as he could”.