Andrew Stanislaus (Andrzej Stanisław) Ciechanowiecki (28 September 1924 – 2 November 2015) was a Polish-British nobleman, diplomat, prisoner and agent of Communist Poland, economist, academic, art historian, philanthropist, art collector, antique dealer, antiquarian and exhibition curator. He was considered an authority on French baroque sculpture in the second half of the 20th century.
He was founder of the Ciechanowiecki Foundation at the Royal Castle in Warsaw (1986), Honorary Professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Honorary Member or Life Member of many learned societies both British and Polish, FSA, member of the board of trustees of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and member of the board of the Lanckoroński Foundation. He was also a council member of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation from its establishment until July 2011, the Raczyński Foundation, and the Polish Historical and Literary Society in Paris (SHLP), chairman of the Polish-Belarusian Bilateral Commission for the Conservation of National Patrimony.
He was a prominent member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. His distinctions included the Order of the White Eagle (1998), Grand Cross of Polonia Restituta and war medals, the Gloria Artis Gold Medal, among other awards.
While there is no doubt about his considerable academic and business achievements and his subsequent generosity in restoring some of Poland's pillaged cultural heritage, his wartime and immediate post-war activities remain unclear. A lack of clarity also applies to the origins of Ciechanowiecki's restored title of "Count".
Biography
Early life to 1945
Andrew Ciechanowiecki was born in Warsaw in 1924, the only child of Jerzy Stanisław Ciechanowiecki, a Polish diplomat, and Matilda,"Tilly", née Countess Osiecimska-Hutten-Czapska, a prominent figure in the élite social circles of pre-war Warsaw. On his father's side, he came from an impoverished Masovian noble and senatorial family, established in Belarus, and who had recently lost their landed estates as a result of the Treaty of Riga (1921), when they fell to Soviet control. He had spent his early childhood in Budapest, where his father died at the early age of 37 while working at the Polish embassy, obliging the family to return to Warsaw. There he attended the Mikołaj Rey Primary School followed by the Stefan Batory Gimnazjum & Liceum. The household came to be dominated by his widowed mother and maternal grandmother and their social connections. Ciechanowiecki later attributed his multilingual skills and lifelong academic discipline to their influence.
Ciechanowiecki's war
The German invasion of Poland began on 1 September 1939. On the advice – seriously flawed, as it turned out – of British general, Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, resident in Poland, on 5 September, the family fled East. They went to stay in Mołodów, Polesie Voivodeship on the estate of Henryk Skirmunt and his sister, Maria, the younger siblings of Konstanty Skirmunt, Polish ambassador in London (1919–1934). The plan had been to overwinter there and that Ciechanowiecki should attend school in nearby Pinsk. On 17 September invading Soviet units laid siege to the small town. Elements of local Belarusian activists presented an ultimatum to the Skirmunts: that the 150 Polish military police stationed on their estate should lay down their arms or all the buildings would be set alight. The unworldly Skirmunts fell for the trap; the police were all shot with their own weapons, the elderly Skirmunts were slaughtered in the woods and all the premises looted. Ciechanowiecki and his family managed to flee the horror with the retreating Polish columns of general Franciszek Kleeberg. Ciechanowiecki later stated laconically: "...coś tam pomagałem, mam nawet krzyż za kampanię wrześniową jako ochotnik." – I helped out a bit, I even have a cross for the September campaign, as a volunteer. They travelled via Kamien Koszyrski to Kowel, then by train, strafed by Soviet planes, on to Lwów. There they suffered a harsh winter and a failed attempt in December to cross the Green frontier into Romania. They left the city in March 1940, just two days ahead of the KGB's arrival to start mass deportations. Recrossing the new frontier, they finally returned to Warsaw in early May 1940.