Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski (Polish: [ˈadam ˈkarɔl t͡ʂartɔˈrɨskʲi]; Spanish: Adán Carlos, IPA: [aˈðaŋ ˈkaɾlos t͡ʃaɾtoˈriski] born 2 January 1940) is a Polish and Spanish aristocrat who is head of the Polish-Lithuanian House of Czartoryski. He is related to both the Spanish royal family (House of Bourbon-Anjou) and to France's House of Orléans. In 2016, he sold the family art collection held in the Czartoryski Museum to the Polish state for approximately €100 million.
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Origins
Adam Karol Czartoryski is the son of Prince Augustyn Józef Czartoryski (1907–1946) and his wife, Princess María de los Dolores of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.
Through his mother, he is the first cousin of King Juan Carlos I of Spain.
He is the head of the Polish House of Czartoryski, descendants of Gediminas (died 1341), ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The Czartoryski rose to power under August Aleksander Czartoryski (1697–1782) of the Klewa line, who married Countess Zofia von Dönhoff, the only heir to the Sieniawski family.
The Czartoryski and the Potocki were the two most influential aristocratic families of the last decades of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795).
Biography
At the start of World War II (1939–1945) the Germans occupied Poland in September 1939.
The Gestapo arrested Prince Augustyn and Princess Dolores, who was pregnant with Prince Adam Karol.
Through their connections to Italian and Spanish royalty they arranged to be deported to Spain.
Adam Karol Czartoryski was born on 2 January 1940 in Seville, Spain.
Adam Karol's brother Ludwik Piotr was born in 1945.
Prince Augustyn and Ludwik Piotr both died in 1946 and were buried in the crypt of the Silesian Church in Seville.
Adam Karol Czartoryski was educated in Spain and then in England.
He lived in Ireland for a while, where he became a professional race car driver and an enthusiast of karate.
He was a great admirer of Hawaiian Kenpō grand master Ed Parker.
He trained in Kenpō Karate with John McSweeney, a pupil of Ed Parker.
Returning to his native Spain at the end of the sixties, Czartoryski continued his Karate training under the guidance of Japanese Sensei Yasunari Ishimi.
He reached the 5th Dan of karate.
Czartoryski was director of several international karate organizations.
He also supported conventional wrestling and judo.
Czartoryski collection sale
The Czartoryski collection was started in 1796 by Adam Karol Czartoryski's ancestor, Princess Izabela Czartoryska, a liberal progressive who corresponded with Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin.
The original goal was to preserve Poland's cultural heritage, but later objects from around the world were added, including items looted from the camp of the Ottoman Sultan after the 1683 Battle of Vienna.
Izabela's descendants added works from Greece, Rome, Egypt and Japan.
In 1798 Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Izabela's son, visited Italy where he bought Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine and Raphael's Portrait of a young man.
Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan is the third of the "big three" works in the collection.
By 1939 the collection had 5,000 paintings, statues and other antiquities.
When the Germans invaded Poland that year, Augustyn Józef Czartoryski had the most valuable items hidden beneath the baroque Sieniawski family castle, while others were stored in the cellar of the museum. However the Germans found the collection and the works were taken to various locations in Germany.
After the war the Polish representative at the Allies Commission for the Retrieval of Works of Art found many of the stolen paintings and claimed them for the Czartoryski Museum.
The Portrait of a Young Man was not recovered.
The museum became a branch of the National Museum of Poland in Kraków.
The collection now included 86,000 artworks and 250,000 books and other manuscripts.