Antoni Dunin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antoni Dunin (1907-1939) was a Polish noble (szlachta), a Hrabia (Count), and an army officer who received the prestigious Virtuti Militari award (Recipients of the Virtuti Militari).
[edit] Biography
Antoni was born on June 5, 1907, the youngest child of Lucia (Łucja) Taczanowska (1862-1917) and her second husband Count Rodryg Dunin (1870-1928). He grew up at the Granówko estate near Poznań, the youngest of ten children. He had six older siblings by his mother's first marriage to Stanisław Niezychowski, and two sisters and one brother via his own father Rodryg. When Antoni was 13, his elder brother Stanisław died in combat, and was then immortalized in the patriotic 1922 painting The Death of Lieutenant Stanisław Dunin (Polish: Śmierć Porucznika Stanisława Dunina) by noted artist Wojciech Kossak. The Dunin family crest is the Łabędź (swan).
On December 28, 1933, Antoni married Zofia Helena Werner (1910-1939), daughter of Poland's vice-Finance Minister Edward Werner, and great-niece of the man who would become Saint Raphael Kalinowski. They had three children: Krystyna, Stanley (Stanisław, named after Antoni's older brother), and Magda (Magdelena). They lived near Poznań in the Bogusławice estate, a wedding gift from the bride's father, as the Granówko estate had gone to Antoni's older half-brother Jozef Niezychowski.
Antoni was killed in combat at the age of 32 on September 16, 1939, in Kampinoska Forest (Polish name: Puszcza Kampinoska), during the German blitzkrieg in the Invasion of Poland. His wife Zofia was also killed the next day, at the age of 29, while trying to stay ahead of the front to get to safety in a different part of Poland. Their three orphaned children survived by being shuffled from house to house during the war, until finally taking up residence at the estate of Jan Czarnowski. He was a Polish nobleman, Papal chamberlain to Pope Pius XI and head of the Polish Order of the Knights of the Maltese Cross). Jan Czarnowski was married to Zofia's aunt Helena (Lunia) Kalinowska. The descendants of Antoni Dunin were eventually able to escape Poland to France and finally to the United States in the 1940s.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Family tree maintained by Antoni's granddaughter Elonka Dunin
- Recipients of the Virtuti Militari (Surnames starting with D)
- Unidentified paintings recovered from the Bogusławice estate
- (Polish wikipedia) Dunin
- "Engagement of Countess Revealed", Detroit Times, April 23, 1957 - about Dunin's daughter Christine Dunin Zika
