Władysław Plater

Władysław Plater (also Broel-Plater; Vilnius, November 7, 1808 – April 22, 1889, Broelberg, near Zurich, Switzerland) was a Polish-Lithuanian count, brother of Cezary Plater, and a relative of Emilia Plater. With Agaton Giller, he founded the Polish National Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland.

[edit] Life

Władysław Plater, a relative of Emilia Plater, like her took part, in Lithuania, in the November 1830 Uprising against Imperial Russia.

In 1832 he succeeded in influencing British public opinion in favor of Poland.

In exile in Paris, as a member of Poland's Great Emigration, he founded the journal Le Polonais (1833–36).

In 1863 Plater was active on behalf of the Polish January 1863 Uprising.

In 1868, on the centennial of the Bar Confederation, Plater erected in the Swiss town of Rapperswil, on the shore of Lake Zurich, a column surmounted by a Polish eagle and inscribed, "Magna res libertas" (Latin: "A great thing is liberty"). Two years later, on October 23, 1870, in the Rapperswil Castle, he founded a Polish National Museum as a repository for Polish historic memorabilia, a library and archives of the Great Emigration.

In Rapperswil, Plater married the actress Karoline Bauer.

Janusz S. Morkowski, Polish Museum, Rapperswil: Guide through the Exposition (triligual English-German-Polish guidebook), Rapperswil, 1994, ISBN 83-900559-9-6.
Gabriela Pauszer-Klonowska, "W Rapperswilu śladami Żeromskiego i Prusa" ("In Rapperswil in the Footsteps of Żeromski and Prus"), Problemy: organ Towarzystwa Wiedzy Powszechnej (Problems: Organ of the Society of Universal Knowledge), rok XXV, nr 8 (281) [year XXV, no. 8 (281)], 1969, pp. 466–70.
"Władysław Plater," Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4. Aufl. 1888–1890, Bd. 13, S. 118 f.