Marcjanna — the same woman who later reported to the authorities that her husband was collecting insufficient taxes from distilleries — was not quite sixteen when she married, although the parish priest recorded her age as seventeen.

Marriage record of Franz Frischman and Marcjanna Fuchs.

Franz was twenty-seven, eleven years older than his very young wife.

They had six children:

1. Emilia, born on 9 April 1825.
2. August Jan, born on 11 November 1826 in Zaleszczyki, died on 2 November 1880 in Dynów.
3. Adolf, born on 19 May 1828 in Zaleszczyki.
4. Leontyna Anna, born on 29 November 1832, died on 17 February 1852 in Janów Gródecki, in the Lwów district.
5. Paulina Antonina Waleriana, born on 27 November 1833 in Zaleszczyki, died on 12 August 1921 in Żywiec, then known as Saybusch, in the parish of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
6. Marianna Józefa, born on 1 December 1835 in Gorlice.

A few words about each of Franz and Marcjanna’s children.

1. Emilia

She was born six months after the wedding, which may explain why her mother married so young. As I have mentioned, Marcjanna had not yet turned sixteen.

Beyond that, no information about Emilia has come to light so far.

2. August Jan

Birth record of August Frischman

Pharmacy studies at the Jagiellonian University in 1853.

An extract from the university’s student register has survived:

August Frischman
Place of birth: Zaleszczyki, Galicia
Religion: Roman Catholic
Nationality: German
Citizenship: Austrian

Father: Franz, a financial commissioner residing in Janów Gródecki, near Lwów.

Previous schooling: grammar school in Buczacz.

At the Jagiellonian University, August studied in the Faculty of Philosophy, which at that time also provided the training of pharmacists.

He attended during the academic years 1853–1854 and 1854–1855, and on 20 March 1858 was awarded the degree of Master of Pharmacy.

Very shortly after obtaining his degree, he went to Dubiecko, a dozen or so kilometres from Dynów.

This may have been his first position as a pharmacy manager.

3. Adolf de Frischmann

Adolf was born on 19 May 1828 in Zaleszczyki.

He used the surname with the prefix “de”, the so-called nobiliary particle.

His sister Paulina and some of the Frischmanns from Antoni’s branch of the family signed their names in the same way.

They all bore the Frischman coat of arms, granted to Georg Frischman by Charles VI in 1727, as described earlier.

Like his brother August, Adolf chose the pharmacist’s profession. He studied pharmacy, however, at the University of Munich rather than in Kraków.

After receiving his diploma, he left for Romania and settled in Brăila.

There, he initially leased the “Minerva” pharmacy, which he bought from the Scharmelly family in 1880.

The historic “Minerva” pharmacy occupied the beautiful Bolehover House, on the corner of Strada Regala and Strada Golesti.

Adolf de Frischmann was its second owner, after Rudolf Scharmelly.

There is evidence that he took part in various charitable initiatives to help people affected by misfortune.

Interestingly, his visiting card has survived, bearing the original Frischman coat of arms.

The card is evidence that Adolph knew of his noble ancestry.

4. Leontyna Anna

Born on 29 November 1832, she died of consumption on 17 February 1852 in Janów Gródecki, near Lwów.

She was not quite twenty. It seems possible that she lived there with her father, Franz, although I have no proof of this.

5. Paulina Antonina Waleriana de Frischmann

Paulina Antonia Waleriana de Frischmann

She was born on 27 November 1833 in Zaleszczyki.

During the 1860s, she too went to Brăila, as her brother Adolf had done.

In 1877, the Russo-Turkish War broke out. For Romania, it became a war of independence.

Paulina helped care for the wounded as a nurse.

For this work, she was awarded the Elisabeth Cross.

A description of the cross and the circumstances of its award can be found in Appendix V.

The historical background is well documented.

Queen Elisabeth was indeed deeply involved in caring for the wounded during the war of 1877–1878, and biographical sources credit her with establishing an award for women who distinguished themselves in this service.

After the war, Paulina de Frischmann became part of Queen Elisabeth’s circle.

Elisabeth, Romania’s first queen, was a remarkable woman.

She devoted herself to literature, music and charitable work. She adopted the pen name Carmen Sylva.

The queen died in 1916, and it was after her death that the final chapter of Paulina’s life began.

Paulina was already over eighty.

She left Romania and came to Żywiec, then known as Saybusch.

Why there, of all places?

Żywiec was home to the residence of the Żywiec branch of the Habsburg family.

Archduke Charles Stephen Habsburg, the owner of Żywiec, was married to Maria Theresa of Tuscany, a close friend of Carmen Sylva.

Archduchess Maria Teresa of Austria-Tuscany.

After the Romanian queen’s death, it was she who took the now solitary Paulina under her care.

Paulina died in Żywiec on 12 August 1921, aged eighty-seven, and was buried in the cemetery of the parish of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I have information — not yet fully verified — that Paulina had a child out of wedlock, born in Lwów on 28 May 1862.

Paulina was twenty-eight at the time.

The child was named Anna. Nothing is known about her.

One more family story has survived.

Before leaving for Żywiec, around 1916, Paulina is said to have expressed a wish to live in Dynów. Wanda Salomea, the widow of Paulina’s brother August, reportedly objected firmly, saying that she had already had “more than enough of the Frischmans”.

There is no doubt that, after thirteen years of marriage to a husband who was far from an easy partner, she bore a grudge against his family.

6. Marianna Józefa

The youngest child of Franz and Marcjanna Frischman, Marianna Józefa, was born on 1 December 1835 in Gorlice, in Lesser Poland. She married twice.

Her first husband was Julian Lewicki of Założce, born in 1838, the son of Stefan Lewicki of Lewiczyn, of the Rogala coat of arms, and Maria Illewicz, of the Zaremba coat of arms. They married on 15 March 1880 in Lwów.

Her second husband was Kajetan Rogalski, whom she married on 11 June 1892. Both husbands were pharmacists, which in a way confirms the tradition of this profession running through the various branches of the Frischmann family.

1. The Death of Feliks Baraniecki. August and Karolina

At that time, Dynów had a pharmacy called “Pod Opatrznością” — “Under Providence” — owned by Feliks Antoni Baraniecki. Besides being a pharmacist, he also owned the local horse-post station.

We know that he suffered from kidney disease.

In June 1858, he went to Karlsbad for treatment.

After a stay of nearly two months, he set off for Dynów. On the way, he stopped for a short rest in Přerov, Moravia, with his friend from university, Jakubowski, a qualified pharmacist.

There he suddenly fell ill and died unexpectedly on 1 August 1858.

He left a young wife, Karolina, née Papst, and six children.

Karolina was only thirty-one and found herself in a very difficult position.

She herself had tuberculosis. Now she was left alone with the children, the house, the pharmacy, the post office, and a multitude of property and financial affairs.

The pharmacy posed a particular problem. Although Karolina, as Feliks’s heir, could hold a share in its ownership, she lacked the professional qualifications required to run it. Under the law then in force, it could not operate without a qualified pharmacist.

To keep the pharmacy going, she therefore had to employ a pharmacy manager.

I explain the training of nineteenth-century pharmacists in Appendix I.

Her search was rather desperate, but that is hardly surprising. A closed pharmacy brought in no income, and Karolina had six children.

We know this from her letters to her friend Marynia Żywicka of Bystra, near Gorlice. To her, she confided her mounting troubles and the expenses she could no longer meet.

Envelope addressed to Maria Żywicka, 1859.

Karolina’s surviving letters are a remarkable source. These are no dry official records. They show a living woman, frightened by what was happening to her, trying at the same time to keep her family and its property together.

She wrote to her friend Marynia Żywicka asking for help in finding a suitable pharmacy manager to run her establishment, the “Pod Opatrznością” pharmacy in Dynów.

In one letter, Frischman’s name appears, together with a reference to his contract in Dubiecko.

Here is the letter in transcription:

I must warn you, my Dear, that this letter of mine today will probably have neither beginning nor end, but forgive me — I had not even meant to write today, only I am so dreadfully lonely and sad that I cannot settle anywhere. When I write to you, it seems to me, if only for a moment, that I am talking with you — there is not a soul here whom I can ask for advice, and as for pouring out my troubles, there is no question of it. Believe me, my Dear, sometimes I miss you so much that I think I shall leave everything and come to you for a few days — but there is simply no way I can. I am in such a strange state — sometimes, when I begin reasoning with myself, you would think I had grown calm and even cheerful, but when [illegible words — author’s note] comes rushing in, I no longer know what to do with myself. It seems to me that if only I could weep my heart out at Feliks’s grave, that would be the greatest comfort!

Oh God, if it were not for these poor orphans, for whom I wish to live — today my [unclear] said to me — oh, Mama is unhappy without Papa, before Mama never cried, and now she cries every day —

Affairs and troubles without end — they have assessed my taxes at 100 florins. Imagine, since Feliks’s death, besides what has come in, I have already spent 100 florins in cash, and there are still 200 in taxes, and after that I must pay the rechsgebir — now more troubles await me. I am thinking of selling the pharmacy, because a tenant cannot pay as much as I want — indeed, it will be difficult to find a tenant. Frischman is not bound here yet, because they renewed his contract in Dubiecko, and that was three months ago, while my guardian has done nothing to arrange another — and now Frischman says that there are no prospects in Dynów for a leaseholder — certainly none for him, for he needs a great deal, fifteen to twenty florins a month for cigars, and he is forever entertaining guests — he says the boredom here is dreadful, that there is no one for company — if he stays, he will do it only for me. But I can neither ask for nor accept such sacrifices, even though he is so good and honourable a man that his like is hard to find these days — and for that very reason I should not wish to accept such a sacrifice — for I know, I am convinced, that he would be better off and happier in Kraków.

That is how it is, my Marynia! It is bad to have bad people around us — and with good people we are not content either — always something wrong, and for me, at least, things will never be right again.

Karolina Baraniecka’s letter – original

These are the first references to August. Although he was already working in Dynów, he was not happy there. He spoke of boredom and the lack of a social life, and said that if he stayed, it would be only for Karolina.

His contract in Dubiecko had been renewed, and everything suggests that he wanted to return there. Mainly because of the boredom in Dynów, which was driving him to distraction.

Incidentally, there is something rather puzzling here.

Advertisements from those years include a notice offering the Dubiecko pharmacy for sale — by Karolina Baraniecka! Most intriguing! Could the Baranieckis have owned that pharmacy as well?

Whatever else one may say, Karolina’s letters make it clear that, although she really needed a pharmacy manager, she had begun to have reservations about August Frischman’s way of life.

August was a sociable man. He liked people, gatherings, guests, cards, outings and amusement. He spent money freely.

Karolina writes that he could spend fifteen to twenty florins a month on cigars and entertaining guests.

Yet she could also say something quite different about him — that he was:

“so good and honourable a man…”

And perhaps those two qualities tell us much about August’s character.

He was extravagant, sociable and probably difficult to keep in check, but he was undoubtedly a good and honourable man.

Incidentally, the expression “a Frischman flourish” survived in our family for many years. It was used of someone who threw money around.

That speaks for itself.

In her letters, Karolina quite often mentions currencies whose names and values few people understand today.

So, a few words of explanation.

Documents from this period use the terms florin, gulden and złoty reński. To a present-day reader, the figures alone mean little.

There is no simple, honest way of saying: “One florin in 1860 was worth exactly this many złotys or dollars today.”

We can, however, try to understand its value by comparing it with prices at the time.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, a morga of farmland in western Galicia cost roughly 200–400 florins.

So when Karolina wrote of August spending fifteen or twenty florins a month on cigars, guests and his social life, she was speaking of very substantial sums.

We shall need such comparisons again, because the family documents mention hundreds, thousands, and later tens of thousands of florins and crowns.

I shall not force these sums into present-day equivalents. It is far more honest to show their value in the circumstances of their own time.

That will do by way of explanation.

Eventually, Karolina overcame her reservations and employed August. And he, surprisingly enough, agreed.

Perhaps he really did do it solely for her, as she suggested in the letter quoted above…

In 1862, when Karolina signed a contract with August to manage the Dynów pharmacy, he was thirty-six and she was thirty-five.

They were almost the same age.

Dynów was a small town. The presence of a handsome, unmarried and very sociable pharmacist in the home of a young widow was bound to provoke comment.

And it did.

Rumours began to spread that Karolina intended to marry August.

And those rumours may have had some basis.

August Frischman and Karolina Baraniecka were almost the same age and came from exactly the same part of the world.

Both had been born in Bukovina, and both came from German families. Karolina’s parents were Krystian Papst and Karolina Kampf.

Nevertheless, the spreading rumours hurt Karolina. She suffered.

In a letter to her friend Marynia Żywicka, she wrote:

“…I imagine that this [the gossip — author’s note] concerns Frischman. Perhaps it has reached your ears too that I am supposedly about to marry, and it seems that many people think that is precisely what I shall do. Those whom I considered my friends have contributed most to all this talk! Surely, if I had meant to marry, I would have done so by now and the gossip would have ended, but I do not wish, for the sake of these reckless people’s chatter, to sacrifice my children’s future and my dear memories of the years spent with my husband. But I explain myself to no one, for time will tell. Nor can I [by a hasty decision to remarry — author’s note] put all my property at risk, where it might fall into untrustworthy hands. I do not deny that there are honest men — but where is one to find them — and besides all that — would it protect me from slander? If there is another man, there will be gossip all over again!

Find me a pharmacy manager who would undertake to run everything, and if you can vouch for his honesty, I give you my word of honour, as truly as I wish happiness for my children, that I shall give Frischman notice at once, and he must leave at the New Year. It seems to me that the pharmacist in Gorlice, your husband’s acquaintance, might know someone, for there are plenty looking for positions, but who knows what they are like? Take Siedlecki, for instance, whom I wanted before — he was considered a good man, and look — while working as a pharmacy manager, he put aside 3,000 florins in just five years. He surely did not save that out of his salary — not even if he went without shoes — so where did it come from?”

Karolina Baraniecka’s letter – original of the letter quoted above.

Meanwhile, August ran the pharmacy, carried out his duties, and became part of the household in Dynów. The only things spoiling the atmosphere were people’s envy and gossip.

I have no grounds for claiming that their relationship was anything more than professional.

On the contrary, Karolina’s letters show a woman still mourning Feliks and far from contemplating another marriage.

Her husband had died in an unfamiliar town, far from home. She had not been with him when he died. That too disturbed her peace of mind.

And on top of everything else, her strength was failing. Consumption — or tuberculosis, as we would call it today — was destroying her. Karolina was dying.

And August was there all the while.

Ignoring the gossip, he ran the pharmacy, attended to the affairs of the post office, and gradually became part of life in Dynów.

In documents from 1862, he appears as more than a pharmacist.

He was also the Imperial and Royal administrator of the post office in Dynów and an agent of the Kraków Mutual Fire Insurance Society. Later, he also acquired the right of propination.

That is how he is described in materials preserved in the Jagiellonian Library.

And then came the summer of 1863.

Karolina was ill, dying, yet she continued trying to put in order the affairs she would leave to her children.

I give a detailed account of these affairs and Karolina’s letters in Appendix IV.

There are many of them. Some concern the years before she became Feliks’s wife, when her family, the Papsts, already knew him and did business with him.

2. Karolina’s Death. August’s Imprisonment. His Marriage to Wanda Salomea

In 1863, Karolina’s health was deteriorating rapidly.

Two letters written by August during this period have survived.

They are especially precious to me, because for the first time August becomes more than a name in the documents.

The first letter was written on 16 July 1863.

Karolina was still alive.

August knew, however, that the end was approaching.

On behalf of the dying woman, he wrote to her friends asking them to come.

Here is the letter describing the sad days of Karolina’s illness and death.

The letters were written in the summer of 1863.

The first, dated 16 July, was most probably addressed to Mr Żywicki, the husband of Marynia, Karolina’s friend:

My Esteemed Sir,

Poor Mrs Baraniecka is still alive — I have not dared to read your letter to her, for her mind is quite clear, and I could not bear the effect your heartfelt sympathy would have upon her. I know what it means to have a friend, and I can feel what it means to lose one. I imagine what comfort it would bring her to embrace and bid farewell, for the last time, perhaps even in her final hour, to the woman whom she has truly and sincerely loved.

I hope that if your wife sets out without delay, immediately upon receiving this letter, she will find this poor woman still alive.

On behalf of the dying woman, I ask that you keep your promise — I shall be grateful in her stead.

Your servant,
Frischman

August Frischman’s letter of 18 July 1863

The second letter is even more moving.

August wrote it from Dynów on 9 August 1863.

He describes Karolina’s last moments, her death, the funeral, and what happened afterwards.

Here is the letter:

My Esteemed Madam,

Forgive me for having left your letter unanswered for so long — in my sorrowful circumstances, I forgot everything. Today I have grown accustomed to this new order of things, and so I hasten to fulfil the pleasant duty of [putting your minds entirely at ease].

The children are well. I do not know what is happening in their hearts, but from their faces no one would guess that they are orphans without either father or mother. In the first moment after their mother ceased to live, I think I had the most foolish expression of them all.

At four in the afternoon, she gathered us around her and would not let us leave her side.

At eight in the evening, she began to die. Beside the bed stood myself, Władek, Wanda and Felcia — the little ones behind us.

My head was buzzing, and I would have sworn that they were all weeping and sobbing. At ten in the evening, when she drew her last breath, I turned round and saw only the two older girls; the others were fast asleep. Old Wincenty stood beside the stove.

As though someone had given a command, people began to arrive. Amid the confusion, I noticed only that Felcia and Wanda were dressing their mother’s hair as if for a wedding. They attended to everything so briskly that within an hour she lay on the illuminated bier, all in perfect order, and everyone was kneeling, singing and praying.

What happened at that moment I do not know. I could not bear to look at anyone and sat in my room.

I did not see the funeral, but judging by the money I spent, I gather it was quite a proper one.

I immediately took the children downstairs and ordered some repairs upstairs, for everything there was already in great disorder.

And so, while I was sharing one room with six children, Mrs Stronczakowa came to visit us a week after the death. Wishing to win me over, or for some other purpose, she said: “The deceased was always less than truthful.” … Her eagerness to take everything away from the children made an unpleasant impression on me, and I must have been less than courteous to the lady, since she departed at once, for which I am most grateful to her.

A few days later, the postal official Astleilhner arrived on an inspection. I received him as best I could amid the throng of children. He stayed, lodged and ate with us until today. The Directorate acted most humanely, ordering that … and the whole … be given to the children, while I was to have the office and the administration of everything.

While Mrs Baraniecka was alive, I somehow gave more thought to everything. After her death, I did nothing, visited no one and asked no one for anything. And yet everything turned out for the best.

I promised the official that I would go, and I thanked the Director for the kindness he had shown the children.

There are very many applicants for this post office, and several have sought its administration.

If you would be so kind as to visit my friend’s children in September, I shall gladly and gratefully listen to your advice on what to do with them. Perhaps it would be better to prepare Władek for the postal service, for the road to becoming a pharmacist is a long one — and on this too I should be glad to hear your opinion.

My dear aunt gives no sign of life. I am preparing to write to her, and if this attempt also comes to nothing, then let her stay where she is, and I shall look for someone else.

On this occasion, please accept the expression of my deepest respect for you both.

Your servant,
Frischman

Dynów, 9 August 1863.

I enclose a letter from … — he is not at home.

August Frischman’s letter of 9 August 1863.

Karolina Baraniecka’s grave in Dynów.

After Karolina’s death, August took the six children of the late Feliks and Karolina Baraniecki downstairs.

He ordered repairs to the upper floor because, as he wrote, everything there was already in great disorder.

And suddenly this thirty-six-year-old bachelor became the guardian of six children who were not his own. Six orphans.

Mrs Marianna Stronczakowa, née Baraniecka, the late Karolina’s sister-in-law, arrived. She had nothing to offer, only the insulting remark that “the deceased was always less than truthful”!

August practically drove her out of the house.

Later, a postal official appeared. The postal Directorate left August in charge of the office and its administration.

There is another sentence:

“My dear aunt gives no sign of life…”

Perhaps he meant Anastazja Frischman, his father’s sister.

Perhaps August was trying to bring her to Dynów to help him with the children.

It is hard to say!

Grave of Karolina Baraniecka, nee Papst, in Dynów

But at that very time, besides Karolina’s death, another event struck the household in Dynów like a bolt from the blue!

The year 1863 was the year of the January Uprising.

After its defeat, many insurgents fleeing the Russian partition crossed the Austrian border. They sought refuge from persecution by the Russian authorities.

At first, the Austrian authorities more or less tolerated them, but this did not last long.

A group of fugitive insurgents reached Dynów. August gave them shelter in the house.

The newcomers, however, behaved in a disorderly manner. Perhaps this was a result of the strain of the defeated uprising? There were disturbances and various troubles — suffice it to say that the Austrian authorities, unwilling to tolerate such behaviour, arrested the newcomers and August along with them.

According to my Father’s account, August was tried and imprisoned in the fortress of Kufstein, in Tyrol.

He spent about a year and a half there, slept on a stone floor, and returned with his health ruined, particularly his kidneys.

What happened during that time to Karolina’s children, the pharmacy, the post office and the house?

Admittedly, the children were no longer all very young. The eldest, Władysław, was sixteen in 1863. His sisters were younger, however, and the youngest, Maria, was only eight.

Who looked after them?

I once suggested that it might have been their aunt, Marianna Baraniecka, born on 2 January 1807 in Zamieście Burek, in the parish of Tarnów Cathedral — the sister of the late Feliks Antoni.

The pharmacy may have been run by Teofil Podsoński, a qualified pharmacy manager, but I am not certain of this.

In any event, the pharmacy certainly continued under qualified managers, while the authorities placed the post office under administration.

August returned from prison to Dynów around 1865.

He returned to the orphaned children, who were, after all, not his children.

He returned to a house that was not really his home, but merely his place of work.

And yet he returned.

Perhaps he had promised the dying Karolina that he would look after her children. Or perhaps he had nowhere else to go — though that hardly seems likely to me, for a man like him could have found work anywhere.

Whatever the reason, he returned and eventually married the eldest daughter of the late Karolina — Wanda Salomea!

When August first came to the Baraniecki household, in 1862, Wanda was still a young girl.

A few years later, she became his wife.

They married on 2 February 1867.

August was forty, and Wanda Salomea eighteen.

The difference in age was therefore twenty-two years.

August, whose name had been linked with the mother’s, married her daughter!

Apparently, that was what the circumstances called for.

We shall probably never know all the circumstances surrounding this decision, on either Wanda’s side or August’s.

It is hard to say who needed whom more — August needed Wanda, or Wanda needed August.

And so the wedding took place. Although the marriage was unhappy from the beginning, over its thirteen years they nevertheless had seven children!

August Jan Frischman died in Dynów on 2 November 1880.

He was fifty-three.

Within the family, his death was attributed to the kidney disease he was said to have developed during his imprisonment.

He was buried in the family tomb in Dynów.

His grave survives to this day.

Wanda Salomea Frischman, née Baraniecka, was thirty-one when she became a widow, and remained one for fifty-nine years.

She was known as “Grandma Frischmann”. Never anything else.

History seemed to be repeating itself.

At the time of August’s death, her circumstances were remarkably similar to those of her mother Karolina twenty-two years earlier.

Karolina was thirty-one when her husband Feliks died.

Wanda was thirty-one when her husband August died.

Karolina was left alone with a brood of children.

Wanda was left alone with a brood of children.

But there the similarities ended, for Wanda was a very different woman from her mother.

After Feliks’s death, Karolina was devastated. She had tuberculosis, could not come to terms with the loss of her husband, and remained in mourning almost until the end of her life.

Wanda Salomea was made of very different stuff.

In fact, after her husband’s death, she came back to life!

One might say she was a woman cast in bronze.

Here is what my Father wrote about her, her husband August, and the circumstances of his imprisonment:

“My grandmother, as I have already written, after a few years of schooling at the convent of the Benedictine nuns in Staniątki, near Kraków, married August Frischman, the son of a district commissioner sent from Vienna to Galicia to Germanise the country. The result was quite the opposite: he himself became Polish in outlook, while his son August, enamoured of the Poles and a man of extraordinary intelligence, was active in secret Polish societies and supported the insurgents in 1863. For this he later suffered two years in an Austrian prison, having been found guilty at his trial.

Grandmother told me that all the young ladies were sewing underclothes for the insurgents, sending boots and such things, while the men sent guns and gunpowder.

She had no fond memories of the insurgents. She maintained that they were no different from ordinary robbers. Fleeing to Galicia after the defeat of the uprising, they behaved as soldiers do, requisitioning and plundering, taking whatever they needed.

From her parents’ stories, my grandmother also knew the history of the peasant uprising, which had taken its toll on Dynów and the surrounding area.

But after the uprising and her husband’s return home, a period of crisis followed. Everyone wanted to forget the defeat in a whirl of amusement. August, invited everywhere, a favourite of the neighbouring manor houses, an almost daily guest of old Count Wojciech Starzeński — August’s father and the grandfather of another Wojciech — in Dąbrówka, and also of Zbigniew Trzecieski in Dynów, amid sleigh parties, festivities and dancing, neglected everything completely (?). He paid neither allowances nor the inheritances due to Grandmother’s sisters. A passionate card player himself, and a gambler at that, he developed kidney disease early and died in his fifty-third year on All Saints’ Day in 1880. A freethinker and a liberal, he waged continual war against the parish priest of the time, Father Zaleski (?) [this surname requires clarification, as the parish priest in Dynów was Father Teofil Witoszyński from 1847 to 1876, and Father Edward Palch from 1876 to 1890], who, hot-tempered and tactless, stopped at nothing in suing him to defend his honour.”

And here is an excellent comment from my sister, Maria Baraniecka Witkowska:

“What fascinated me was the life in Dynów of a liberal — a man whose intellectual horizons were at odds with the values of that provincial backwater; a man who, through his own choices, had also deprived himself of the warmth of family life; a courageous man who stood up to the all-powerful parish priest.

But hardly anyone spoke of this. Indeed, no one was interested.

The world the family held dear was not his world. And that was how he left it, on a bleak November day…”

3. Wanda Salomea — Sole Owner of the “Pod Opatrznością” Pharmacy

In 1880, at the time of August’s death, the pharmacy still did not belong to Wanda alone.

It belonged to all the children of Feliks and Karolina Baraniecki.

They were:

1. Władysław (1847–1921).
2. Wanda Salomea (1849–1939).
3. Felicja Zygmunta (1849–1941).
4. Helena (1851–1877).
5. Stefania (1853–1932).
6. Maria Joanna (1855–1940).

In practice, this meant that for many years — since 1858 — the “Pod Opatrznością” pharmacy had been jointly owned by Feliks Baraniecki’s heirs.

To settle the ownership, while her husband was still alive, Wanda reached an agreement with her siblings: they would all transfer their shares in the inheritance to her, so that the pharmacy would eventually belong to her alone.

And that is what happened!

The harmony among the siblings is remarkable. Quite exemplary!

On 1 July 1874, in Prague, her brother Władysław Baraniecki transferred his entire share in the inheritance to Wanda for 600 Rhenish florins.

The document has survived and specifies exactly what the transfer covered: buildings and other property, land, outstanding debts owed to the estate, movable possessions, and, above all, the pharmacy in Dynów.

Władysław wrote:

“…I transfer my entire share in the inheritance (…) without retaining anything for myself or my heirs, into the sole and unrestricted ownership of my sister, Mrs Wanda Frischman, née Baraniecka…”

Then came the others.

On 20 August 1875, Helena Chodzińska, née Baraniecka, transferred her share for 1,000 florins.

On 3 September 1878, Stefania Niewolkiewicz, née Baraniecka, did the same, also for 1,000 florins.

These three transactions took place during August’s lifetime.

But the matter was not yet settled.

It was not until 23 October 1890 that Felicja transferred her share for 2,000 florins.

And on 8 January 1891, Maria — who also appears in the documents as Maryanna — sold Wanda her share for another 2,000 florins.

Only then, more than thirty years after the death of her father Feliks, did Wanda Salomea become the sole owner of the family’s “Pod Opatrznością” pharmacy.

I describe the children of Karolina and Feliks in detail in Appendix VI.