The Poznań Guardhouse from the 18th century: history — architecture — authorship

Abstract

The Poznań Guardhouse is, from an artistic point of view, a historic monument of very fine quality. It is easily recognizable due to its location at the centre of tourist routes. It is also frequently visited, and is now the seat of the Museum of the Wielkopolska Uprising 1918–1919 – a branch of the Wielkopolska Museum of the Struggle for Independence. In previous scholarly works, its design and construction have been misattributed to Johann Christian Kamsetezer, an architect of King Stanislaus Augustus. Established attributions of monuments dating from the reign of Stanislaus Augustus have been repeated many times and therefore are long-lived. Nonetheless, many of them have been made without being confirmed on the basis of source documents, or without even taking into consideration the artist’s or the epoch’s specific background. They were based on loose associations, without putting forward any arguments. Sometimes they contributed to whole sequences of attributions arising. One speculation led to another, and they were repeated in print, thereby creating ‘indisputable facts’. The Poznań Guardhouse is a good example of such a train of thought.
The idea of building a brick Guardhouse in Poznań evolved in 1784, inspired by matters related to organizing the stationing of troops in Warsaw. The Boni Ordinis Committee supervised the project and Kazimierz Raczyński, the Starosta Generalny of Wielkopolska, was also personally responsible. It was Raczyński who donated funds from his personal property to supplement municipal funds derived from the property tax. He also commissioned the design to Stanisław Zawadzki, with whom he was personally acquainted and who was also architect to the Royal Army. Major Zawadzki’s competencies included designing all the military construction projects undertaken in towns. The architectural and sculptural solutions used in the building attest to such an attribution, as they had been used previously in the architect’s work. In 1787, the Guardhouse in Poznań was built and adorned with sculptures probably made, according to Zawadzki’s designs, by the Poznań sculptor Augustinus Schöps.