From the history of economic curatorship of the Ossolineum in Lviv – about a certain legal conflict (or is it only that?)

Abstract

This article concerns the conflict about economic curatorship of the Ossolineum in Lviv aften the death of Michał Baier (1930). Two representatives of the Ledóchowski family – Mieczysław and Stanisław were involved in this conflict. This conflict went through all degrees of jurisdiction and lasted from 1931 to 1937. Its essence was estimating whether the priority to take over the post of economic curator belonged to – according to principles set by Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński – the male representative of the indicated family appointed in the process of establishing primogeniture if he was an illegitimate child, later legitimized by the marriage of the father and the mother. The course of events and arguments raised by its participants allow to express doubts whether this conflict was only a legal one or rather a family-moral one. The courts had to consider the rights of legitimate children several times. Although they finally granted the priority to Stanisław Ledóchowski accepting his rights as a legitimate child through the marriage of the mother with the biological father later on, the right to take economic curatorship of the Ossolineum – due to procedural reasons – was granted to his rival. The history of the economic curatorship of the Ossolineum presented in this article has not yet been dealt with in the literature on the Ossolineum.