page_title: Ossolineum
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ossolineum / History
context_page_description: The Ossolineum or the National Ossoliński Institute is a historic cultural foundation and publishing house located in Wrocław, Poland since 1947, second only in size to the ancient Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. It is an archival institute and research centre of national and international significance. Its publishing arm is the oldest continuous imprint in Polish since the early 19th century. Both institutions bear the name of their founder, Polish magnate, Count Jozef Ossoliński. Although their origin may be traced to the foreign imposed partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, the institute's actual history dates from 1817 in the former Polish city of Lwów, then known as Lemberg, capital of Galicia, a province of the Austro-hungarian empire. The institute first opened its doors to the public in 1827.
context_section_description: Ossoliński who was a politician, writer and researcher had already devoted his long life to building and cataloguing an extremely rich library collection, consisting of books, manuscripts, prints and coins. It was only upon mature consideration and after observing developments since the Congress of Vienna that he opted for Lwów, as the most suitable place in which to house his 52 crates of materials having obtained prior approval of the Austrian emperor, Francis I. Thus began his Institute in Lwów (Institut in Lemberg in German). The income from Ossoliński's landed properties served for over three decades to finance his acquisitions and collection. The Ossolineum quickly became a celebrated centre for Polish science and culture which not only survived under foreign rule, but throughout the Second Polish Republic in the Interwar period.
  Until the 1939 invasion of Poland it had combined a library, publishing house, and the Lubomirski Museum.
  The National Ossoliński Institute had been located from its foundation until 1945 in the former convent and church buildings of the Carmelite Order of nuns in Lwów at 2, Ossolińscy street, (since renamed vulytsia Stefanyka). After the first partition of Poland and the dissolution of many convents by the Austrian emperor Joseph II, the convent buildings had become a ruin. Their restoration became a project for General Józef Bem who in 1823 merged the Lubomirski Museum (originally founded by Prince Henryk Lubomirski) with the Ossoliński Institute.
  Under Austrian rule, the Ossolineum became a beacon for the Polish independence movement and was one of the most important centres of Polish culture despite foreign rule and the Germanization of its structures. During that time there were many persecutions such as police searches and arrests of employees of the institute. It housed a clandestine Polish printing works in the early 1840s, and had exclusive rights for publishing textbooks under the relative Galician autonomy. During the revolutionary upheaval in 1848, the Ossolineum became a Polish landmark in an otherwise highly ethnically diverse city.
caption: Józef Ossoliński
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