Ludgard Piotr Grocholski (Odessa 5/18 XII 1884 – Kraków 9 IV 1954), social and cultural activist in Ukraine, heraldist, poet, and publicist. He was born as the son of Ludgard Bernard (1840–1908) and Maria Michalina from the Rohoziński family, coat of arms Leliwa (1853–1893). His father was successively the owner of Woronowica, lost after the January Uprising of 1863, and later inherited Błudnik, Pustomyty, Szabelnik, Rybalcza, and Królewszczyzna. He came from the Tereszkowski line of the Grocholski family through the sword-bearer Franciszek Ksawery in Woronowica, registered in the noble books of the Podolian governorate. By the decision of the Department of Heraldry of the Russian Empire on 12 VI 1908, he was confirmed in the count title. He was to inherit Rybalcza and Królewszczyzna from his father, and after his uncle Władysław (1841–1920), he became the successor of Tereszki.
He completed high school in Odessa and studied at the Faculty of Law at the local university, and then pursued supplementary studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Agriculture at the universities in Krakow and Lviv. Initially, he was a delegate of the Society for the Care of Historical Monuments in Warsaw, and then a collaborator of Aleksander Lednicki as the manager of this Society in Kyiv. During World War I, he served as the president of the Executive Committee and vice-president of the Polish Society for the Care of Historical Monuments in Ruthenia. He was a co-founder and active board member of the Polish Society for War Victims Relief, including the Department of Protection of Cultural and Art Monuments of this Society, and the president of the Polish Society of the Aleksander Jabłonowski Scientific Library in Kyiv. These institutions provided assistance to local Poles affected by the war, as well as Polish refugees, and saved cultural and art monuments on the territory of Ukraine. He also joined the government administration of the Ukrainian Republic and became the head of the Kyiv department in the Ministry of Polish Affairs in Ukraine and the department of culture and art in the Secretariat for Nationalities. He cooperated with Naczpol and the Polish Military Organization in Kyiv. He founded, edited, and published the magazine “Polish Museum” in Kyiv in 1917, dedicated to the history and monuments of art and culture. Additionally, he was a member of the Circle of Writers and Journalists in Kyiv and the Directorate of the Society of Fine Arts in Lviv in 1917–1918.
In November 1918, he voluntarily joined the City Civic Guard in Lviv and distinguished himself in fighting on the First Section, and then became the Chief Commander of the Civic Militia. He was later to defend the homeland against Bolshevik forces in the ranks of the Volunteer Army with the rank of officer. His last public function was the dignity of Delegate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland for Eastern Lesser Poland.
In his journalistic activity, besides historical and genealogical issues, he referred to Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, which he tried to patronize in Kyiv during World War I and the revolution. Temporarily, along with a small group of landowners and Ruthenian nobility, he was associated with the Ukrainian movement, which he eventually abandoned. He published political, historical, and heraldic articles in the press of Odessa, Kyiv, Lviv, Krakow, and Warsaw: in “Czas”, “Dziennik Kijowski”, “Gazeta Poranna”, “Gazeta Wieczorna”, “Kłosy Ukraińskie”, “Kurier Lwowski”, “Miesięcznik Heraldyczny”, “Przewodnik Bibliograficzny”, “Sprawa Polska”, “Tygodnik Ilustrowany”, “Tygodnik Odeski”, “Wiadomości Bibliograficzne”, and “Zjednoczenie”.
He was awarded the Cross of Valor for his stance during the defense of Lviv, a series of commemorative badges, such as the Star of Defense of Lviv “Orlęta”, the Cross of Defense of Lviv with Swords, the Badge of the First Section, and the honorary Cross of Merit for the protection of Polish monuments and property in 1915–1920. He belonged to the Union of Defenders of Lviv from November 1918 and the International Combatant Organization (FIDAC). Among foreign decorations, he had the Commander’s Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Grand Cross of Justice of the Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, and the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory of Burgundy. He collaborated and belonged to many foreign organizations and associations, such as the Papal Tiberian Academy, Real Sociedad Hispano-Americana de Genealogie y Heráldica, Collegio Araldico in Rome, Collège Héraldique de France, Conseil des Héraldistes de France, Institut Héraldique International in Paris, Unione Cavalleresca, the Heraldic Society “Adler” in Vienna, Gotiska Gyllene Gripen in Gothenburg, and Skandinaviska Slakt Studie Samfundet in Stockholm. He participated in the International Heraldic Congress in Barcelona in 1929.
After World War I, he devoted himself entirely to heraldry and attempted to revive the noble movement. In 1922, he organized the Heraldic Institute in Krakow, later moved to Warsaw, of which he was the director. Simultaneously, from 1929, he served as the general secretary of the Heraldic College in Warsaw. As the secretary of the Miechów Committee, he promoted the revival of the Polish branch of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. From 1930 to 1936, he edited and published the irregular monthly “Herold”. His activity in the field of heraldry is assessed inconsistently. On one hand, he defended noble traditions (e.g., by protecting noble surnames appropriated through changes by people often of non-Polish origin) and published valuable contributions of a historical-genealogical-heraldic nature. Additionally, along with Prince Zdzisław Lubomirski and Adam Gubrynowicz, he initiated the restoration of Polish knightly coats of arms in the chapel on the Kahlenberg in Vienna, maintaining heraldic requirements. At the same time, heraldry became a source of income for him: he profited from the trade of titles and certifying membership in the noble state to people of dubious historical lineage or legal title.
World War II caused irreparable losses in his heraldic collections and the resources of the Heraldic Institute. After the Warsaw Uprising, he found himself in Krakow, where he engaged in antiquarian trade and collaborated with the Polish Biographical Dictionary in preparing biographies of the Grocholski family. He was buried in the Rakowicki Cemetery in plot XXXII, row 3, grave 7. From the marriage contracted in 1909 in Odessa with Janina Maria Ścibor-Marchocka, coat of arms Ostoja (1886–1980), he had an only daughter, Maria Ładysława (1919–1984), married to Stefan Ostrowski, coat of arms Korab (1910-1986). After World War I, his wife went to Paris, and a permanent separation occurred between them, and Ludgard Grocholski became involved in 1924 with Wanda Zofia Piccard (1893–1967), a painter, who after the war was considered his wife and used his surname.
Tomasz Lenczewski
To the Polish Nobility Ludgard Count Grocholski
The following appeal appeared in 1930 in the periodical “Herold”, edited by Ludgard Count Grocholski.
We address you, representatives of the Noble Estate.
The Constitution of 1921 may not have recognized nobility as a state institution, but nothing could make the existing de facto Polish nobility cease to exist. It exists in you and through you. As long as you consider yourselves nobility, as long as you are aware of the inherited tradition of duties that rest upon you, connected with your birth, the nobility exists.
We have in mind the entire Polish nobility, not only its representatives, unfortunately increasingly less numerous, who managed to maintain themselves as landowners, but all members of the Polish nobility, wherever they are, in whatever positions they find themselves – in scientific work, in free professions, in state offices, in trade, in industry, or in any contemporary workshop, and above all those who today, just like their ancestors over the centuries, continue to perform self-sacrificing knightly service in the ranks of the army of the Most Serene Republic.
For completely independently of where the historical moment found you, regardless of which camp you find yourselves in, and even from which so-called social class the evolution of successive generations has led you, everywhere and always you are the same Polish nobility, descendants of Polish knighthood, everywhere you are accompanied by traditions inherited from your ancestors, to every work you bring the glow of their immortal fame, you bring to the Polish ear the dear sound of the same names, the glory of which resounded throughout the world along with the glory of Polish arms and the loud, rumbling over the centuries rustle of the wings of the Polish hussars, and together, inseparably with all this, in every work, in every endeavor, you are accompanied and your minds and hearts are illuminated by the reflection of this Polish noble-knightly ideology.
You are not a class, but a historical estate. You may be temporarily separated by class differences, but the unity of the estate, the unity of noble ideology, will always unite you in critical moments of decisive action. The truth is, as a separate collectivity you never appear, nowhere can you gather and create a concentration that could release your forces. Your efforts are isolated, while all other historical estates – clergy, bourgeoisie, and people, appear externally, preserving all the features of their distinct estate. Especially the bourgeoisie does not give up its estate traditions, and the peasantry estate, until recently the idol of the intelligentsia, possesses increasingly more of its own clearly popular organizations. All professions, all classes have their representative bodies, and above all the press particularly serving their interests. If among all this, some individual or group were to want to throw the idea of organizing the nobility, it would cause the impression of a thunderbolt from a clear sky in Poland.
This is because there are those who claim that you, Polish Nobility, are now only a tradition, a museum relic, that all the names you bear, which appear on all the pages of our history, can serve at most for the memory of wise, ancient undertakings and once-great martial deeds, but nothing more. NOT TRUE!! Historical memorabilia are the venerable armors of the Chodkiewicz and Żółkiewski families that we view with reverence in museums, the ancient memory is the rustle of banners on fields of glory, hung under the ceiling of a church or museum, but you, you living people do not want to be and are not just a lifeless souvenir.
The deeds of your ancestors resurrect in your living life through actions, proving with testimony from Rokitna or Rarańcza that the same blood pulses in your veins that once flowed from their wounds at Vienna or Kircholm.
You have not died, Polish nobility, in the aimless and dark existence of those old portraits on the walls, you have not made that dead existence of museum relics your share. The entire 19th century, the entire period of captivity, all the heroic impulses, heroic struggles against oppression, the fight for the freedom of peoples on the barricades of the whole world, all national uprisings finally, these are the living deeds of the living Polish nobility. And so from the dawn of independence, when the fiery banner of the holy rebellion against invaders, the revolutionary banner, was seized by the mighty hand of the descendant of Lithuanian princes, when alongside new freedom fighters, the elite of the descendants of the old knightly nobility gathered under the banners of the already independent homeland, building the edifice of a new powerful Poland with joint effort. For knightly battles as well as creative work, for the common good you draw strength from the traditions passed down to you by the legacy of the centuries from your ancestors.
Today, no one believes in equality among people anymore. This inequality lasts from the moment of birth. Today, people are divided not according to differences and inherited rights, but according to the difference of inherited duties, and with such an approach to the matter, the role of the main core of the organizing social elite can and should fall to the nobility, especially since we do not consider it a caste-closed state, as it is not and never was.
To fulfill this role, the nobility must first of all come out of a state of passivity, from the shameful hiding of their nobility in public life, from the lethargy into which long-standing adherence to democratic utopias has plunged them. The necessity of breaking with these utopias is all the greater because the democratic idea, for which our ancestors often died, has degenerated, and today we are dealing not with democracy, but with an ochlocracy dressed in its feathers on one side, and with anti-democratic communism on the other. The Polish state needs to remind itself of the great mission and great historical role it had in the past, and thus retreat, to gain momentum forward, towards traditions. Traditions are not dead in writing and print history and have their seat nowhere else but in living people and living human groups.
Such a living group with us is the nobility, the only historical estate that as such preserves from generation to generation the living memory of the times of greatness and power of a great-power Poland, and thus contains in itself in a potential state all that once great leaders like Batory and Żółkiewski could spark from it and forge into the steel of deeds.
All endeavors must be led by an idea, and every idea to live needs material, lasting, and unchanging shapes and frames. In a broader sense, we must include in such shapes everything in which tradition and the thought of inheritance in the succession of generations both of duties and ideology can be expressed, and thus: families, family ties, all external signs of solidarity, with succeeding generations, surnames, bynames, and above all coats of arms, which are not meaningless signs but full of mystical significance ideograms of our faith, loves, our aspirations and hopes.
“Dear Zdzisław, dear Elder of our Clan,
You intend to undertake the considerable effort of immortalizing with your beautiful writing my story about various Grocholscian people, woven around what is closest to me from them, and which I perpetuate, giving the title to my work: “Tereszki”. …”
Received courtesy of Jan Grocholski – son of Andrzej.