Franz Anton von Sporck

Franz Anton von Sporck, Count (Franz Anton Reichsgraf von Sporck in German, František Antonín hrabě Špork in Czech) (born 9 March 1662 in Lysá nad Labem or Heřmanův Městec; died 30 March 1738 in Lysá nad Labem) was a German-speaking literatus and patron of the arts who lived in the province of Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic. He was one of the most notable cultural and intellectual figures in central Europe in the early 18th century.

Count Sporck was born the eldest of four children of Count Johann von Sporck (1595-1679) and his second wife Maria Eleonora of Fineke. His father had been born in rather humble circumstances in Westphalia, but was rewarded handsomely for distinguished military leadership in the service of the Habsburg dynasty during the Thirty Years' War. It was a habit of the Habsburg emperors to reward favorites with lands confiscated from dispossessed Protestant Bohemian nobles who refused to convert to Catholicism after the defeat of the Estates of Bohemia at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. Count Sporck's father was an archetypal example of this sort of favorite, first ennobled with the rank of baron in 1647, then imperial count in 1664. He was given vast amounts of land in Bohemia that Count Sporck would later inherit. Typical of the Germanized Catholic nobility in Bohemia of his day, Count Sporck considered himself ethnically German and exhibited scant interest in Czech culture. He attended school first in Heřmanův Městec, then at the Jesuit Latin School in Kutná Hora. In 1675 he began to attend lectures in philosophy and law at Charles-Ferdinand University in the Prague Clementinum. He graduated in 1678 at the age of sixteen. In 1680 he embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe that brought him to Rome, Turin, southern France, Spain, Paris, England, The Hague, and Brussels. He traveled for a second time to Paris in 1682 after returning to Bohemia in 1681. He acquired a lifelong appreciation of French literature from his travels in France. As he was still a minor at the time of his father's death, he was able to assume control of his inheritance only in 1684. This included the estates of Lysá, Konojedy, Choustníkovo Hradiště, and Malešov. It was on the estate of Choustníkovo Hradiště in northern Bohemia that he later built his own residence of Kuks. He also inherited the family palace in Prague and a considerable sum of money.

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