Ossolineum

The Ossolineum or the National Ossoliński Institute (Polish: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, ZNiO) is a non-profit foundation located in Wrocław, Poland since 1947, and subsidized from the state budget. It was founded in 1817 by Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński of the Topór coat of arms, politician, writer and researcher who devoted his life to building and cataloguing an extremely rich library collection, the second in the country when it comes to size after the Jagiellonian Library of Kraków. The history of Ossolineum goes back to the foreign Partitions of Poland in the 19th century. The institute along with its library was built intentionally as one of the most important national and Polish cultural institutions at a time when the sovereign Poland could not exist. It first opened its doors to the public in 1827, in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine).

The collection of books, manuscripts, art prints and coins was brought by Ossoliński to Lwów, the capital of the Austrian zone of occupation of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 52 crates with the approval of Austrian emperor Franz Joseph. It was the founding stone for his Institute in Lwów (Institut in Lemberg in German). The income from Ossoliński's land-estates served for over three decades as the financial basis for his acquisitions. Ossolineum soon became a meritorious centre for Polish science and culture maintained not only under the foreign rule, but also in sovereign Poland between world wars. Until the 1939 invasion of Poland it combined a Library, Publishing House, and the Lubomirski Museum.

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