Gustav Manteuffel The church cemetery in Drycany (Lat. Dricāni) is the eternal resting place of Gustav Baron Manteuffel, a remarkable researcher with a truly Renaissance range of interests. A thinker and hobbyist, lawyer, historian, cultural expert, music lover and musicologist, ethnographer, genealogist, translator, expert in art and architecture, he was the author of numerous publications on the northern borderlands of the former Republic of Poland - Inflants.

A special, editorially sophisticated work was a colour graphic album on Inflants, 'Terra Mariana 1186-1888', commissioned and prepared under the direction of Gustav Manteuffel. It was created in a single copy and given to Pope Leo XIII in 1888 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. It is kept in the Vatican Library. In 1903, a second edition of the album was prepared in Riga, in a smaller format with a limited range of colours. This reprint was commissioned by Maria of Tyzenhauza Przezdziecka and Gustav Manteuffel.

Manteuffel collaborated with the "Historical Quarterly", the oldest Polish historical-humanist periodical, which was founded in Lwów in 1887 by Ksawery Liske. He was also the author of over 150 geographical and personal entries in the "Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Countries", as well as the "Great Illustrated Universal Encyclopaedia", the largest Polish encyclopaedia of the Partition period, initiated in 1889 by the Warsaw publishers Franciszek Granowski and Saturnin Sikorski.

Gustaw Manteuffel came from the well-known Livonian Manteuffel family of the Soie (Szoege) family. His mother, Maria Françoise, was the last of the Drykas line of the Rykas. In 1828, she married Jacob Baron Manteuffl of the Berzygal line, a former hussar rotormaster and heir to Auerhof. The dowry consisted of Drycany, Taunagi, Brokany, Lesno, Skuszkowo, Siliniki, Mizany.

Gustav was the second most senior of the four sons of Maria and Jacob Manteuffl, from whom the Berzygala-Drycany line of the family took its origin. He was born in Drycany on 18 November 1832. He was first educated at home, under his mother's guidance, and when he was fifteen, at the German-language grammar school in Mitava (Lat. Jelgava). In 1856, he graduated with honours from the Faculty of Law at the University of Dorpat (est. Tartu); he defended his master's thesis in 1859. He was a member of the Polonia Convention, the oldest Polish academic corporation, founded in 1828 at the University of Dorpat. From 1874 he lived in Riga, researching, publishing and promoting knowledge of the history of former Polish Inflants.

His family nest, Drycany, formerly known as Dritzen or Dricen, is located near the town of Rzhezhitsa (Lat. Rēzekne). According to Gustaw Manteuffel, on the basis of documents which were kept in the family archives, these estates were granted to Ernest von de Ryck in 1568 by King Sigismund II Augustus. The privilege was confirmed by John III Sobieski in 1677. From 1568, the estate was continuously in the hands of the Ryck (Ryków) family, which eventually became completely Polonised in the 18th century.

When working out the entry 'Drycany' for the second volume of 'Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich' (Warsaw 1881), Gustaw Manteuffel described the family estate in the following way: 'The Drycany Manor House, situated on a lofty and very large hill, is visible for miles around with its white walls, charmingly reflecting the dark trees. The land here is mostly wheat and barley; the farm is a variable one, the breed of cattle is mostly from the Zulawy and Oldenburg; there is an abundance of forest and meadows. The latter, in relation to the arable land, double the amount. In addition to winter wheat and rye, the crops grown here are: barley, spring wheat, peas, clover, potatoes and fodder beet. Noteworthy in Drycany is the steam mill with three porches, with 12 steam engines, combined with a threshing machine, a rolling mill and a machine for making Swedish shingles, as well as extensive gardens and orchards with nurseries of fruit trees. The population is purely Latvian, Roman Catholic".

The founders of the parish church in Drycany - a two-towered brick church erected between 1859 and 1860, bearing the invocation of the Apostles Simon and Thaddeus Judas - were two sisters: Maria Manteufflowa, Gustavus' mother, and Katarzyna Ulanowska (1813-1878), née Rykova. This church replaced the small wooden church erected by their grandfather, Dominik Ryka, in 1779. The design of the new church was approved by the St Petersburg building commission in 1857. The temple was given the classicist style characteristic of the Russian Empire (the official name for Russia in 1700-21).

Drycany was placed under sequestration because Gustav Manteuffel's brother, Ryszard, took part in the January Uprising and he refused to sign an address of allegiance to the Tsar. Ryszard Manteuffel, in his younger days a Hussar Hussar captain in Grodno, was arrested when he was transporting weapons for the insurgents. Imprisoned together with Leon Count Plater, he was taken to prison in Dyneburg, later sentenced to exile to Omsk. It was only to his wife's family connections that he was able to avoid the death penalty. His stay in Siberia was replaced after a few years by forced settlement in Riga, with no right to return to the family estate. Nine years passed before the sequestration was lifted from his estates, which had been returned in a deplorable state, in addition to which they were subjected to a contribution. Jan, the youngest of the brothers, was not spared the repression, which resulted in the family's increasing financial problems. In 1883 Jan Manteuffel was forced to sell Drycany.

In 1912, the aged Gustaw Manteuffel suffered a partial paralysis as a result of a stroke; this was the end of his journalistic activity. He died on 24 April 1916 at the Bonifacov estate (Lat. Bonifacova) in the Lucin district, which belonged to his nephew, Józef Manteuffel. He was buried next to the graves of his parents in Drycany.

Cemetery in Drycany

The Drycany chateau no longer exists, but in the local church cemetery, apart from the cast-iron gravestones of Gustav's parents Maria (1811-1874) and Jacob (1795-1857) Manteuffl, the graves of their daughters Maria (d. 1838), Ludwika (d. 1843) and Katharina (d. 1844) as well as Augusta Rycka (d. 1849) and Maria (d. 1851) and Michel (d. 1848) Ange have been preserved.

Between the gravestones of Maria and Jacob Manteuffl, a memorial to Gustav Manteuffl has stood since 1982, bearing an inscription in Latin. The church cemetery also contains the graves of local priests and the remains of an unidentified gravestone. The cemetery in nearby Taunaga (Lat. Taunaga) preserves, among others, the tombstone of Richard and Jadwiga Manteuffl and the tombstone of Catherine Ulanowska.

One of the oldest trees in the Drycany cemetery is a lime tree, growing in the immediate vicinity of the grave quarters of Gustaw Manteuffl's parents. According to oral and written accounts, there was supposed to be an earthen grave underneath it, hiding the ashes of the explorer. On the basis of a surviving photograph from 1937, it is possible to conclude that the plaque dedicated to Gustav Manteuffel, funded by the Latgale Teachers' Union, was originally erected on this very spot. According to another version, the grave was supposed to be located between the tombstones of his parents.

Conservation work

In 2005, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, conservator Dr Janusz Smaza of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, after an on-site visit to Drycany, prepared an opinion on the condition of the burial place of Gustaw Manteuffel and his family. At the request of the Polish Community Association, the Ministry granted funds for the renovation and reconstruction of the grave field and the making of a new plaque commemorating Gustaw Manteuffel, as well as the restoration of the family's entire burial plot.

A team of Polish conservators consisting of Dr Janusz Smaza, Krzysztof Jurków and Bartosz Markowski carried out the work in the summer of 2006. They were authorised by the Latvian State Inspectorate for the Protection of Cultural Monuments (Valsts kultūras pieminekļu aizsardzības inspekcija). All the historical tombstones in the cemetery, the fence of the quarters, the slab with an inscription in Latvian and the memorial to Gustav Manteuffel were subjected to conservation. The conservators also carried out restoration work on three gravestones preserved in the Taunaga cemetery: Jadwiga and Ryszard Manteuffl, Katarzyna Ulanowska and Julia Biernacka.

A grave field has been marked out under a linden tree in the church cemetery in Drycany, within which a restored slab donated by teachers from Latgale and a new slab made of white Italian marble with an inscription in Polish have been installed: ETERNAL RESTING PLACE / GUSTAW MANTEUFFEL / B. 1832 ZM. 1916 / EMINENT HISTORIAN, LAWYER, ETHNOGRAPHER. This new plaque was unfortunately damaged in 2015 by a tree branch that fell during a windstorm. Through the efforts of the Polonica Institute, a new tombstone was made in 2019