zámek Osvračín Chateau

The manor house in Osvračín stands in the middle of the village of the same name in the Domažlice district. It is a two-winged single-storey building from the eighteenth century. It belongs to the municipality, which has its town hall there and uses it for cultural purposes. Since nineteen ninety-three, the manor house has been protected as a cultural monument.

The local noble residence has a long history. The old Osvračín castle was empty at the end of the fifteenth century and belonged to the Švihov estates. In fifteen oh four, Osvračín was inherited by Bohunka of Lomnice, widow of Půta of Rýzmberok. After her, her son Jindřich took it over, and he sold it to Jan Vidršpergár of Vidršperek.

In fifteen forty-four, the estate belonged to Markéta Kočovská of Křimice. Later, Ofka is mentioned and in fifteen seventy-nine Anna Kočovská. Around that time, the Kočovský family built a new fortified manor house in the village. From fifteen eighty-five to sixteen nineteen, it was held by Jiří of Kočov. After him, it was inherited by Anna Černínová, born of Kočov, together with her four sons. Osvračín fell to Humprech Černín, but he soon died. His brother Drslav did not have enough money to pay off the others, so in sixteen twenty-five Jiří Černín took over the estate.

After his death in sixteen sixty-nine, his uncle Jiří Václav took over the property. However, he bequeathed it to his children contrary to the wishes of the deceased. Vilém Václav, the eldest son of Jiří Černín, challenged the will and won the case in sixteen eighty-eight. Six years later, he sold the estate to Count Heřman Jakub Černín.

František Josef Černín had the fortified manor house rebuilt as a baroque manor house according to a design by architect František Maxmilián Kaňka. In seventeen thirty-four, the knight Jan Josef Hildprant of Ottenhausen purchased the estate. From seventeen sixty-one, Osvračín was again an independent estate and belonged to Hildprant's descendants until eighteen hundred. It is possible that the baroque manor house was actually built by the Hildprants. Over the next four decades, six owners succeeded each other. Eventually, the manor house was acquired by the glassware entrepreneur Ondřej Ziegler and he renovated it in the neo-gothic style.

The manor house had a library, which was built up by the Zieglers, the Packs, and the nobility from Deberg. It had over fifteen hundred books and one hundred ten volumes of sheet music, mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More than four hundred books were published in the Netherlands. German predominated, but English, French and Italian also appeared, Czech only rarely. The majority consisted of fiction, mainly translations of the world's leading authors of the time, as well as language textbooks and dictionaries. Among the sheet music, piano scores were the most frequent.