Adam Karol Czartoryski

Adam Karol
Coat of arms
consort Josette Naime Calil
Family Czartoryski
Father Prince Augustyn Józef Czartoryski
Mother Princess Maria de los Dolores of Borbon y Orleans
Born (1940-01-02) 2 January 1940
Seville, Spain

Adam Karol Jezus Maria Józef Franciszek Salezy and all the Saints Czartoryski, his Spanish name Adán Carlos Jesús María José Francisco de Sales y todos los Santos Czartoryski-Bórbon Krasinski y Orléans (born 2 January 1940 in Seville, Spain) is a Polish-Spanish aristocrat, the founder and president of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation, in Cracow.

He is the Head of the Polish House of Czartoryski, descendants of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and he is the 14th direct descendant of this line.[1]

Adam Karol was born in Seville on the 2 of January 1940. His parents fled Poland at the beginning of the 1939 German invasion and lived in Spain, his mother's native country. After his father's death, he remained in Spain where he was educated. Later, he lived for a time in England and in Ireland before returning to Spain when his maternal first cousin, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, came to the throne.

During the sixties while in Dublin, he became involved with racing cars of different modalities and classes. From Sport Cars to Formula III and was involved both in Circuit Racing and Hill Climbs in Ireland, as well as in Britain and some European Circuits for sometime.

He was also interested in martial arts and started training in Kempo Karate with John McSweeney, a direct pupil of the famous Hawaiian Master Ed Parker. Returning to Spain he continued training and he became a 5 Dan Black Belt in Karate,as well as he contributed on the organisation and creation of the Spanish Karate Federation. He was vice President of the World Union of Karate Do Organisations, the World Karate Federation and also the European Karate Union for over two decades.

In 1975, at the death of his grandmother Princess Maria Ludwika Czartoryska, the Hotel Lambert was sold by the heirs. This family residence in Paris, bought during the exile in 1842, was the rallying point of the Polish émigrés and represented the political and cultural resistance movement. Adam Karol kept the family portraits and miniatures.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the Polish High Court returned to Adam Karol the Czartoryski Museum and Library with its important collections brought to Krakow by his great-grandfather, Prince Wladyslaw, in 1876. Its most important treasure is The Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci. He instituted the Princes Czartoryski Foundation to run and administer the Museum Collections. In recognition of his Grand Gesture he was awarded with the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

In 1992 during the Universal EXPO in Seville, Spain, he was chosen by the Polish Government to head the Polish Pavilion, recognising, for the first time, his Polish identity.

Nowadays Adam Karol's task is to maintain the new museum for future generations as a testimony of patriotism and national identity, through the exhibition of his family's collection.

Family

Adam Karol is the only surviving child of Prince Jozef August and Princess Dolores of Borbon y Orleans. His younger brother, Ludwik, died in infancy. He is a cousin of the royal families of Spain, Brazil and the Two Sicilies. In 1977 Adam Karol married Nora Picciotto, with whom he had one daughter, Tamara Czartoryska (b. 1978). They divorced in 1986. In 2000 he married Josette Naime Calil.

Ancestry

Selected Awards and Honours

Selected Sports Medals

Other Selected Activities

References

  1. ↑ http://www.czartoryski.org/familyhistory.htm

External links

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