The von Randow Family

Konrad von Randow

Konrad von Randow (1799–1864) was a major in the Prussian army, a Silesian nobleman and a district deputy, best known as the founder of the Neo-Gothic palace in Boguszyce (known as Schloss Randowshof) near Oleśnica.

He was born on 26 February 1799 in Boguszyce and died on 29 March (or August) 1864 at his estate. He was the son of Leopold Heinrich von Randow and Beate Henriette Eleonore von Koschembahr und Skorkau.

In the 19th century, Boguszyce (then Bogschütz) was divided into two separate units: the village and the knightly estate (landed estate). Konrad von Randow was not an official of the village itself, but a powerful landowner and district deputy who dominated the life of the local community.

His activity in Boguszyce focused on three key areas:

1. Unification and expansion of the estate Konrad inherited previously scattered properties:
- Boguszyce (the main part of the village),
- Damnik (Damnig),
- Rzędów (Randowshof).
He combined them into one enormous economic complex which, at its peak, comprised more than 880 hectares of land. He managed a vast farm estate including more than a dozen agricultural buildings, fish ponds, a watermill and processing facilities. In this way he provided employment and housing for most of the inhabitants of the local municipality.

2. Construction of the Neo-Gothic palace (Randowhof)

3. Political and administrative functions
As a nobleman and retired officer of the Prussian army (Major a.D.), Konrad held the prestigious office of district deputy (Kreisdeputierter) in Oleśnica.

This meant that:
- He represented the interests of Boguszyce and the entire region before the authorities in Oleśnica and Wrocław.
- He took part in tax, budgetary and administrative decisions concerning local infrastructure (roads and river drainage).
- As patron of the local Evangelical church, he looked after its technical condition and finances, directly influencing the everyday religious life of the community.

Thanks to the wealth and position of Konrad von Randow, Boguszyce experienced its greatest economic and architectural flourishing in the mid-19th century.

In 1828 he married Charlotte Ottilie Ida von Lieres und Wilkau. The couple had six children.

Konrad von Randow and his wife Charlotte Ottilie Ida were buried in the former Evangelical cemetery in Boguszyce. The cemetery was destroyed.

Charlotte Ottilie Ida von Lieres und Wilkau

Charlotte Ottilie Ida was born on 7 April 1810 in Stephanshayn (Szczepanów) near Świdnica. She came from the old Silesian von Lieres und Wilkau family, which owned numerous estates in Lower Silesia. She was the daughter of Karl Ferdinand Friedrich Otto von Lieres und Wilkau and the influential Charlotte Eleonore Karoline, née Riemer von Riemberg, from the Dürrjentsch (Radomierzyce) line just outside Wrocław.

It was at her mother's estate near Wrocław that, on 23 October 1828, the eighteen-year-old Charlotte married Major Konrad von Randow, eleven years her senior. The marriage united two powerful landed fortunes.
On 23 October 1828 in Dürrjentsch (today the village of Radomierzyce), she married Konrad von Randow.

As lady of Boguszyce, Charlotte Ottilie Ida enjoyed enormous wealth, but her personal life was marked by great suffering. She gave birth to six children, but sadly all four of her sons died in childhood. Charlotte had to bury all of her male descendants, which at the time meant the extinction of the family line in the male branch and the need to pass the estate to her daughters.

Charlotte Ottilie Ida von Lieres und Wilkau introduced the stag motif to Boguszyce, taken from her family coat of arms. Over time, the stag became an independent official symbol of the municipality of Boguszyce and appeared on its seal.

Charlotte outlived her husband by seventeen years and experienced a long widowhood. As a widow, she managed the household, supervised court life and supported her daughters in administering the vast estates. She enjoyed great respect from the local community until her death on 16 June 1881. In accordance with her wishes, she was buried beside her husband and the sons who had died in childhood in the churchyard cemetery in her beloved Boguszyce.

Charlotte Henriette Ida von Randow

Ida was born on 29 October 1829 at the Dürrjentsch estate near Wrocław (today Radomierzyce). She grew up while her father, Konrad von Randow, was carrying out his ambitious plan to build a magnificent Neo-Gothic palace at Boguszyce-Rzędów. On 4 November 1857, at the age of 28, Ida married Count Emil Gottlob Friedrich Wilhelm von Richthofen (1830–1882). It was a typical aristocratic alliance of the period: the groom came from the old and powerful Silesian comital family von Richthofen. Ida's husband did not possess an estate of comparable size, so after the marriage he became directly involved in his wife's affairs. He became the official tenant and administrator of the Boguszyce estate, relieving his father-in-law, and later the widow, of the burden of managing hundreds of hectares of fields, the distillery and the watermill. The couple lived in the palace in Boguszyce (known as Randowhof). Although they had no children, their marriage was regarded as harmonious, and Emil managed the estate until his premature death in the autumn of 1882. After the death of her father in 1864 and her husband in 1882, Ida became the leading figure in Boguszyce. For 51 years, from 1864 until her death in 1915, Prussian land registers listed her as an official co-owner of the palace and knightly estate (882.06 hectares, roughly equivalent to a square about 3 × 3 km). She managed it jointly with her sister Anna von Prittwitz, creating an unusual female partnership at the head of a large Silesian landed estate.

During this period Ida kept an open house at the palace in Boguszyce, receiving Silesian nobility and officials from Oleśnica and Wrocław.
She financially supported the local Evangelical community and helped maintain the timber-framed church in Boguszyce.

Ida lived to the advanced age of 85. The final years of her life coincided with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, which foreshadowed the gradual end of the world of the great Silesian aristocracy. Toward the end of her life, the ailing countess moved from the palace to nearby Oleśnica, where she had better medical care and closer contact with the urban elite. She died there on 4 February 1915, closing an important chapter in the 19th-century history of Boguszyce.

Unlike her parents, she was not buried in the village cemetery in Boguszyce. According to surviving documents, she died on 4 February 1915 in nearby Oleśnica and was buried there. Evangelical Cemetery in Oleśnica: the countess was buried in the so-called New Cemetery (German: Neuer Friedhof), located opposite the former municipal cemetery on today's Wojska Polskiego Street. It was the principal burial ground for wealthy and noble Evangelical families from the Oleśnica area. Post-war liquidation. The cemetery survived the Second World War, but in the 1960s and 1970s the authorities of the Polish People's Republic decided to remove it completely and erase traces of the former German inhabitants. Fences, the monumental entrance gate and hundreds of historic tombs were destroyed. The site of the former cemetery where Charlotte Henriette Ida was buried was converted into green space and partly occupied by residential buildings and urban infrastructure along Wojska Polskiego Street. Her physical gravestone has not survived.

Heinrich Leopold Friedrich von Randow

He was born in 1832 in Silesia (in Boguszyce) as the long-awaited male heir to the fortune accumulated by the von Randow and von Koschembahr families.

His early childhood was spent in the old manor house and family farm estate in Boguszyce, where they lived together with Konrad's mother, Beate Henriette Eleonore von Koschembahr. In old age she moved to her son's home from her estate in Ose. She died at the age of 77, one year before Heinrich.

When he was about 7–8 years old, in 1839, his father Konrad began the spectacular construction of a new family residence — the Neo-Gothic palace in Boguszyce. Heinrich spent his final years watching this monumental residence rise, a palace he was expected one day to inherit.

As the eldest son, he was expected eventually to inherit not only the newly built Neo-Gothic palace but also the vast knightly estate in Boguszyce. His sudden death deeply affected his parents.

What did Heinrich Leopold Friedrich von Randow die of?
The precise medical cause of the boy's death has not survived in generally accessible municipal or family chronicles.
In the 19th century, before antibiotics and modern medicine, child mortality was extremely high, even among the wealthiest noble families.

Heinrich's death at only 11 years of age, followed by the deaths of his three younger brothers Robert, Leo and Maximilian, was most likely caused by one of the then-incurable infectious diseases such as scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhus or tuberculosis, which regularly devastated large families.

He was buried in the family burial plot beside the historic church in Boguszyce.

He was laid to rest in the Evangelical churchyard cemetery, where his siblings and parents, Konrad and Charlotte Ottilie, were later also buried.
Because of post-war destruction, the displacement of the German population and the later neglect and removal of old Evangelical gravestones by the communist authorities, his individual 19th-century grave monument did not survive to the present day.

Robert von Randow

Robert von Randow was the second son of Major Konrad von Randow and Charlotte Ottilie Ida von Lieres und Wilkau.

His fate forms part of the tragic history of succession to the Boguszyce estate.

He was born in 1837 at the old family estate of Boguszyce near Oleśnica. He died in 1838, having lived only one year; he was still an infant.

He was the younger brother of the previously mentioned Heinrich Leopold. His sudden death deeply affected his parents and began a series of family tragedies.

It is striking that he was given only one name. His brothers received several names, which was the norm in this family. Did the family already sense at his birth that his fate would be different? Or was it simply a coincidence? Especially since his father, Konrad von Randow, also bore only one given name.

Robert was buried in the family plot in the Evangelical cemetery beside the church in Boguszyce.

Charlotte Ottilie Wilhelmine Anna von Randow

She was born on 12 November 1840 in Boguszyce near Oleśnica. She was the fourth child of Major Konrad and Charlotte.

Although she was the younger sister, the tragic and premature deaths of all four of her brothers meant that she and her elder sister, Charlotte Henriette Ida, became the sole heiresses to the vast estate.

Until the age of ten she grew up at the old estate in Boguszyce, and later in the representative palace built by her father at Boguszyce-Rzędów (Randowhof).

On 4 November 1862, at the age of 22, she married Gustav Victor von Prittwitz und Gaffron (1831–1884), a retired captain of the Royal Prussian Army. He came from one of the oldest and most extensive Silesian noble families. The wedding took place in Boguszyce.

Her husband died relatively young, on 3 August 1884 in Oleśnica. Anna became a widow at the age of 44 and remained widowed for another 45 years.

Throughout her adult life Anna remained closely connected with the family estate, which at its peak comprised more than 882 hectares.

Joint rule (1867–1915):
For almost half a century she was listed in Prussian tax records and land registers as an official co-owner of the palace and knightly estate in Boguszyce, sharing the title with her elder sister, Countess Ida von Richthofen.
While her sister lived in the palace, Anna, as a resident of nearby Oleśnica, was actively involved in the administration and official affairs of the estate.

Sole rule (1915–1921):
After the death of her sister Ida in 1915, during the First World War, Anna became the sole independent owner of the entire Boguszyce estate complex.

Like her sister, Anna faced the serious problem of having no direct male heir who could preserve the von Randow name and estate in Boguszyce. She therefore made a strategic decision to transfer the property.

In 1921 she leased the estate to cavalry captain Eduard Waldemar von Randow (1876–1945), who came from another related branch of the family, from Wilków. She secured full succession for him, so that in 1926 — or ultimately through a testamentary bequest after her death — Waldemar became the official lord of Randowhof Palace, thereby preventing the property from passing into unrelated hands.

Anna lived to an exceptionally advanced age. She died on 7 July 1929 in Oleśnica at the age of 88. With her death, the era of the direct children of the palace builder, Konrad von Randow, definitively came to an end.

Like her elder sister Ida, she was not buried in the village cemetery in Boguszyce, but in the main municipal cemetery for noble families, the so-called New Cemetery (Neuer Friedhof), on today's Wojska Polskiego Street in Oleśnica.
This cemetery was completely removed by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic in the 1960s and 1970s. German gravestones and family tombs were razed to the ground.

Leo Bogislaw Dieu-donné von Randow

Leo Bogislaw Dieu-donné von Randow was born on 2 January 1844 at the family estate in Boguszyce near Oleśnica. He was the fifth child and third son of Prussian Major Konrad von Randow and his wife Charlotte Ottilie Ida, née von Lieres und Wilkau. His short life formed part of the series of tragedies that affected the male line of the family at the palace in Boguszyce.

The names given to him carried powerful meaning — "Leo Bogusław, God's Gift of Randow" — and probably reflected the immense joy and hope of his parents. After losing their second son Robert (d. 1838) and eldest son Heinrich (d. 1843), they saw the newborn boy as another chance to continue the family line and preserve the surname.

Sadly, those hopes proved futile. Leo Bogislaw died on 17 March 1849 in Boguszyce at only five years of age.

He was buried in the family plot in the Evangelical churchyard cemetery in Boguszyce, beside his deceased brothers.

Because of post-war destruction, his individual gravestone has not survived. The death of the five-year-old 'Gift from God' was a devastating blow to the whole family and left his parents with only one surviving son, Maximilian Guido.

Maximilian Guido von Randow

Maximilian Guido von Randow was the sixth and youngest child of Major Konrad von Randow and Charlotte Ottilie Ida, née von Lieres und Wilkau.

He was born on 22 October 1847 at the family estate of Boguszyce near Oleśnica.

He was born at a time when three of his elder brothers — Heinrich, Robert and Leo — were already buried in the family tomb.

As the only surviving son, he became his parents' last hope of continuing the family line and preserving the von Randow name for the Boguszyce estate.

Sadly, fate proved merciless. Maximilian Guido died on 28 September 1852 in Boguszyce at only four years of age, less than a month before his fifth birthday.

His death finally sealed the tragic fate of the male succession of this branch of the family in Boguszyce.

He was buried beside his brothers and grandmother in the Evangelical cemetery next to the timber-framed church in Boguszyce.