Interesy Leona Alfonsa de Schillera-Schildenfelda
Enterprises of Leon Alfons de Schiller-Schildenfeld

Summary/Abstract: Little is known about Leon Schiller’s ancestors. Biographers say that they came from Carinthia, which until the First World War belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1745 Empress Maria Theresa ennobled Johann Matthäus Schiller, a postmaster from Loitsch, investing him with the cognomen “von Schildenfeld”. In 1772 the Schillers settled in Galicia, and soon became Polonised. At the beginning of the 1890s, Leon Alfons Schiller-Schildenfeld, Leon’s father, moved from Zaleszczyki to Cracow where he founded his firm, Dom AgencyjnoKomisowy. And this is pretty much all that was known about his activities. A postcard sent by him to a well-known French engraver on 13 September 1900 has become an inspiration for research that would add to this scant knowledge. It turns out that Leon Alfons Schiller was a valued business partner. In 1899, along with a well-known merchant and rich industrialist, Stanisław Gurgul, he bought a defunct factory of gingerbread and food products at Jarosław. In November of 1905, he formed a commercial company with Bolesław Bilikiewicz, which carried out its business until 1913. He hoped that his son would become its coowner. However, despite the fact that Leon Schiller completed the Course for High School Graduates at the Trade Academy in Cracow (Kurs Abiturientów Akademii Handlowej w Krakowie) on 30 June 1912 and underwent the respective on-the-job training, he did not want to take over his father’s business. From an early age, he was fascinated with theatre. In February of 1909, during his stay in Paris, he met Edward Gordon Craig and published his essay “Two Theatres” in Craig’s periodical, The Mask. He performed as a singer in cabarets of Cracow, Warsaw, and Paris. He left Cracow for good in 1917 and took the position of musical director at the Polski Theatre in Warsaw, where he debuted as a director on 22 December 1917. Leon Alfons de Schiller-Schildenfeld gained gratitude of the Cracow public as a founder and president of an insurance organisation that served the needs of the poor. During the First World War, he took on the responsibilities of the City Provisions director and became a member of the management board of Kasa Kupiecka. At the end of his life he moved with his wife to Wroczyn, a village owned by their daughter’s husband, Tadeusz Gustaw Jackowski, where he passed away on 3 July 1931.

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