Kelmė Manor is a former residential manor in

Kelmė Kelmė (; ; Yiddish: קעלם) is a city in northwestern Lithuania, a historical region of Samogitia. It has a population of 8,206 and is the administrative center of the Kelmė District Municipality. Name Kelmė's name is likely derived from t ...

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

. Currently it is occupied by Kelmė Regional Museum. Of the nine buildings on the 15.2 hectare estate, three are used for the display of museum artifacts.

History

The Kelmė Estate dates back to the 15th century, when it was owned by the

Grand Duke of Lithuania This is a list of Lithuanian monarchs who ruled Lithuania from its inception until the fall of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1795. The Lithuanian monarch bore the title of Grand duke, Grand Duke, with the exception of Mindaugas, who was crown ...

. It was passed to Jonas Kontautas at the end of the century, then to the Polish Gruzewski family in 1591. They actively supported the

Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...

, establishing a Protestant parish in Kelmė in 1596, and they built the Protestant church in 1622 and founded the first school in Kelmė. They also established an extensive library and archive of Reformation history, which includes about 5000 rare volumes, as well as

numismatic Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inclu ...

collections including Greek and Roman coins. The manor was built about 1780 and was owned for many years by the Grużewski family. In 1831, Kelmė Estate was at the centre of an unsuccessful rebellion against Czarist Russia. Work was done on the manor in 1892 by architect F. Lehmann, and a project to establish a park was prepared in 1898, and in 1892 Bronislavas Gruzewski established a butter manufacturing company Biruta. In 1940 the estate was taken over, and the owners, Gabriele Grużewska and her daughters Sofia and Adolfina, were expelled and eventually exiled to

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. Baron von Haren occupied the estate during the German occupation, and in 1941 the archive was moved to the Aušros museum in

Šiauliai Šiauliai ( ; ) is a city in northern Lithuania, the List of cities in Lithuania, country's fourth largest city and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, sixth largest city in the Baltic States, with a population of 112 581 in 202 ...

, from which it was transferred to the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in 1952. After the war the manor was used as a school, the Centre of Soviet Economy of Aviculture. A historic barn on the estate was restored and renovated as part of the museum and opened in January 2010, funded by €289,877 from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism in Lithuania.

Gallery

File:Kelmės dvaras 1938.jpg, Kelmė Manor (1938) File:Kelmes dvaras priekis 2013 IMG 7135.jpg, Kelmė Manor (front) File:Kelmes dvaras svirnas 2013 IMG 7136.jpg, Barn File:Kelmes dvaras vartai 2013 IMG 7139.jpg, Gates

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelme Manor Manor houses in Lithuania Baroque architecture in Lithuania