Historic sites

Schaffgotsch Mausoleum in Kopice

Next to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross church in Kopice near Grodków stands the neoclassical mausoleum of Johanna and Hans Ulrich Schaffgotsch. The tomb from the second half of the 19th century remains a memento of the "Silesian Cinderella", heiress to Karol Godula's fortune.

The Silesian Cinderella

Johanna Gryczik was born in 1842 into a poor family in Poremba, today a district of Zabrze. In 1846 she entered the household of Karol Godula, one of the wealthiest industrialists of Upper Silesia. When Godula died on 6 July 1848, his principal heiress was six-year-old Johanna: she received, among other things, 4 calamine mines and 6 coal mines as well as nearly 70,000 morgs of fields and 3,500 morgs of forest. In 1859 she married Count Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch, and together they turned the inherited estate into a grand palace-and-park complex.

History of the tomb

The neoclassical tomb, a simple rectangular structure, was built beside the church of 1802–1822. Only the Schaffgotsch couple were buried there; the family's second tomb stands in the depths of the 64-hectare landscape park, behind the palace.

Both tombs were looted and desecrated in 1945. Only in 1977 did the parish priest of Kopice, together with the couple's grandson – also named Hans Ulrich Schaffgotsch – gather the remains and lay them in a common grave beside the mausoleum. Inside stand today two empty sarcophagi, and the building is gradually being restored. The site can be viewed from the outside all year round; nearby, 400 metres away, rise the ruins of the palace in Kopice.