Ostend beach - Stanisław Wilhelm Lilpop

He is one of eight children born to Stanisław Lilpop and Joanna née Petzold. His great-grandfather came to Warsaw from Graz (Austria) in 1789, where he founded a watchmaking company (which existed until 1939). His father was not only one of the country's wealthiest Polish entrepreneurs, but also a patron of the arts and an art collector. Stanisław Wilhelm Lilpop studied at the Faculty of Commerce at Riga Technical University between 1884 and 1889. He inherited a considerable fortune from his father, valued at 320,000 rubles in silver, as well as shares in machine factories and sugar refineries. In 1909, he sold most of the land he had inherited from Brwinów, and with the money obtained in 1910, he set off on a safari to Kenya. The aim of this expedition was not only to obtain hunting trophies (some of which can still be found in the Stawisko Museum in Podkowa Lesna), but also to return with a huge collection (several dozen albums) of excellent photographs, in which he was able to capture the rich culture, rituals and no-longer-existing costumes of the local population. At the time of Poland's independence in 1920, Lilpop succeeded in convincing the authorities to run a railroad line through the Podkowa Leśna region, and at the same time set up a company under the name of “Miasto Ogród Podkowa Leśna”. In 1925, he transferred the districts of the future town as a contribution in kind to a joint-stock company, of which he obtained 40%. He left part of the area to himself, where in 1928 he built the magnificent villa “Stawisko” for his daughter Anna and her husband Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. As a passionate photographer, Stanisław Lilpop left behind a rich collection of colorful photographs taken using the autochrome method. Some of his photographs were presented in 2015 at an exhibition at the House of History in Warsaw. Lilpop committed suicide at the Hotel Bristol, and is buried in the Brwinów cemetery. He inspired the character of Monsieur Liebe in Józef Weyssenhoff's novel Soból i Panna. He is also the hero of Albena Grabowska's novel Stulecie Winnych. His role in the series of the same name was played by Adam Ferency.