The Eduard Herbst Palace is a neo-Renaissance villa built in
Lodz, probably according to the project of H. Majewski in 1875-1877.
It was erected by order of the famous industrialist Karol Scheibler.
The luxurious house was intended for his eldest daughter Matilda,
who married Edward Herbst.
The place for the villa was chosen
at the intersection of the current streets of Bishop V. Tymenetsky
and Pshendzalnyaya, in the immediate vicinity of Scheibler's factory
and the Ksendza Mill district, where working people lived. The
rectangular two-story building had a hipped roof with a gazebo. In
1877, a ballroom was added to the villa on the east side, with a
rectangular greenhouse adjoining it. The second outbuilding,
intended for keeping horses and storing carriages, appeared on the
territory of the palace complex in 1893. It was designed by local
architect Adolf Zelingson.
The Herbst family owned this villa
until the end of 1941. In those days, the owners' son Leon and his
wife Alexandra lived here. This married couple moved from Lodz to
Vienna in 1941. They took with them all the valuables and
furnishings. Leon did not live to see the end of World War II, his
wife returned to Lodz in peacetime, and then left for Berlin, where
her trace was lost. In October 2013, she symbolically returned to
the villa - here she was brought here, discovered in a private
collection in Lodz, of her portrait by the German impressionist
Fritz von Kamptz.
History
After the war, the villa complex
was used by various state institutions. Many years of neglect and
improper exploitation led to the devastation of the buildings. The
residence of the Herbst family was taken over by the Museum of Art
in Łódź in 1976. For almost fourteen years, a general renovation was
carried out, combined with reconstruction of the interior and other
conservation measures. In 1990, thanks to the efforts of the then
director of the Museum, Ryszard Stanisławski, the palace was
officially opened to the public as a branch of the Museum of Art in
Łódź. At the same time, in the same year, the branch was honored
with the Europa Nostra medal. It was the first medal awarded to the
facility in Poland.
In 2012, in the Herbstów complex, in the
building of the former carriage house, the Old Art Gallery was
established. The creation of this gallery made it possible to
prepare a long-awaited permanent exhibition presenting previously
unseen art collections located in the warehouses of the Museum of
Art. At the same time, in 2013, the Herbst Palace Museum became the
first Polish museum that allowed people with visual impairments to
visit the exhibition on their own. In the same year, the museum
received the prestigious Sybilla Award.
In 2015, by order of
the President of the Republic of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, the
museum was awarded the title of Monument of History.
Since
the establishment of the branch in 1990, the museum has been managed
by its manager, Dorota Berbelska.