RAKONIEWICE

Located in the Poznań Lake District, situated south-west of Poznań, 12 km south of Grodzisk-Wielkopolski, Rakoniewice have plausibly derived its name from a mediaeval village whose owner was Rakoń, a comes. He had received the local estates in recognition of his wartime merits from Prince Bolesław the Pious (d. 1279). In 1869–1872, Robert Koch, the physician and bacteriologist, later awarded the Nobel Prize (1905) for his tuberculosis research, served his practice there.

History

In 1662, Krzysztof Grzymułtowski incorporated a town named Freystadt for Protestant refugees from Silesia. Since the new name was not accepted, the earlier one, dating back to the locality’s rural time, was resumed. Rakoniewice was re-incorporated in 1696.
The Second Partition of Poland, 1793, started the Prussian rule period for Rakoniewice. In the former half of 19th century, the locals traded in leeches. This rather unusual practice used leeches imported from Russia. In the winter season, special ponds were used to store them, and horse blood was applied as a feed. The leeches were sold to West-European markets as a recommended panacea used in the medical blood removal practice. The town was also known as a local cereals trading hub and a coffee grinder producing site. In 1807–1815, the town functioned as part of the Duchy of Warsaw.
In 1919, following the other Prussian domination period, Rakoniewice returned to Poland. The Nazi occupation time marked displacements to the Generalgouvernement and almost 200 fatal victims of the Hitlerist terror. Today, Rakoniewice is a services and trade centre of its farming region.

Worth Seeing

Four 18th-century arcaded houses have survived at the market. Then on goes a wattle-and-daub former Evangelical church from the latter half of 18th century, now housing, since 1974, a Wielkopolska Firemanship Museum, one of the oldest such institutions in Poland. 2009 saw the unveiling at the market of a fountain whose form relates to the local Museum: the water is poured into its pool by two firemen. East of the market, you can see a St. Martin and St. Stanislaus’ church, dated late 18th/early 19th c., rebuilt 1914–1917. There is too a neo-renaissance Czarnecki palace of the nineteenth century, and a landscape park adjacent to it.