A member of the noted polonised
Courland family, the Platers, Władysław Plater was a son of Kazimierz Plater and Apolinara Żaba. He took part in the
November 1830 Uprising against
Imperial Russia. His older cousin,
Emilia Plater, played a significant role in the struggle during which she died. His role in the armed insurrection forced him into exile. In 1832 he was one of several figures who succeeded in influencing British public opinion in favour of the Polish cause. While in exile in
Paris among Poland's
Great Emigration, he founded the journal
Le Polonais (1833–36). In 1863 Plater was again politically active in the next Polish
Uprising against the
Russian yoke. To mark the centenary of the
Bar Confederation, in 1868, Plater had a column erected surmounted by a Polish eagle with the Latin inscription, "
Magna res libertas" (the great cause of liberty) in the Swiss town of
Rapperswil, on the shore of
Lake Zurich. Two years later, on 23 October 1870, he founded a
Polish National Museum having taken out a 99-year lease on Rapperswil Castle. It was to become a major repository for Polish historic memorabilia, a library and archive based on donations and legacies from members of the Great Emigration. Barely a century later, the collection, previously returned to
Warsaw in independent Poland, was set alight in 1944 by the German occupiers as part of their systematic decimation of Polish and Jewish heritage on Polish soil, in a resurgence of their earlier
Kulturkampf. Plater met and married the actress,
Karoline Bauer in Rapperswil. ==See also==