Bruno Konczakowski
* 1881, † 1959,
He was born the son of a Cieszyn ironmonger, Józef Konczakowski. After leaving school in Cieszyn he went on to study at the well known Max Allin the Viennese Commercial School, where he began to collect relics of the past, mainly historic weaponry of which he soon became a great expert. He continued to collect after taking over the family ironmonger’s firm in 1909, which he built up to become the largest of its kind in the region. For his commercial achievements he was awarded the title of Royal Imperial supplier to the Court.
Konczakowski bought his pieces in the best known antique shops and largest auction houses in Europe. Apart from historic weaponry he began to collect other works of art, such as china, antique furniture, paintings and old timepieces. He was on friendly terms with the greatest European and world collectors of the turn of the 20th century. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy he enlarged his collection by buying up works from former imperial collections and impoverished noble families. He exhibited his treasures in his own house at Rynek 19. He was also a keen hunter – guests at his hunting lodge in Brenna included President Ignacy Mościcki. In 1938 he donated his valuable collection of Eastern weaponry to the Military Museum in Warsaw.
In 1939 he was incarcerated by the Nazis and was released from Dachau owing to interventions by his family. Then in 1945 he was considered a German and interned for a short time. He managed to rescue his collections, although after the war he restricted his activities to buying antique books from Polish antiquarians. He died during a visit to his beloved Vienna. After the war his collection was divided up on the strength of an agreement between his inheritors and the Polish Government. The largest and most valuable part of his collection ended up in the State Art Collection in the Wawel Castle in Kraków, while part of it went to the Cieszyn Museum.