A 16th-century ring once belonging to King Sigismund I the Old — looted during the Second World War by German soldiers — has been located in a museum in southwestern Germany. The Polish government is now formally seeking its restitution, calling the artefact an “irreplaceable cultural treasure” and a part of Princess Izabela Czartoryska’s famed royal collection.

The discovery was confirmed by Piotr Jędrzejowski, spokesperson for Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. 

“In March 2023, we submitted a restitution request to the management of Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim regarding the ring of King Sigismund I from the Czartoryska collection. This was followed by a formal application to the German Foreign Ministry in October 2024, via our embassy in Berlin,” Jędrzejowski told Rzeczpospolita.

He emphasised that each case of looted heritage is examined on a case-by-case basis, regardless of whether the artefact is held in public or private hands. 

“The process of restitution requires thorough research and historical reconstruction of the object’s provenance. We employ all legal avenues available to secure the return of cultural property to Poland,” he added.

The ring in question is currently part of the jewellery collection at the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg. Questions have been submitted to the museum about the circumstances of its acquisition and its willingness to repatriate the item. As of now, no response has been received.

Should the ring be returned, it will become part of the collection at the National Museum in Kraków, in line with a 2016 agreement signed when the Polish state purchased the Czartoryski collection. That deal included rights to artworks from Princess Izabela’s holdings that remain missing.

The ring’s post-war journey was first traced by Professor Ewa Letkiewicz, an art historian at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. In 2007, she published her findings in the Bulletin of Art History, where she reconstructed the ring’s provenance and noted its appearance in the Schmuckmuseum collection.

According to Letkiewicz, the ring entered the German museum in 1963 as part of a larger acquisition of 180 antique rings from a private collector named Heinz Battke. Intriguingly, she also discovered that the ring was temporarily exhibited in the early 2000s at a museum in Częstochowa — a sister city of Pforzheim.

“Dr Fritz Falk, a former curator at the Schmuckmuseum, informed me that the ring was acquired for the Battke collection sometime between 1954 and 1962. Its earlier provenance remains unclear. Dr Falk believes the ring is of Italian origin, with visual counterparts appearing in several Renaissance portraits,” Professor Letkiewicz noted.

The case adds another layer to the ongoing, and often fraught, efforts to recover thousands of artworks stolen from Poland during the German occupation — a mission that continues to this day, over 80 years later.

The tale of King Sigismund I’s ring is as rich and intricate as the jewel itself. Professor Letkiewicz believes the ring originally belonged to Queen Bona Sforza, the formidable consort of Sigismund I. In a letter to her daughter, Isabella – then Queen of Hungary – Bona mentioned having given the ring to Sigismund upon his death, as a deeply personal gesture of mourning.

According to Letkiewicz’s research, the ring resurfaced centuries later during an 18th-century exploration of the royal crypts beneath Wawel Cathedral. In 1791, Tadeusz Czacki, a prominent Polish historian and nobleman, led an expedition into the cathedral’s underground vaults, unearthing a trove of royal artefacts. 

Among the items he removed was the very ring of King Sigismund, along with a gold chain bearing a cross. These treasures were then incorporated into Czacki’s private collection in Poryck (now Pavlivka, Ukraine).

Following Czacki’s death, the ring changed hands once again. In 1813, it was acquired by Princess Izabela Czartoryska, one of the great cultural patrons of her era. She placed the ring in the Royal Casket, a purpose-built chest crafted in Warsaw in 1800 by a master artisan named Jannasch. 

The box – a stately construction measuring 52 x 36 x 30 cm, complete with hidden drawers – was meant to hold relics of Polish royal history. Czartoryska, who founded Poland’s first museum at the Temple of the Sibyl in Puławy, used the casket to house priceless symbols of the former Commonwealth’s grandeur.

After Poland regained independence in 1918, the casket was transferred to the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. But with the shadow of war looming in 1939, museum director Marian Kukiel ordered the evacuation of the nation’s most precious artefacts, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci. 

The Royal Casket was hidden—sealed behind a wall in a palace in Sieniawa, southeastern Poland.

That hiding place, however, did not remain secret for long. On the night of 17–18 September 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, German forces, acting on a tip-off, uncovered the concealed vault and looted its contents. Many of the casket’s royal artefacts have never been recovered.

Source: Rzeczpospolita

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Izabela Czartoryska Royal Casket

Tomasz Modrzejewski