Gacionys Dvaras was built around 1870 by Jan Rosen , a descendant of the Von Rosen Family whose name was very well known in Germany, and Scandinavia and even during the time of the Crusades around 1100 AD.
Gacionys Dvaras is the only manor of this kind still belonging to the same family in Lithuania and in the Baltic States.
This manor survived two world wars, and 70 years of Communist rule and is still there !
After a complete renovation, and modernization in 2001, we welcome guests from all over the world for an enchanting experience.
In 2015 on the 11th and 12th of July [...]Gacionys Dvaras was built around 1870 by Jan Rosen , a descendant of the Von Rosen Family whose name was very well known in Germany, and Scandinavia and even during the time of the Crusades around 1100 AD.
Gacionys Dvaras is the only manor of this kind still belonging to the same family in Lithuania and in the Baltic States.
This manor survived two world wars, and 70 years of Communist rule and is still there !
After a complete renovation, and modernization in 2001, we welcome guests from all over the world for an enchanting experience.
In 2015 on the 11th and 12th of July the National Lithuanian TV, Channel TVB, ran a feature program about the manor.
The fomer polish president Bronislaw Komorowski was a family acquaintance and they hunted or stayed at Gacionys manor house regularly.
Also the famous writer Joseph Weyssenhoff , who wrote the best seller “ Sobol i Panna “, (“ the Sable and the Girl .”) was a regular visitor.
Jan Von Rosen was a farming engineer, and in addition to getting revenue from real estate in Vilnius and in the Baltic region, he developped a very modern fertilizer production taking advantage of the very rich black soil of his 2000 acres of farming land.
The farming activity included, horse breeding, dairy products and crops.
Gacionys Manor just before the Nazi came in.
In 1940 Gacionys House was occupied by the German army and in 2001 some remains of this ocupation were still there when we found a German helmet, with a Swastika and a German gun in the garden when we were creating the park.
These german relics are now in the Rokiskis museum.
After the german retreated in 1944 the Soviet Army came and under Stalin, nationalized Gacionys Manor and its surrouding land, creating a collective farm ( Kolkhoze) that included the manor’s tenants.
Hopefully the house was heated and people lived in it, even though it was not the kind of guests we would appreciate today ;o)
The forest surrounding Gacionys was no longer used for hunting but for timber, and most of it then belonged to the newly created Lithuanian Republic hands.
During the 1950’s accomodation for the farmers and the managers of the new collective farm were created within the manor, by building new walls in the previous kitchen and master bedroom.
Gacionys Manor just before WWII
In the 1970’s, the manor house changed again when the the managers and farmers moved to more convenient housing in Juzintai, and instead a grocery shop was created.
Former employees of the Rosen family were able to come in the house and have a beer in the living room which had been turned into a Bar.
Fortunately for us , Mrs Lucina, a maid from the manor house lived upstairs at that time.
She was born in 1920 at the Gacionys Manor and had never left the plakce, working in the kolkhoze, then helping in the shop and finally living by herself upstairs rasing while raising hens downstairs and growing some vegetables in a small plot.
In 1995, when my father and I first paid a visit to Gacionys Manor which for me was a “fantasy” my grandfather has ust talked about over and over, we actually met Mrs Lucina, who could not believe she was seeing my grandfather a man she remembere only as a teenager.
The roof had holes in many places, the upstairs floor had rotted, and windows were held together with tape.
The roof was quicly restored ( after selling part of the forest ) and then a few years later we began to modernize the manor
HISTORY OF THE VON ROSEN FAMILY
The von Rosen family is a noble Latvian family , known since the 13th century , a family which spread in the Baltic provinces, Sweden and the Russian Empire .
The founder of the family, a knight named Theodoricus Ropa was a native of Lower Saxony. He left to to fight in Livonia ( Nothern Latvia ) in 1203 AD with the Sword Knights .
The family received its coat of arms, a shield with three roses in 1296 AD.
Robert von Rosen (1595-1630) was accepted into the Swedish nobility and naturalized in the early seventeenth century.
Then the Rosens become barons and earls in Sweden.
The Rosen Barons in Livonia, their titles and privileges were recognized in the eighteenth century by the Assemblies of the nobility of the Government of Estonia and Latvia , when these territories passed from Sweden to the Russian Empire .
THE ROSEN FAMILY
Robert von Rosen (1595-1630)
Marshal Conrad Rosen (1628-1715)
Johann von Rosen, head of the Estonian Knighthood (1598-1600)
Count Reinhold von Rosen (1604-1667), lieutenant general of the French army
Conrad Rosen (1628-1715), Marshal of France
Gustav Friedrich von Rosen (1688-1769), General Livonian serving Sweden and military governor of Finland
Baroness Marie-Sophie von Rosen (1673-1740), daughter of Marshal of France
Woldemar von Rosen (1742-1790), General of the Russian Imperial Army who distinguished himself in the Caucasus
Baron Johann von Rosen (1752-1817), General of the Russian Imperial Army, participated in the Russo-Turkish War
Gustaf Fredrik von Rosen (1758-1815), Marshal of the Court of Sweden
Baron Georg Friedrich Otto von Rosen (1767-1851) (born and died in Tallinn ), General of the Russian imperial army, military governor of Sevastopol
Count Axel von Rosen (1773-1834)
Baron Johann Andreas Magnus von Rosen (1773-1829), an officer of the Napoleonic Wars in the Russian army and fought at the siege of Baku
Baron Georg Andreas von Rosen (1776-1841), General of the Russian Imperial Army
Baron Alexander von Rosen (1779-1832), General of the Russian Imperial Army
Baron Otto von Rosen (1782-1831), General of the Russian imperial army , participates in the Napoleonic wars and the war in Persia
Robert von Rosen (1782-1848), General of the Russian Imperial Army, twin brother of Otto von Rosen (1782-1831)
Baron Alexis von Rosen (1812-1867), General of the Russian imperial army, war hero of the Caucasus
Baron Friedrich von Rosen (1834-1902), paleontologist
Baron Andreas von Rosen (1799-1884)
Count Björn von Rosen (1905-1989), Swedish poet
Count Clarence von Rosen (1867-1955), Swedish officer, member of the IOC ( International Olympic Comitee, en excellent horse jumping rider and reintroduced horse riding at the Olympic Games- a friend of Pierre de Coubertin)
Count Carl Gustaf von Rosen (1909-1977), Swedish aviator
Countess Elsa von Rosen (1904-1991), wife morganatic Prince Carl Bernadotte divorcing in 1951
Elsa-Marianne von Rosen (1924), ballerina and choreographer Swedish
Eric von Rosen (1879-1948), ethnogra pher and Swedish explorer
Roman von Rosen (1847-1921), Russian ambassador
Viktor von Rosen (1849-1908), orientalist
Countess Mary von Rosen (1887-1967), co-founder of the Societas Sanctae Birgittae in Swede
LITHUANIAN BRANCH OF THE VON ROSEN FAMILY
Rosen Antoni (1922- 2015), born in Manor Gacionys (Gacionys Dvaras)
Piotr Rosen (1947-), born in Warsaw , son of the previous
Bogdan Rosen (1982-), born in Paris , son of the previous
Jerzy Von Rosen (1976-), born in Paris, son of Piotr Rosen
Lea Rosen (2009), born in Lisieux , daughter of Igor Rosen
Jagoda Rosen (2012), born in Lisieux , daughter of Igor Rosen
Anton Rosen (2013) born in Paris, son of Bogdan Rosen
MANORS-CASTLES
Gacionys field (today Juzintai in Lithuania ), in the family since 1780
Kiltsi
Lückholm Manor in Estonia , again in possession of the family
Castle Mehntack (now Mäetaguse in Estonia )
Örbyhus Castle in Sweden
Rockelstad Castle in Sweden
Roop Castle (now in Straupe in Latvia )
Wattel Castle (now Vatla in Estonia)www.manoirvonrosen.wordpress.com