History of the Hildprandt Family

Per angusta, Ad Augusta – Through difficulties to honors – is the motto of the noble family that found its home in Blatna. The Barons of Hildprandt, Tyrolean nobility originally hailing from the Upper Austrian municipality of Ottenhausen, received their nobility in 1530 from Emperor Charles V and in 1579 were accepted into the Imperial nobility. In 1629 they became Bohemian nobles and were later elevated to Barons. Jan Reinhard became an imperial counselor under Rudolf II and performed supervision in the accounting office of the Bohemian Crown.

In 1798, this family acquired the Blatna estate, and the first of the Hildprandts to settle here in 1799 was Baron Václav Karel (Wenzel Karl) Hildprandt with his wife Marie Anna McMurrough Cavanagh of Ballyane. His eldest son significantly improved the Blatna castle, had a brick bridge built, built sheepfolds, a riding school, and established an English park and an artificial lake in the game preserve. The tutor of another successor of the family, Ferdinand, was the famous scientist Jan Evangelista Purkyně. In 1845, after Ferdinand's death, Robert became the lord of the Blatna estate; his mother and Ferdinand's wife was Karolina, born Nostitz. Robert was also publicly engaged, becoming a member of the provincial parliament (Landtag) and a lifelong member of the House of Lords.

When he died in 1884, his son Ferdinand, who married Josefina, Countess Thun, became the heir of the family. He was responsible for the construction of the school in Blatna and the establishment of the Strakonice – Blatna – Březnice railway, which fundamentally influenced the life of Blatna and its surroundings. During the First World War, he was the mayor of Blatna. His son Bedřich (Friedrich) “Fido” married Cornelia “Nella” Veverková, daughter of the then Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States, in 1936. After the communist coup, the Hildprandt property was confiscated, and although the family received a promise that they could stay at the castle for life, they were forcibly evicted in 1952. According to the decision at the time, they were not allowed to live closer than eleven kilometers from Blatna. The Hildprandts and their two daughters (fourteen-year-old Josefína and five-year-old Jana) settled in Rojice; Fido worked in the power plant in Písek and Nella taught foreign languages.

When the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I visited Czechoslovakia in 1959, he asked President Novotný for the legal emigration of the Hildprandts to Ethiopia. The Emperor knew Mrs. Cornelia's father, Dr. Ferdinand Veverka, from earlier diplomatic negotiations. Veverka's castle in Dolní Lukavice had also been confiscated after 1948, and after emigrating to Ethiopia, he drew the monarch's attention to the fate of his daughter and her family. In Addis Ababa, Bedřich Hildprandt was entrusted with the supervision of the imperial stud farm, and Nella worked as an interpreter at the local UN headquarters. After the communist coup and the fall of the Emperor, Fido and Nella moved to the Balearic Islands in 1975, and later to Gauting near Munich, where Fido died in 1981.

In 1992, Nella returned to Blatna with her daughter Jana and her husband, Greek architect Spyridon Germenis. At first, the family lived in the castle, but eventually moved to the reconstructed Empire house in the castle park, where Mrs. Cornelia's husband's brother, Baron Jindřich Hildprandt, a prominent sculptor, once lived.

After the deaths of Nella and Spyridon in 2014, the castle passed into the ownership of Stephanos Germenis-Hildprandt, who currently manages it. Jana continues to be actively involved in the daily activities associated with running the castle.