Franz Anton von Sporck
Franz Anton von Sporck, Count (German: Franz Anton Reichsgraf von Sporck, Czech: František Antonín hrabě Špork) (9 March 1662 in Lysá nad Labem or Heřmanův Městec – 30 March 1738 in Lysá nad Labem) was a German-speaking literatus and patron of the arts who lived in the province of Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic.
His father had been born in rather humble circumstances in Westphalia, but was rewarded handsomely for distinguished military leadership in the service of the Habsburg dynasty during the Thirty Years' War.
It was a habit of the Habsburg emperors to reward favorites with lands confiscated from dispossessed Protestant Bohemian nobles who refused to convert to Catholicism after the defeat of the Estates of Bohemia at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620.
His title of Statthalter, which indicates merely that he held a seat on the Statthalterei, a committee of nobles that served as the highest local civil authority in the province of Bohemia at the time, has led to confusion in the English-language literature.
In 1694 the Prague physician J. F. Love confirmed the healing properties of the spring that originated on the left side of the river in the southern portion of the estate of Choustníkovo Hradiště.
Count Sporck's intellectual interests led him to found a branch of Freemasonry in Bohemia, but they also had the effect of arousing the suspicion of the Habsburg ecclesiastical authorities for his flirtations with Jansenist philosophy and anti-Jesuitical polemicism.
Traditions of French horn playing were introduced in Bohemia after Count Sporck brought the instrument back with him from a visit to the court of Versailles in the spring of 1681.
Count Sporck did not provide financial support for the opera company beyond permitting the impresario to use the theater in his Prague palace free of charge, however, nor did he attend performances after the confiscation of his library in 1729.
The Prague nobility gradually lost the interest in the Denzio productions, his company suffered serious financial reversals, and finally it collapsed in bankruptcy in 1735 with appeals to Count Sporck for assistance contemptuously dismissed.
It is possible that this connection led Bach to try to cultivate Count Sporck, who was passionately interested in German poetry and even employed the poet Gottfried Benjamin Hancke permanently as a member of his household.
