1858, the adopted daughter and sole heir of zinc mine industrialist Karl Godulla and thus became one of the most important industrialists in Prussia. Their descendants, the Upper Silesian line, or Koppitz branch of the family, owned this huge business empire until 1945. The Lower Silesian line, with its large possessions in and around the Riesen- and Iser Gebirge (Giant and Jesera Mountains), was considered the second wealthiest family of the region before World War I. In the 1930s, the last lord of the Warmbrunn-Kynast estate, Friedrich (1883–1947), owned 27,668 hectares, the sixth largest enterprise in Prussia. In 1923 Anna Schaffgotsch inherited Niederleis Castle in Lower Austria, which is still owned by her descendants. In 1935, Averell Harriman, chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, tasked Felix von Schaffgotsch (of Austria) with finding a location for a Union Pacific "resort investment" in the western United States. In January 1936, Felix notified Harriman that he had found a location outside Ketchum, Idaho, that would soon become the site of Union Pacific's Sun Valley Resort. During the resort's construction, he returned to Austria to recruit instructors for the Sun Valley ski school, who he confided to actor David Niven were, "all Nazis." Felix Schaffgotsch returned to the U.S. in time for the resort's opening, and remained a central figure in Sun Valley's early development. He returned to Europe after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and entered the Waffen-SS division Florian Geyer as a first-lieutenant. He was killed fighting in the Caucasus on 11 August 1942, aged 38. After World War II, most members of the Schaffgotsch family were expelled from their homes because they were ethnic Germans, and the Communists confiscated their properties. Castles References Sources U. Schmilewski, Schaffgotsch, in: Neue Deutsche Biographie, Bd 22 (Rohmer-Schinkel), München 2005, p.536-538 (German) Das schlesische Elysium, Arne Franke, Deutsches Kulturforum östliches Europa e. V., p. 16–19 (German) A. Kuzio-Podrucki, Das Haus Schaffgotsch. Das wechselvolle Schicksal einer schlesischen Adelsdynastie, Tarnowskie Góry 2009, (German) A. Kuzio-Podrucki, Schaffgotschowie. Zmienne losy śląskiej arystokracji, Bytom 2007, , (Polish) About Family Schaffgotsch on the website: Silesian gentry and aristocracy (English) External links Polish Wikipedia: Family seat in Kopice Palace in Kopice, destroyed by fire in 1958, Polish Wikipedia Silesian nobility Austrian noble families German Bohemian noble families German noble families Silesian-German people