Brzeziny

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Brzeziny
Brzeziny coat of arms
Brzeziny (Poland)
Brzeziny
Brzeziny
Basic data
State : Poland
Voivodeship : Łódź
Powiat : Brzeziny
Area : 21.58  km²
Geographic location : 51 ° 48 ′  N , 19 ° 45 ′  E Coordinates: 51 ° 48 ′ 0 ″  N , 19 ° 45 ′ 0 ″  E
Residents : 12,520
(Jun. 30, 2019)
Postal code : 95-060
Telephone code : (+48) 46
License plate : EWC
Economy and Transport
Street : Łódź - Rawa Mazowiecka
Next international airport : Łódź
Gmina
Gminatype: city
Residents: 12,520
(Jun. 30, 2019)
Community number  ( GUS ): 1021011
Administration (as of 2008)
Mayoress : Ewa Jolanta Chojka
Address:
ul.Sienkiewicza 16 95-060 Brzeziny
Website : www.brzeziny.pl



Brzeziny [ bʒɛˈʑinɨ ] ( German Brzeziny , 1943–1945 Lion City ) is a city in Poland in the Łódź Voivodeship .

Geographical location

Brzeziny is located about 15 kilometers east of the center of Łódź on the national road 72 ( droga krajowa 72 ) to Rawa Mazowiecka .

history

The first settlement on the site of today's Brzeziny was in the 13th century. The first documented evidence of the town charter comes from 1332 (other sources say that town charter was granted in 1327). A trade route from Thorn to Russia, which ran here, played an important role in the development . In 1462 Jan Gruszczynski, the bishop of Kujawy , sold the town to Michał Lasocki, whose family owned it for 300 years. Jews were first mentioned in Brzeziny in 1564.

The place had the greatest economic importance from the 15th to 17th centuries. At that time, handicrafts such as cloth making and tailoring were important economic factors. In the second half of the 16th century, Brzeziny was the largest cloth-making town in the country with 290 cloth makers, and its cloths were well known at home and abroad. This economic boom came to an end in the middle of the 17th century with the Polish-Swedish War . Forty Jewish families were murdered by Polish soldiers during this war in 1656.

Around 1550, Christoph Lasocki, the owner and magnate of the city, joined the Reformed faith and thus became a promoter of the city's Reformed community. In 1551 Gregor Pauli , who had studied in Wittenberg and was a student of Melanchthon , became its pastor. However, after clashes with his Roman Catholic opponents in the city, he was forced to leave the city in 1554 and went to Krakow . In 1570 the community became " Arian ", that is, it joined the anti-Trinitarian movement. At the beginning of the 17th century the Lasocki family returned to the Catholic faith, and in 1627 Kacper Lasocki built the Catholic Reformate monastery church . The anti-Trinitarians who refused to be converted continued their meetings underground.

In 1793, as part of the second partition of Poland , the city fell to Prussia .

At the end of the 18th century, Brzeziny came into the possession of the Oginski family through the marriage of Prince Oginski to Isabella Lasocka , who received the town as a dowry . The first Germans are said to have come to the city as early as 1752, but it was not until the efforts of the city's mistress Isabella Ogińska, who approached the Prussian authorities in 1801 about the desired settlement of German clothiers, that the influx of people increased. Also by the political instability - 1807 Brzeziny part of the Duchy of Warsaw and in 1815 again part of Congress Poland - the basic mistress was not deterred and founded in 1815 the Lasocin district with 47 building sites where they settled German clothier, which consists predominantly of Ozorków and Dąbie came . In 1818 the German cloth makers 'guild was founded (in addition to the existing Polish cloth makers' guild), and the following year there were already 40 German and 108 Polish cloth makers in the village. In 1826 a German elementary school was founded. The construction of a Protestant church with a parsonage, to which the landlady had committed in the settlement agreement of 1815, did not begin until 1826 and dragged on until 1833. (This church was demolished in the second half of the 1950s.)

In 1839 the heavily indebted Brzeziny became state property.

With the emergence of the Łódź textile industry, the textile industry got into increasing difficulties in the second half of the 19th century, which were exacerbated by the construction of the Łódź railway connection via Koluszki - and not via Brzeziny. Therefore, there was an increasing migration to Łódź and the surrounding factories Tomaszów Mazowiecki , Pabianice , Zgierz and Zduńska Wola . Nevertheless, there were still 25 large weaving mills in 1880, but by the end of the century the cloth trade was already completely extinct.

At the beginning of the First World War , General Karl Litzmann operated here . For his successful service on the Eastern Front, in which, under the command of Reinhard von Scheffer-Boyadel at the end of November 1914, he managed to break through the Russian front from an already cut position in the Lowitsch pocket at minus 20 degrees near the town of Brzeziny awarded him the Order of Pour le Mérite. During this battle near Łódź, the advance of Russian troops in the direction of Poznan and Berlin was stopped. Since then, Litzmann has held the honorary title “The Lion of Brzeziny”. This explains on the one hand the renaming of the city of Brzeziny to "Lion City" and at the same time the name Litzmannstadt for the neighboring city of Lodsch - both at the time of the German occupation in World War II .

In the years from 1914 to 1918, when Brzeziny was under German occupation, the tailoring trade, which was operated exclusively by Jews, flourished. It was primarily produced inferior quality men's clothing that was exported to Russia and the Far East . When the city was cut off from these markets by the formation of the new Polish state after the end of the First World War , the tailors therefore got into economic hardship, which in part led to their emigration.

During the Second World War, the city was occupied by the German Wehrmacht and now belonged to the Litzmannstadt district in the Reichsgau Wartheland , with the border to the Generalgouvernement running in the immediate vicinity. In February 1942 a ghetto was established in which over 6,000 people lived. The ghetto was dissolved in May 1942, the older inmates were taken to the Kulmhof extermination camp , the rest were transferred to the Litzmannstadt ghetto . On January 18, 1945, the Red Army reached Brzeziny. Presumably, the city lost over half of its inhabitants during the occupation and the war.

During an administrative reform in 1975, the city became part of the Skierniewice Voivodeship . Another reform dissolved the voivodeship and Brzeziny became part of the Łódź voivodeship.

Population development

year population Poland Jews German
absolutely % absolutely % absolutely %
1815 1,756
1827 3,492 946 27.1%
1828 3,641
1832 3,386
1835 3,651
1851 4,783 2.406 50.3 1,887 39.5 587 12.3
1859 5,185 2,060 40.0% 2,443 47% 682 13%
1880 6,300
1886 7,420
1890 7,980 3,288 41.2% 3,767 47.2% 918 11.5%
1893 8,794 4,321 38.9% 3,488 49.9% 976 11.1%
1900 9,641
1903 9,181
1907 16,920 6,768 40% 9,695 57.3% 458 2.7%
1913 17,108 9,307 54.4%
1931 13,098 6,025 46% 6,811 52% 262 2%
1935 331
2009 12,351

coat of arms

In the city's coat of arms, a red city wall with an open gate can be seen on a silver background. The open gate is interpreted as a symbol of the city's openness. The wall has three towers, of which the middle one is the largest. A Christian cross can be seen on its top. Most likely, the city received the coat of arms shortly after the city charter was granted; the first known use was in 1534.

Culture and sights

Museums

  • The Regional Museum was opened in 1972 and is located at 49 Piłsudski Street. 5,200 exhibits from archeology, folklore, art and history are presented to the visitor.

Buildings

  • The Podwyższenia Świętego Krzyża parish church was built around the 13th century and later rebuilt several times. As a result, the architectural style is now a mixture of Gothic , Renaissance and Baroque . The baroque organ dates from the 17th century.
  • The Reformation Church dates from 1700. The church was destroyed several times and rebuilt again and again, most recently in 1947–1952. The door that still exists today dates from 1754, the defective clock from the 17th century.
  • The wooden St. Anna church has an altar and other objects from the 17th century.
  • The Church of the Holy Spirit ( Kościół Ducha Świętego ) was built by Józef Lasocki in 1737.

Personalities

sons and daughters of the town

Other personalities associated with the city

  • Eduard Kneifel (1896–1993), Protestant pastor (from 1925 to 1939 in Brzeziny), superintendent, church historian and poet of hymns
  • Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503–1572), Polish Renaissance scholar, humanist and theologian
  • Karl Litzmann (1850–1936), General, "The Lion of Brzeziny"
  • Maciej Stryjkowski (around 1547 - around 1593), chronicler (attended school in Brzeziny)

See also

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b population. Size and Structure by Territorial Division. As of June 30, 2019. Główny Urząd Statystyczny (GUS) (PDF files; 0.99 MiB), accessed December 24, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Cf. "Order on change of place names in Reichsgau Wartheland, No. 62" of May 18, 1943.
  3. ↑ a b c Evidence missing.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Eduard Kneifel: The parish Brzeziny. For the 100th anniversary celebration of the ev.-luth. Church in Brzeziny on September 10, 1933 , Brzeziny 1933, p. 6.
  5. ↑ a b c Website of the Jewish Virtual Library about Brzeziny , accessed on February 3, 2010.
  6. ↑ Unfortunately, no information is available about further victims and destruction in this war.
  7. ^ Eduard Kneifel: The parish of Brzeziny. For the 100th anniversary celebration of the ev.-luth. Church in Brzeziny on September 10, 1933 , Brzeziny 1933, pp. 7–9.
  8. ^ Official website of the city of Brzeziny accessed on June 13, 2012.
  9. ↑ a b c Albert Breyer: German cloth makers immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 104.
  10. ^ A b Oskar Kossmann: Germans in the middle of Poland , Berlin / Bonn 1985, pp. 78–81.
  11. ^ Albert Breyer: German cloth makers immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 136.
  12. ↑ Albert Breyer: German clothmaker immigration in the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 140.
  13. ^ Albert Breyer: German cloth makers immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 205.
  14. ^ Eduard Kneifel / Harry Richter: The Evangelical Lutheran Congregation Brzeziny near Lodz / Poland 1829–1945. Vierkirchen / Schwabach 1983, p. 98.
  15. ↑ Augsburski w Brzezinach ( Memento from December 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ a b Eduard Kneifel: The parish Brzeziny. For the 100th anniversary celebration of the ev.-luth. Church in Brzeziny on September 10, 1933 , Brzeziny 1933, p. 7.
  17. ↑ Albert Breyer: German clothier immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 77.
  18. ^ Eduard Kneifel: The parish of Brzeziny. For the 100th anniversary celebration of the ev.-luth. Church in Brzeziny on September 10, 1933 , Brzeziny 1933, p. 87.
  19. ^ A b Albert Breyer: German cloth makers immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 193.
  20. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Joseph Shaibowicz: Brzezin in History, in: Brzeziny Memorial Book (in the original Hebrew), New York 1961
  21. ^ Albert Breyer: German cloth makers immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 239.
  22. ↑ Albert Breyer: German cloth makers immigration to the East Central European area from 1550 to 1830 , Leipzig 1941, p. 245.
  23. ↑ a b c d e Eduard Kneifel: The parish Brzeziny. For the 100th anniversary celebration of the ev.-luth. Church in Brzeziny on September 10, 1933 , Brzeziny 1933, p. 6 f.
  24. ↑ Alexander Faure The Germans in Russian Poland , in: Deutsche Erde , 1907, p. 85.
  25. ^ Map distribution of the Germans and their rural property in the Lodz area , in: Oskar Kossmann: Lodz. A historical-geographical analysis , Würzburg 1966.
  26. ^ Eduard Kneifel / Harry Richter: The Evangelical Lutheran Congregation Brzeziny near Lodz / Poland 1829–1945. Vierkirchen / Schwabach 1983, p. 16.
  27. ↑ See also pl: Edward Aleksander Rontaler .