History of the city of Lubsko
The area around today's city of Lubsko (German: Sommerfeld ) was already inhabited during the Lusatian culture . Finds from this prehistoric period indicate this.
Settlement in modern times goes back to the first half of the 9th century and is dated to the year 840 in the opinion of the summer field preacher Johann Möller (1628–1671). At that time the country was inhabited by the Slavic-Sorbian tribes Selpoli (the Old Country) . For a few centuries the settlement shared the fate of Niederlausitz , to which it also belongs geographically. The city's name is probably derived from a Slavic-Sorbian term Zemrje, which means dead field and can be traced back to a place of worship in a swampy area. A regional market settlement is said to have emerged from this site first, which together with the castle built there, which monitored the river crossing, grew into a town.
Under the Lausitz mark
In the course of the German colonization in the east, the place name Sommerfeld was first mentioned in a document in a privilege to build a castle from Margrave Heinrich I from 1106. At this point he was no longer alive. The document is apparently a forgery in order to substantiate claims to the Lausitz mark within the aristocratic Wettin family .
In 1283 Margrave Heinrich the Illustrious extended the rights of the citizens of the already commercial place, which was surrounded by walls and defensive towers; However, the deed in question is neither the deed of foundation nor the deed according to which the city was granted Magdeburg law . In the document that has survived to this day, the cloth makers are mentioned several times ; this z. B. was allowed to go to the fairs freely, without having to pay duty, with two four-horse wagons. Two gates of the city led north to Guben and south to Sorau . The margrave installed his land bailiffs ( advocatus ) everywhere , who administered the city in his name.
In the Mark Brandenburg
After the death of Count Heinrich, disputes over inheritance broke out among the Wettins. His grandson Dietrich IV. (Diezmann) sold the city in 1304 to the Brandenburg Ascanians Otto IV and Waldemar due to his financial problems . The city thus belonged to the Mark Brandenburg .
The following years were marked by economic hardship, bad harvests and hunger. Before his death in 1318, Margrave Waldemar granted the town of Sommerfeld, among others, the privileges of jurisdiction. From then on the city had the right to condemn the crimes that took place inside the wall. The right to stand in the courts, one judge elected for one year and three lay judges elected for life, was also granted. After the death of the margrave, there were disputes and battles over Niederlausitz between the neighboring princes , which also affected the city. Soon the Luxemburgish Johann von Böhmen crossed the Mark and took the city on the way to Guben. In 1323 the Mark and the city were transferred from Emperor Ludwig IV to his eldest son Ludwig . In 1343, the new margrave granted the city freedom from customs duties throughout the entire march. In 1350 the city council received the watermill on the Lubust River.
The city was in 1353 by the Brandenburg margrave to Friedrich III. pledged by Meissen . In 1359 Friedrich granted an economic right for free trade with Frankfurt and Brandenburg, which was confirmed a year later by Ludwig the Roman .
In the Silesian Duchy of Schweidnitz-Jauer
Through a contract to redeem the pledge between Emperor Charles IV and the Brandenburg Margrave, the town came into the possession of Bolko II von Schweidnitz , a relative of the emperor from the Polish Piast family, between 1364 and 1368 .
Every time the city changed hands, the city council took the opportunity to obtain new privileges as well as confirmation of the previous ones. The Silesian-Polish Duke also gave in to the city council.
In Bohemia
After Bolko died without any heirs, Sommerfeld fell back to Karl and his underage son, the Bohemian King Wenceslaus IV , and remained under the Bohemian crown for almost a hundred years. Wenceslaus granted the city the right to mint in 1411. In that century the city was mediatized , which had been given to the von Biberstein family in pledge.
In April 1430, the city was sacked by a Hussite army with a strength of 300 foot soldiers and horsemen and partly set on fire when they moved towards Bober . The Taborites appeared repeatedly in front of the city wall in August 1431. After the tough negotiations and handing over the food and all the horses, this time they spared the city.
Around 1457 the humanist Johannes Rak (the younger) was born in the city as the son of a miller.
Again in the Mark Brandenburg
During the Märkisches War between Achilles of Brandenburg and Hans von Sagan , the city was occupied and conquered several times by both parties. Because of the Peace of Kamenz, the man from Brandenburg received Sommerfeld in 1492. Since then, the city, along with Crossen , belonged to Brandenburg until 1945 . The city and the surrounding area formed a Brandenburg land wedge in the middle of the Saxon Lower Lusatia, which only fell to the Prussian province of Brandenburg in 1815 .
On July 13, 1496, Sommerfeld was almost completely destroyed by the great fire. The reconstruction proceeded quickly, the parish church on the market also dates from this time. During the 16th century there was peaceful urban development that was not disturbed by war. The crowning glory of this era is the town hall, built in the Renaissance style by an Italian architect. The fires came repeatedly in 1597 and later in 1609.
The mediatization of the city was complete in 1543 when it became the private property of the von Pack family and later von Kottwitz. But this led to several conflicts between the owners and the city council in the following years. In 1611, this set up a city guard to protect the residents from the castle servants.
Sommerfeld also suffered very badly during the Thirty Years' War . At first, the Brandenburg troops raged in the city several times. In October 1627 Wallenstein came to town for the first time in pursuit of Mansfeld . Friedlander visited the city several times with his soldiers and paid high contributions. Only between 1627 and 1629 "... the city was plundered twenty times". In 1632, Sommerfeld fell victim to Croatian troops from Ferdinand II. In addition to looting, there were many fatalities. In addition to the war sufferings, there was also the plague in 1633, which cost the lives of 580 people (the majority of the entire population). After the Swedes entered the war, they too moved across the city several times between 1639 and 1643. The city has slowly recovered from the war. The destruction in the surrounding area and the villages was also great. The wine-growing areas around Sommerfeld were almost completely destroyed and viticulture has since been abandoned.
In the wars of the 18th century, the city was spared from destruction, but great burdens were placed on it. During the Seven Years' War , the Prussian corps under Frederick the Great , but also Austrian corps, moved through the city several times . In August 1759 the city had to cope with barely affordable supplies of food to the imperial army several times. Some of the handsome townspeople were kidnapped as hostages as far as Prague for several years.
During the Napoleonic wars , foreign and own armies passed through here, demanding contributions every time . In July 1813, the Sommerfelder Landwehr repulsed attacks by French troops from the walls.
The city order in Prussia of 1807 brought the city a period of independence and the immediate city status was dropped. The city got freely elected city councilors and took the administration into its own hands. After the Prussian administrative reform of 1815, Sommerfeld was incorporated into the Brandenburg district of Crossen .
In 1793, the Knight of St. John George Friedrich von Beerfelde was mentioned as the lord of the manor at Sommerfeld Castle. His descendants rebuilt the castle from 1840 in the shape that still exists today.
The time of industrialization began in the city with the first steam engine and the first factory chimney in 1835. During that time the city wall ring was razed. What remains of the old fortifications is a tower (Büttelturm) of the Sorauer Tor that has been preserved to this day, as well as wall remnants that were added to some houses during construction. During this time there was also an immense growth in the Jewish community. In 1844 the city had 26 Jews and after two years 47 Jews. A Jewish cemetery, the remains of which have been preserved to this day, was set up in the south of the city. In 1846 Sommerfeld was connected to the Berlin – Breslau railway line . In 1857 a gas works went into operation, and in 1863 water pipes were laid. Street lighting was introduced with incandescent gas in 1896 .
The later industrialist and inventor Heinrich Ehrhardt worked in the Kulke machine factory in 1870 and became famous throughout the region as a "machine doctor" because he was able to save the valuable, but failure-prone balancing steam engine of the Martini cloth factory from total damage.
The population grew steadily, several new businesses in the textile industry and brickworks were established in the second half of the 19th century and the city experienced the Wilhelminian boom and was always the largest city in the district. In addition to the new economic upswing, the service infrastructure also grew. Several schools, the hospital, the classicist rifle house and some hotels have sprung up during this time.
The First World War hampered urban development. The population decreased slightly until 1939. The infrastructure has also changed in times of economic crisis. The small businesses were taken over by a few joint-stock companies and production was heavily concentrated.
The castle was sold to the Inner Mission in 1930, and since then, with short interruptions, it has served as a care home for the elderly in need.
In the time of National Socialism and in the Second World War
During the Second World War , the city was not affected by major damage from the air. Many forced laborers from the areas occupied by Nazi Germany were used in the numerous factories . Above all, the textile factories, brickworks and also smaller mechanical engineering companies were dependent on outside power. In 1943 there was a protest in the hat factory Gebr. Lembert and sit-in blockades of the Russian workers because of harassment on the part of the factory and camp management.
At the end of January 1945 in the area between Sommerfeld, Forst and Guben, a Wisła ( Vistula ) commando force of the Polish army , which had been erroneously removed, was active. In addition to reconnaissance in and around the city, there was an act of sabotage on February 8, 1945 on the railway line between Sommerfeld and Crossen. The group was feared by the civilian population in the villages because of raids to collect food.
At the beginning of February 1945, Sommerfeld, along with other Niederlausitz towns, became the run-up to the Battle of Bober . On the morning of February 13, the Soviet army broke through the German positions on the Bober River (20 km away) and got as far as the city. During the day, the trains with the refugees left the train station heading west. In the evening the 6th Mot. Reached the Guard Corps under Colonel M. Orlow Sommerfeld and the fighting began. On February 14th, the city was captured and the Soviet raiding party advanced further in the direction of the Neisse south of Guben. The Polish commando group was caught by the Soviet units and the soldiers were shot almost as divers . A counterattack by German forces began on February 15th. The city was recaptured by the Dirlewanger Storm Brigade on February 16.
At noon on February 19, the city was under artillery fire, with the tower of the parish church on the market being hit, but without major damage. The tough fighting east of Sommerfeld continued until February 20, when the German units had to pull back from the Bober. That morning, Sommerfeld was occupied again by Soviet forces. Nevertheless, on the night of February 20-21, the remnants of the German units moved across the city towards Guben to be re-established behind the Neisse. In all of the fighting, only a few houses in the city were destroyed.
After the city was taken, the usual attacks on the civilian population took place at the time . Soon the technical equipment of most of the factories was downright dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union. Some city officials were also affected by the deportations.
In Poland
After the end of the Second World War, the city of Sommerfeld was placed under Polish administration even before the Potsdam Conference on June 3, 1945 . The handover was carried out by a Soviet commander. The city was initially given the Polish name Zemsz and from 1947 the name Lubsko , which is derived from the Lubsza River . The entire local population was expelled at the end of June 1945 , combined with a reluctant settlement by Poland .
The destruction and looting of machine equipment in the factories in the city could be ended by the beginning of 1946, so that the large textile factories in the city started their production again. In the years that followed, the city, like all areas placed under Polish administration, was viewed by many arriving settlers and by the central government in Warsaw as a pure source of resources. The looting and devastation continued, supported by the general uncertainty and the ambiguity of the Potsdam decisions. Some streets were razed at the end of the 1940s in order to obtain the building material for the reconstruction of the capital. The economy in the period of real socialism after 1945 was based on the infrastructure that was taken over and which was not expanded for a long time. Public communication only played a spatially limited role with poor regional connections.
At the end of the sixties there was limited reinvestment of the companies in the city. The population grew steadily, so that Lubsko was the district town between 1954 and 1975 . This period was marked for the city by the dynamic development of the local character. After the rapprochement with the Federal Republic of Germany , its change in Ostpolitik and the subsequent signing of the Warsaw Treaty , there was a brief expansion of state trade and industry. Environmental protection did not yet play a role. In Lubsko there were also new settlements, prefabricated buildings , schools and the city library. After the Polish administrative reform in 1975, the city was reduced to a small municipality. The character of a city on the periphery, far from the centralized administrative centers, became clearer. The weakening infrastructure and the already low sales of the state trade organization also indicated the crisis in Warsaw's planned economy from the mid-1970s .
After the fall of the Wall in 1989, there were massive layoffs of employees and thus very high unemployment (over 40%). The economic infrastructure had almost collapsed. Only a few small companies continued their production. Rail traffic came to a standstill and since then the city has only been accessible via regional roads.
The large factories and brickworks were first under the administration of the voivodeship and were privatized. As the majority of cases were fraud, the factories fell into disrepair, were completely looted and demolished at the beginning of the 21st century. After Poland joined the European Union , the city took part in several regional economic projects of the EU. When investors from Germany settled down, the unemployment rate fell to around 20%.
Lubsko and the train
Since Sommerfeld was in the middle of the Berlin – Breslau railway line , the railway depots were expanded from the middle of the 19th century to serve the vehicle fleet. Later on, other railway lines branched off from Sommerfeld to Crossen, Sorau and Grünberg via Benau . A private railway line was built at the end of the 19th century to Teuplitz and on to Weißwasser on the Berlin – Görlitz railway line . This made the city an important rail hub.
With the loss of connections to Berlin and Weißwasser, rail traffic was severely restricted after 1945 and gradually became less and less important. In 1989, passenger traffic was discontinued as unprofitable. The station was closed and only goods traffic to the freight station was maintained. Since then, the railway systems in the city have fallen into disrepair or torn down.
Religions
Reformation in the 16th century
The Reformation in Sommerfeld was quite confusing. In 1524 the pastor Simon Kuhne reported to the Brandenburg Elector Joachim I that “the mayor had ordered only half the interest to be paid and forbidden to pay the thirtieth. The priests would starve ”. At that time there was already a Lutheran preacher in the city, Michael Reuther, a former brother of the Order of the Holy Spirit in Cottbus, about whom the pastor told:
"He let his tonsure grow together, discarded the cross and prayer book, put on secular clothes, wears a red Scottish birat, a red linen robe and cut-out shoes, wants to marry a young widow and is not particularly learned."
There were also complaints that the butchers had taken his priestly robe and sold it. On the other hand, the pastor is said to have prevented the evangelical preacher from ringing the bell and prevented him from preaching by incessant organ playing.
In 1527 things looked different: The pastor “... took a wife - Anna, daughter of the local Balbier Fabianus and became a Lutheran. He calls himself a 'lectureist'. ”At the time, Elector Joachim demanded in a letter from the incumbent mayor and the city council that“ they should use the Catholic ceremonies and remove the Lutheran ones ”. For fear of possible reprisals from the prince, the Reformation was not practiced in public.
After the elector's death, the first official Protestant pastor, Bartholomäus Frantz, came to the city from Wittenberg in 1537 . In the following year, the formal abolition of the Catholic custom in the city took place and the population became completely Protestant by 1542. The Slavic population of the area soon became supporters of the new teaching. In the Nikolauskirche within the city, services were held in the Sorbian language until the 19th century.
An official abolition of the Evangelical Church in the city took place with the dissolution of the Evangelical Church of Silesia east of Oder and Neisse by the Polish authorities on October 31, 1946.
Recatholization in the 20th century
At the end of the 19th century, many workers from Greater Poland and other parts of Germany who found employment in local industry were settled in the city. Over time, the proportion of supporters of the Catholic denomination rose again , so that in 1908 a new Catholic church was built in the neo-Gothic style, financed from donations .
After 1945, the two Protestant churches in the city were converted into Catholic churches, as the Polish population that followed was Roman Catholic. The Nikolauskirche came down completely in the following time and was demolished in the sixties.
At the end of the 20th century, the city community was divided into two parishes .
Population development
| year | population |
|---|---|
| 1750 | 1496 |
| 1801 | 1737 |
| 1840 | 4760 |
| 1851 | 6240 |
| 1875 | 10,235 |
| 1900 | 11,910 |
| 1939 | 10,760 |
| 1946 | 3200 |
| 1950 | 6400 |
| 1954 | 8600 |
| 1971 | 13,000 |
| 2010 | 14,600 |
literature
- W. Riehl and J. Scheu (eds.): Berlin and the Mark Brandenburg with the Margrafenthum Nieder-Lausitz . Berlin 1861, pp. 533-536.
- Eduard Ludwig Wedekind: Diplomatic Chronicle of the Immediatstadt Sommerfeld from its construction up to the present time. Publisher Riep, Krossen 1846.
- Hermann Standke : Local history of Niederlausitz for school and home with special consideration of the forest and the surrounding area . Rauert & Pittius, Sorau / NL 1923.
- Gerhard Schulz: 850 years of Sommerfeld 1106–1956. Self-published by the Sommerfeld local support, Berlin 1956.
- Wiesław Hładkiewicz (ed.): Lubsko, Jasień. Z dziejówi współczesnosci. Lubuskie Towarzystwo Kultury, Zielona Góra 1977 ( Zeszyty lubuskie LTK 15, ISSN 0239-4790 ).
- Hans von Ahlfen : The fight for Silesia 1944/1945. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-87943-480-8 .
- Jerzy Piotr Majchrzak: Miasto ze złotym lwem w herbie. Dom Wydawniczy "SORAVIA", Żary 1998, ISBN 83-907074-5-4 .
- Władyslaw Mochocki: Lubsko we wspomnieniach / Lubsko in memories. Urząd Miejski w Lubsku, Lubsko 2003, ISBN 83-911822-4-X (bilingual edition).
- A. Köppen: Sommerfeld in Niederlausitz with alleys and surroundings . Niederlausitzer Verlag, Guben 2011. ISBN 978-3-935881-84-5 , (reprint of the 1908 edition).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ W. Riehl and J. Scheu (eds.): Berlin and the Mark Brandenburg with the Margrafenthum Nieder-Lausitz . Berlin 1861, pp. 533-536.
- ↑ Majchrzak: Lubsko, miasto ze złotym lwem w herbie. P. 103.
- ^ Heinrich Erhardt: Hammerschlag (autobiography) Leipzig 1927, p. 33
- ↑ Zeszyty Lubskie 4/1985, p. 14 ff. (Lubskoer Hefte)
- ↑ Command group Wisla (Polish)
- ↑ Władysław Mochocki: Lubsko we wspomnieniach / Lubsko in memories. P. 75.
- ^ Gerhard Schulz: 850 years of Sommerfeld 1106–1956. P. 15: “Around 2:30 p.m., part of our city was shot at. […] At 4:30 pm the city commandant came into the basement and reported to those present that the Russian troops were on Galgenberg. The population should move towards the forest. "
- ↑ Escape from Nieder-Lausitz [1] ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hans von Ahlfen: The battle for Silesia 1944/1945. P. 140: "'The town of Sommerfeld sleeps under a sea of white flags as a sign of the peacefulness of its residents', this is how General Nehring paints this night march - 'a picture that seems almost eerie in its dead silence!'"
- ↑ On the beginning of the expulsion of the entire local population in the border areas before the Potsdam Conference and the hesitant resettlement by Poland see Detlef Brandes (Ed.): Lexicon of Expulsions. Deportation, Forced Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe . Böhlau, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78407-4 , pp. 726–728
- ↑ Lubuskie Towarzystwo Kultury (Ed.), Andrzej Czarkowski, p. 65.
- ↑ Lubuskie Towarzystwo Kultury (ed.), Andrzej Czarkowski: "Place 16 (of 18) in sales of goods", p. 64.
- ^ Hermann Standke: Local history of Niederlausitz. P. 170 ff.
- ↑ Standke, p. 171 ff.
- ↑ Majchrzak, p. 113
- ↑ Standke, p. 171 ff.
- ↑ Majchrzak, p. 114 ff.
