Hrodna

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hrodna | Grodno
Гродна | Гродно
( Belarus. ) | ( Russian )
coat of arms
coat of arms
 flag
flag
State : BelarusBelarus Belarus
Woblasz : Flag of Hrodna Voblasts.svg Hrodna
Founded : 1128 (1127)
Coordinates : 53 ° 41 ′  N , 23 ° 50 ′  E Coordinates: 53 ° 41 ′  N , 23 ° 50 ′  E
Height : 90-147  m
Area : 142  km²
 
Residents : 370,919 (2018)
Population density : 2,612 inhabitants per km²
Time zone : Moscow time ( UTC + 3 )
Telephone code : (+375) 15
Postal code : 230000
License plate : 4th
 
Mayor : Boris Koselkow
Website :
Hrodna (Belarus)
Hrodna
Hrodna

Hrodna or Grodno ( Belarusian Гродна Hrodna ; Russian Гродно Grodno ; Polish Grodno , Lithuanian Gardinas ; German  garden ; older Belarus. Горадня / Horadnja or Гародня / Harodnja ; Yiddish גראָדנע Grodne ) is a city in Belarus on the Memel , near the border triangle with Poland and Lithuania . It is the administrative seat of the Hrodsenskaja Woblasz and the Rajon Hrodna .

With around 380,000 inhabitants (as of 2018/19) it is the fifth largest city in Belarus. From 1919 to 1939 Hrodna belonged to Poland and had a Polish-speaking majority population consisting of Jews and Poles . As a result of the border shifts initiated by Stalin , the city fell to the Soviet Union , large parts of the Polish population were expelled, instead Russians and Belarusians were settled from other parts of the country. Since 1991 the city has been part of the independent Belarus; to this day there is still a strong Polish minority there. Hrodna is twinned with Minden in Westphalia , Białystok and Breslau in Poland, Limoges in France and Alytus in Lithuania .

coat of arms

Description: In blue, a brown stag with a golden Latin cross between the antlers is jumping over a silver wicker fence.

history

City view around 1575
Market with Franz Xaver Cathedral around 1860

Hrodna was mentioned for the first time in 1128 as a castle under the name Goroden in the Principality of Polotsk in the Union of Rus . The name is related to the Slavic word degree and means something like "fortified settlement". Some time later it became the center of an independent Old Russian principality, which subsequently lost its independence to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . Hrodna received city rights in 1391 from the Lithuanian prince Vytautas . The prince also donated the parish church to the city and had two of the three castles located here expanded.

After the Battle of Tannenberg , the city quickly experienced a heyday from 1410, during which it expanded territorially. Hrodna was ruled by two mayors, one Catholic and one Orthodox. The city experienced its golden age during the rule of the Jagiellonian and Wasa dynasties . During the time of Stefan Batory , Hrodna became the de facto capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire . The old castle was expanded at that time and a Jesuit school was built. Hrodna was the seat of the Crown Tribunal, the highest court for the territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Bad times for Hrodna began with the so-called " Sweden Flood ". In 1705, Russian troops were surrounded by Swedish troops at Hrodna, but were able to successfully withdraw in March 1706 without a military clash. Under King August III. The New Palace was built between 1737 and 1742 as a conference venue for the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm . During the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski , the first theater in Lithuania was built, and the last Polish king founded several schools.

Since 1776 the weekly newspaper "Gazeta Grodzieńska" ( Grodnoer Zeitung ) and "Rocznik Gospodarczy" ( financial yearbook ) appeared.

In 1793 the last Sejm took place in the city , at which the second partition of Poland was ratified. Two years later, the city came under Russian rule and in 1802 became the seat of a Russian governor. Occupied by Napoleonic troops in 1812 , it fell under Russian control again a few months later.

After the November uprising of 1830/31, the Polish residents of the city were subjected to repression. The tsar had the Greek-Catholic rite forbidden, and Roman-Catholic monasteries were liquidated step by step. The public use of the Polish language was banned.

In 1862 the Petersburg-Warsaw railway was built, on which Hrodna has a train station. This connection is only used in the direction of Poland, the route to Russia has been interrupted since 2004.

In 1863 the majority of the residents took part in the January uprising against Tsar Alexander II .

The city was an important Jewish center, around 1900 around 50% of the population were Jews.

From 1915 to 1919 the city was occupied by German troops , in the spring of 1919 it was annexed to the re-established Poland and became a district town in the Białystok Voivodeship . The majority of the city's population were Jews . Furthermore, Catholic and Orthodox Christians lived in the city, the majority of whom saw themselves as Poles. Both Poles and Belarusians lived in the surrounding villages , and Lithuanians in the north .

In the interwar period , despite economic difficulties, the city became the cultural center of the region: the theater, named after Eliza Orzeszkowa , opened, historical and geological museums and a zoo were built . Grodno was the seat of a large military garrison. From 1930 new houses were built in Grodno in the style of constructivism. Many of them were built using regional timber construction in new districts on the outskirts of the city and are now threatened with demolition.

View over the Memel to the Old and New Castle

On September 21, 1939, the city was occupied during the Soviet invasion of Poland . Grodno was the only place in what was then eastern Poland that resisted the Red Army . On November 2, the city was annexed to Belarus and became a Rajonstadt in Białystok Oblast . In February, April, June 1940 and February 1941, many Polish residents of Hrodna who were classified as class enemies were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan by the Soviet occupation .

From June 1941 to July 1944 the city was occupied by the German Wehrmacht . Formally, the Białystok district was annexed to East Prussia , but it remained a separate administrative unit. From Allenstein , Gestapo structures were founded in Białystok , which organized the surveillance of the population in Grodno and the murder of the Grodno Jews. The Jews of the city were from 1 November 1941 in two ghettos spent at the center of the city, where more than 20,000 people in the intermediate storage or directly into the extermination camp Treblinka or Auschwitz-Birkenau were deported, where almost all were murdered by them.

In the treaty of August 16, 1945, the Polish communist government accepted the new border along the Curzon Line . The majority of the Polish population of Hrodna was expelled to Poland, where they settled in the former German eastern territories (including East Prussia, Silesia ) and in central Poland. After 1945, in addition to Soviet cadres from the east of the BSSR and the interior of the Soviet Union, Orthodox and Catholic farmers from the area migrated to Hrodna. As a result, there were officially more Poles and Belarusians living in Grodno since the end of the 1950s than before 1939.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the city has belonged to the independent Belarus since 1991 and is the administrative seat of the Hrodsenskaya Woblasz .

On December 19, 2008, Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko announced in Minsk that the first Belarusian nuclear power plant would be located on the Hrodsenskaya Woblasz . Construction should start in 2009. However, it was not until 2012 that a construction framework contract was concluded between the Minsk government and the Russian company NIAEP JSC - the management company of Atomstroiexport JSC (ASE) - for the construction of two reactor units of the Russian AES-2006 series . The first unit has been under construction since 2013. It should go online in 2018 and the second unit in 2020.

In September 2012, the construction of the largest Belarusian hydropower plant in Grodno, which began in 2008, was completed.

Buildings

Catholic Franz Xavier Cathedral
St. Bernard Church
Church of the Redeemer
Front of the New Castle

The old town of Hrodna and the St. Boris and Gleb Church from the 12th century are on the tentative list for inclusion as UNESCO World Heritage .

Sports

The FK Njoman Hrodna is a football club that plays in the Wyschejschaja Liha . HK Neman Grodno has won several Belarusian champion in ice hockey .

Town twinning

Hrodna is twin town of

Personalities

literature

  • Felix Ackermann: Palimpsest Grodno, nationalization, leveling and sovietization of a Central European city 1919–1991 . Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-447-06425-5 . (German Historical Institute Warsaw Sources and Studies 23) ( perspectivia.net )
  • The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation (ed.): Documents concerning the destruction of the Jews of Grodno 1941-1944. 6 volumes & 1 result volume. New York. (Volume 6 was published in 1991)

Web links

Commons : Hrodna  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Population as of January 1, 2018
  2. ↑ Численность населения на 1 января 2016 г. и среднегодовая численность населения за 2015 год по Республике Беларусь в разрезе оибленность населения за. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 30, 2017 ; Retrieved May 31, 2017 (Russian). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.belstat.gov.by
  3. ↑ List of partner cities of Alytus, Lithuania  ( 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. (accessed on September 2, 2010)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ams.lt  
  4. ^ PR Magocsi: Historical Atlas of Central Europe. University of Washington Press, Seattle 2002, p. 109.
  5. ↑  - Belarus Forum Grodno Constructivism? ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / belarusforum.de
  6. ^ Serge Klarsfeld : Documents concerning the destruction of the Jews of Grodno 1941-1944. Ghetto and Deportations to Death Camps. Cologne and Bielefeld Trials . 6 volumes. Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York / Paris 1987–1992; DNB 552121444
  7. ^ Felix Ackermann: Palimpsest Grodno, Nationalization, Leveling and Sovietization of a Central European City 1919–1991 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-447-06425-5 , pp. 249-260
  8. ^ E-bulletin. Nuclear Forum Switzerland, May 7, 2014; accessed on March 6, 2015
  9. ↑ www.belta.by ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.belta.by