Kluczbork

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Kluczbork
Kluczbork coat of arms
Kluczbork (Poland)
Kluczbork
Kluczbork
Basic data
State : Poland
Voivodeship : Opole
Powiat : Kluczborski
Gmina : Kluczbork
Area : 12.35  km²
Geographic location : 50 ° 58 ′  N , 18 ° 13 ′  E Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 0 ″  N , 18 ° 13 ′ 0 ″  E
Height : 180 m npm
Residents : 24,000 (Dec. 31, 2016)
Postal code : 46-200 to 46-203
Telephone code : (+48) 77
License plate : OKL
Economy and Transport
Street : Lubliniec - Kępno
Opole - Wieluń
Rail route : Lublinitz – Oels
Opole – Poznan
Next international airport : Wroclaw



Kluczbork [ ˈkluʤbɔrk ] ( German Kreuzburg OS , older spelling: Creutzburg (18th century) also Creuzburg or later Kreutzburg (early / mid 19th century), 1945–1946: Kluczborek ) is a city in the Polish Voivodeship of Opole . Kluczbork is the county seat of the Powiat Kluczborski and the seat of the town-and-country municipality of the same name with more than 36,000 inhabitants.

Geographical location

The Stober in the city area

The city is located in the north of Upper Silesia on the right bank of the Stobers ( Stobrawa ), a right-hand tributary of the Oder , at 209 m above sea level. NHN in the Silesian Lowlands (Polish: Nizina Śląska ) on the edge of the Silesian Highlands (Polish: Wyżyna Śląska ), about 50 kilometers northeast of Opole .

history

prehistory

The first settlements on the site of today's Kluczbork existed as early as 1000 to 800 BC. This is evidenced by finds from the Stone Age and the Younger Bronze Age. The Skiren and Bastarnen settled in the area of ​​the city at the end of the 6th century. Later the Celts followed and the Vandal were around 100 BC. BC here. The latter left Silesia around 400 AD. This allowed Slavic peoples to penetrate the area. In the 13th century, Kreuzburg was actually built. The order of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star acquired land around Breslau as well as in the Kreuzburger Land, so u. a. the villages of Ullrichsdorf, Kuhnau and Kotschanowitz. The area acquired in this way received a center around 1252. According to a charter, the settlement was founded on November 2nd, 1252.

Middle of the 13th century: City with Magdeburg law

Kreuzburg town hall on the ring
St. Salvator Church

On February 26, 1253, the settlement was granted city rights under Magdeburg law . This date is now considered to be the founding date of Kluczbork / Kreuzburg. The Silesian name at that time was Cruceburg . Until 1274, the rulers of the cross were responsible for jurisdiction. Then it passed to a ducal bailiff who spoke law together with lay judges. Duke Heinrich III. von Glogau received the city after the death of Prince Henry IV of Breslau. After the death of Henry III. From Glogau, Kreuzburg came to his son Konrad I von Oels in 1309 .

In 1335 Casimir I renounced the place to the Holy Roman Empire . During this time the place was pledged several times and, not always peacefully, redeemed. In 1426 the city was granted the privilege of holding a salt market. From 1480 the city was mostly inhabited by Polish-speaking people. In 1553 the first cloth makers guild of the place was founded. A great fire raged in the city on December 8, 1562 and destroyed many houses. Only six years later, the place was destroyed in another major fire. In 1588, the city was sacked by the Poles and set on fire during the Battle of Pitschen .

In June 1661, an important synod of the Church of the Polish Brothers , persecuted in Poland under the Counter-Reformation, took place in Kreuzburg . Especially the elite of the Polish Brethren came together here during the period of persecution. In Kreuzburg there was also a Unitarian congregation under the protection of the local nobility , where, among other things, Christopher Crell-Spinowski worked as a preacher.

In 1681 about 1000 people lived in the place. In 1657 the city fell to the Habsburgs . On April 23, 1737, the city was again victim of a major fire and is almost completely destroyed. Only a few houses and the castle were spared. The construction to the former size dragged on over many years. The next city fire broke out in 1819, and the country poor house built by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1778 also burned down.

Prussian district town

Entrance building of the Kluczbork station
The ring after the fire of the "Twelve Apostles" on June 28, 1925

In 1741, like almost all of Silesia, the place fell to Prussia and in 1820 was assigned to the Opole administrative district. Even if the Kreuzburger Kreis originally belonged to the Lower Silesian Duchy of Brieg , it has since been considered part of Upper Silesia .

In 1868 the city received a connection to the Prussian railway network with the Rechten Oder-Ufer- Eisenbahn and was developed into a railway junction in the following decades. On November 15, 1868, the line from (Breslau–) Oels to Vossowska was opened. On December 10, 1875, the Poznan-Kreuzburg Railway , today's Kluczbork – Poznań line , opened. The route to Lublinitz followed on July 1, 1883 . The railway line to Opole opened in 1899 . Favored by the traffic situation, a large number of industrial companies settled there at the end of the 19th century, including a sugar factory, sawmills, machine factories, a leather factory, a stave factory , a roofing felt factory and a wooden pin factory. At the beginning of the 20th century Kreuzburg had a Protestant church, a Catholic church, a synagogue , a grammar school, a teachers' college, an orphanage, a provincial insane asylum and a deaconess motherhouse.

In 1875, 5238 people lived in the city, two-thirds of whom were Protestant in the 19th century and half of them in 1933. In the referendum in Upper Silesia on March 20, 1921, 95.6% of the voters in the roughly half German-speaking and half Polish-speaking district of Kreuzburg voted for the district to remain with Germany. On June 19, 1922, the Kreuzburg district, occupied by French troops on behalf of the League of Nations, was returned to the German Reich. During the city fire of 1925, eight of the gabled houses known as the Twelve Apostles from 1737 on the Ring burned down.

time of the nationalsocialism

Kreuzburg synagogue , destroyed in 1938

The Kreuzburg synagogue was destroyed in the nationwide, “spontaneous” November pogrom in 1938 . In 1939, the district town of Kreuzburg OS was the central location of an area with around 50,000 inhabitants, with the city itself having 11,693 inhabitants. District leader of the NSDAP and thus the actual ruler in the district was Alfred Rieger from summer 1939 to October 1942 , his predecessor was Johannes Schweter , his successor was Harksen

Several prisoner of war and internment camps were located in Kreuzburg during the Second World War :

  • Ilag VIII Z, July 1942 - November 1943
  • Ilag / Oflag 6, branch camp, January 1944 - April 1944
  • Ilag / Stalag 344, branch camp, May 1944 - January 1945
  • Oflag VIII A, December 1939 - May 1942

The English musician and music teacher William Hilsley was interned in one of these internment camps, Ilag VIII Z, from mid-1942 until the camp was evacuated in January 1945. He recorded his time in this camp in an impressive diary. The sheet music of the music he composed there was brought to Sweden with the support of the Christian Association of Young Men (YMCA / YMCA) and arranged there for broadcast on Swedish radio at the end of December 1943.

From Henry Soderberg , who as a YMCA delegate access to the camps, further recordings are taken from the camp in 1944, which could be used but only after the war as a document about life in the camp.

On January 17, 1945, shortly before the Red Army marched in, the evacuation of the urban population began. On January 21, the Red Army took the city.

After the war ended in 1945

Johann Dzierzon Museum
Lot at the city park after the renovation

Until 1945 was Kreuzburg administrative headquarters of the district Kreuzburg OS in the administrative district of Opole the Prussian province of Silesia of the German Reich .

In March 1945 the Soviet Union placed Kreuzburg under the administration of the People's Republic of Poland . Then the immigration of Polish migrants began, some of whom came from areas east of the Curzon Line , where they belonged to the Polish minority. The place name was first Polonized as Kluczborek and later changed to Kluczbork . The German population was almost entirely expelled from Kreuzburg by the local Polish administrative authority . Under the Polish administration, the city and the former Kreuzberg OS district initially became part of the Silesian Voivodeship . In 1950 the place came to the Opole Voivodeship and was again the district seat of the Powiat Kluczborski .

In 1959, the Johann Dzierzon Museum was founded in the city . It commemorates the Silesian priest Johann Dzierzon, born in Lowkowitz , who became known as a bee researcher. With the administrative reform in 1975, the Powiat Kluczborski was dissolved. The city remained in the Opole Voivodeship. Between 1982 and 1987 the Roman Catholic Church was built. Sacred Heart Church ( Kościół Najświętszego Serca Pana Jezusa ), the first church building in the city after 1945. With the administrative reform of 1998, the Powiat Kluczborski was re-established and Kluczbork again became a district town. In 2003 the city celebrated its 750th anniversary of the founding of the city.

The urban development program for the revitalization of the city of Kluczbork ( Rewitalizacja Miasta Kluczborka ) ran between 2007 and 2013 . Parts of the old town center were largely renovated with EU funds. By 2012, the renovation and renovation of the ring and the town hall as well as the revitalization of the city park south of the city took place. Funding was also made available to renovate listed buildings. A total of around eight million zlotys were used to renovate the inner city. In 2013 the city won the prize for the best public space in Opole Voivodeship. The program will be continued in the urban development program Rewitalizacja Miasta Kluczbork 2014–2020 .

A bypass road for the city of Kluczbork has been under construction since 2008. The aim is to decimate car traffic in city traffic. The first of a total of five planned sections was opened in 2008 between ul. Fabryczna and Ligota Dolna, west of Kluczbork. Three more sections followed between 2012 and 2015. In May 2018, the last necessary financial resources were released so that the last section of the bypass can be built. In 2020 the western bypass road with a length of around 8.5 kilometers is to be completed.

Demographics

Population development until 1945
year population Remarks
1750 1793 in 230 houses and 254 families
1756 1416
1768 1451 Efforts in the recent past to " allice foreign colonists here" had failed
1782 1434
1800 1918 including military
1816 2663 German residents (excluding the suburbs, including one Polish)
1820 2925 including numerous people from foreign countries
1825 3108 including 745 Catholics, 48 ​​Jews, residents mostly speak both German and Polish
1840 3642 2524 Protestants, 960 Catholics, 158 Jews, residents mostly speak both Polish and German
1843 3697
1855 3691
1859 4019 including 150 military personnel
1861 4000 excluding the military (176 people), including 2,620 Evangelicals, 1,076 Catholics, 304 Jews (around a tenth of the population speaks Polish )
1871 5074 German residents, with the garrison (a squadron Dragoons No. 8), including 3,100 Evangelicals, 350 Jews
1885 6578 mostly evangelicals
1890 7558 4680 Protestants, 2585 Catholics, 290 Jews
1900 10,230 with the garrison (a squadron of Dragoons No. 8) of which 4013 Catholics, 276 Jews
1925 12,395 of which 6643 Protestants, 5558 Catholics, nine other Christians, 172 Jews
1933 12,717 of which 6755 Protestants, 5806 Catholics, three other Christians, 136 Jews
1939 11,673 6076 Protestants, 5360 Catholics, twelve other Christians, two Jews
Number of inhabitants of Gmina Kluczbork (after 1945)
year Residents
1995 26,829
2000 26,799
2005 26,027

Attractions

City Hall in the city center
West side of the ring
Water tower
Old monastery building

St. Salvator Church

The Protestant St. Salvator Church was built in the 14th century and is one of the oldest monuments in the city.

Maria-Hilf-Kirche

The Catholic parish church Maria-Hilf (Polish Kościół pw. Matki Bożej Wspomożenia Wiernych ) is located south of the town center on today's Skłodowskiej-Curie-Straße. The brick basilica was built between 1911 and 1912 on a cross-shaped floor plan. The neo-Gothic church was based on designs by Arthur Kickton and Oskar Hossfeld . The church has a church tower on the south side.

town hall

Today's town hall building was built on the Ring between 1738 and 1741, after the previous building was destroyed in the great city fire. This was followed by a double row of small baroque junk houses, popularly known as the Twelve Apostles . In 1925 eight of the houses burned down completely. The town hall, which was also destroyed in the fire, was reconstructed from 1926 with three other houses under the architect A. Lenz. The two-storey town hall with a rectangular floor plan has gable walls arranged with pilasters and decorated with volute gables. There is a tower on the south side of the mansard roof . The adjacent baroque houses have an arcade to the west and a relief with an old view of the ring on the gable. Between 2011 and 2012 the town hall and the baroque houses were renovated.

Town houses on the ring

There are numerous preserved town houses from the 18th and 19th centuries around the rectangular ring. House number 18 dates from the 17th century. On the west side of the ring there are mainly town houses in the classicism style . House No. 7 is located on the south side, which was built in 1906 in Art Nouveau style.

city ​​wall

A first wall fortification in Kreuzburg is mentioned in 1396. From 1598 the city fortifications consisted of stones and bricks. The river Stober was used as a city moat. In the west was the German Gate, in the east the Polish or Cracow Gate. After the city wall was demolished at the end of the 19th century, public parks were built south of the town center between 1905 and 1906. Remains of the medieval city fortifications have been preserved on the south side.

More buildings

local community

The town-and-country community (gmina miejsko-wiejska) Kluczbork extends over an area of ​​217 km² and is divided into 23 villages in addition to the main town of the same name.

Town twinning

Kluczbork operates with the following cities partnerships :

traffic

Three regional highways run through the village, which intersect mainly in the city center. Among them are the Droga krajowa 11 ( Kołobrzeg - Bytom ), the Droga krajowa 42 ( Namysłów - Starachowice ) and the Droga krajowa 45 ( Praszka - Zabełków ).

The city has a train station on the railway lines Kalety – Wrocław (further stops in Bąków and Smardy), Kluczbork – Poznań (further stop in Krzywizna) and Jełowa – Kluczbork (further stop in Borkowice). In the past, the Kędzierzyn-Koźle-Kluczbork railway was also operated.

Personalities

sons and daughters of the town

Other personalities

Honorary citizen

The following people received honorary citizenship in Kreuzburg between 1848 and 1924:

  • March 10, 1848: Medical Councilor District Physician Dr. Meyer
  • July 28 and August 8, 1849: Kgl. District surgeon Franz Carl Perl
  • October 4, 1854: Kgl. District Court Director Carl Henrici
  • February 14, 1863: Director of the poor house Joseph Kirsch
  • January 1878: Eduard Graf v. Bethusy-Huc
  • September 3, 1883: Commerce Councilor Simon Cohn
  • January 22nd and 24th, 1895: Kgl. Chancellery and city councilor Franz Welczek
  • 1924: Head of the Wilhelm Georgi wooden pencil factory in Kreuzburg

Kreuzburg in literature

Gustav Freytag dedicated the 6th volume From a small town (1880) of his historical novel cycle The Ancestors to his birthplace Kreuzburg. In the 15th chapter the son of the main hero finds an industrially changed city: Railways and steam chimneys penetrate the rural character: “ Our city is now connected to world traffic by iron ties, new things fly in almost every hour, with loneliness the small-town character disappears; the good old city feels every pulse of our great state and every movement of foreign nations for its salvation and to our harm ”.

The main character Werner Bertin in the six-part cycle “The Great War of the White Men” by Arnold Zweig comes from Kreuzburg, where his father is a master carpenter.

Kreuzburg is also the setting for the autobiographical novel Time My Life by the writer and Georg Büchner Prize winner 1976 Heinz Piontek , who spent his childhood and youth in the city against the historical background of the Third Reich. In the penultimate chapter of this novel, he portrays the Silesian Baroque poet Johann Christian Günther , who in 1720 tried to establish a middle-class existence for himself in the Upper Silesian border area around Kreuzburg by settling down as a doctor and being engaged to the pastor's daughter Johanna Barbara Littmann, and to meet the required conditions to reconcile with the father and to acquire the doctorate fails. Piontek's birthplace is also alive in his last novel Goethe on the Road in Silesia (1983), when he lets the poet lodge in Kreuzburg am Ring on his return trip from the Upper Silesian industrial area and Tarnowitz to Breslau . The vividly depicted market life and the landscapes on the Oder are also present in the extensive memory protocols of Heinz Piontek's lyrical work.

Walter Wicclair's memories are a document of Jewish existence and an important testimony of exile literature . His estate of theater materials and emigration documents is available for research in the archive of the Academy of the Arts and the Technical University of Berlin. In 1932 he founded the first permanent theater in his hometown, which he named with the consent of the poet Gerhart-Hauptmann-Bühne and which he directed in the 1932/33 season. The theater man describes the Jewish part in the trade and medical services around the Kreuzburger Ring. An impressive description is the attack by SA men on the occasion of a performance and the destruction of this stage. Wicclair - at that time still Weinleb - was able to narrowly escape the assassination attempt.

William Hilsley recorded his life in several German internment camps, including the longest time in Kreuzburg, in a diary that was first published in 1988 under the title When joy and pain. Reminiscences was published. It was an edited version, expanded by later memories, the so-called "Trevignano version". When Hilsley looked for this Trevignano version in his files in order to prepare a new edition of the diaries, “the yellowed pages of the original version came to light, which were difficult to read, but gave the impression of authenticity through their telegram style, immediacy and patina . [..] The German musicologist Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Osthoff advised us to publish the original version of the diary, free of all later ingredients, and we followed this advice. ”In 1998 Hilsley himself described the difference between the two publications as follows:“ I wrote a revised version in 1987 in Trevignano. If one compares the two versions, it becomes immediately clear that nothing was written in the original version that could have caused the prisoner great trouble if discovered. So I avoided describing the screeching tone on arrival at Schnoorl camp, the scornful removal of passports, the humiliating 'you' in the address, the commands: open suitcase, shut up, there is order here; Pocket knives, pens, sharp objects, striking weapons, alcohol, onions are strictly prohibited. It also fit into the plan of humiliation that all internees were not allowed to wear their own clothing when they were transported to Germany: the uniform clothing made it easier to keep the herd together. ”In 1999 the diary appeared in a German and a Dutch edition, together with one CD with historical recordings of Hilsley's compositions during the war.

literature

  • Heidenfeld: Chronicle of the city of Kreuzburg, from the foundation of the same up to the most recent time. Verlag E. Thielmann, Kreuzburg 1861. ( E-copy ).
  • Felix Triest : Topographical Handbook of Upper Silesia . Breslau 1865, pp. 148-154.
  • Johannes Justin Georg Carl Heinrich Koelling: Presbyterology, that is a detailed history of the pastors and preachers of the church district of Creuzburg . Creuzburg 1867 ( e-copy).
  • Horst Fuhrmann : "Far from educated people". A small town in Upper Silesia around 1870. C. H. Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-33984-0 .
  • Heinz Piontek's Kreuzburg. In: Horst Fuhrmann: Roots and work of a poet from Upper Silesia. Dülmen 1985, pp. 13-22.
  • Walter Wicclair: From Kreuzburg to Hollywood. (with an afterword by Curt Trepte) Henschel, Berlin 1975.
  • William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. Diary of an interned musician 1940–1945 , Ulrich Bornemann, Karlhans Kluncker, Rénald Ruiter (eds.), Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1999, ISBN 3-932981-48-0 . There is also a CD for this book with the title Music Behind the Barbed Wire .

Web links

Commons : Kluczbork  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Creutzberg in the Topographia Bohemiae, Moraviae et Silesiae  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Additions to the description of Silesia by Friedrich-Albert Zimmermann, 1794; P. 133
  2. ↑ As a prescription often also "Kreuzberg", z. B. in genealogies and at second-hand bookshops;
  3. ↑ Gundolf Keil : "blutken - bloedekijn". Notes on the etiology of the hyposphagma genesis in the 'Pommersfeld Silesian Eye Booklet' (1st third of the 15th century). With an overview of the ophthalmological texts of the German Middle Ages. In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 8/9, 2012/2013, pp. 7–175, here: pp. 40 f. (There also to other forms like "Crawczburg" and "Cratzberg").
  4. ↑ Paul Wrzecionko (Ed.): Reformation and Early Enlightenment in Poland: Studies on Socinianism and its influence on Western European thought in the 17th century. Vandenhoeck + Ruprecht, 1997, ISBN 3-525-56431-7 , page 52
  5. ↑ See A. Scheer, Zmiany granic Śląska na przestrzeni wieków. Świdnica 2002, p. 28.
  6. ↑ a b c Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon . 6th edition, Volume 11, Leipzig / Vienna 1907, p. 648 .
  7. ↑ Hugo Weczerka (Ed.): Handbook of historical sites . Volume: Silesia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 316). Kröner, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-520-31601-3 , pp. 251-253.
  8. ^ Joachim Lilla: extras in uniform, members of the Reichstag 1933–1945.
  9. ↑ Kreuzburger Heimatnachrichten born in 1944, February-December (field post newspaper of the NSDAP district leadership Kreuzburg OS.), Publisher: Kreisleiter Harksen
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Schwarz, Edgar Günther Lass: The flight and expulsion, Upper Silesia 1945/46 . published 1965, p. 45, quote: District leader Harksen from Kreuzburg is also present
  11. ↑ Camp in Military District VIII - Breslau (Wrocław)
  12. ^ William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire
  13. ↑ Evacuation of Lower Silesia
  14. ^ History of the city of Kluczbork
  15. ↑ Revitalization of the city of Kluczbork 2007–2013 (Polish)
  16. ↑ Revitalization of the city of Kluczbork 2014–2020 (Polish)
  17. ↑ bypass road construction process (Polish)
  18. ↑ Funding for the construction of the bypass road (Polish)
  19. ^ Heidenfeld: Chronicle of the city of Kreuzburg, from the foundation of the same up to the most recent time. Verlag E. Thielmann, Kreuzburg 1861, p. 76 .
  20. ↑ a b c d Felix Triest : Topographisches Handbuch von Oberschlesien , Wilh. Gottl. Korn, Breslau 1865, p. 150 .
  21. ↑ Heidenfeldt 1861, ibid, pp. 79-80
  22. ↑ Heidenfeldt 1861, ibid, p. 85
  23. ^ A b Gustav Neumann : The German Empire in geographical, statistical and topographical relation . Volume 2, GFO Müller, Berlin 1874, p. 172, item 5 .
  24. ↑ Heidenfeldt 1861, ibid, p. 86
  25. ↑ Johann Georg Knie : Alphabetical-statistical-topographical overview of the villages, spots, cities and other places of the royal family. Prussia. Province of Silesia, including the Margraviate of Upper Lusatia, which now belongs entirely to the province, and the County of Glatz; together with the attached evidence of the division of the country into the various branches of civil administration. Melcher, Breslau 1830, p. 950 .
  26. ↑ a b Johann Georg Knie : Alphabetical-statistical-topographical overview of the villages, towns, cities and other places of the royal family. Preusz. Province of Silesia. 2nd Edition. Graß, Barth and Comp., Breslau 1845, pp. 846-847 .
  27. ↑ a b Felix Triest : Topographisches Handbuch von Oberschlesien , Wilh. Gottl. Korn, Breslau 1865, p. 146, point 1 .
  28. ↑ Heidenfeldt 1861, ibid, p. 86
  29. ^ Meyers Konversationslexikon , 4th edition, Leipzig / Vienna 1885-1892, volume, 10, p. 200 .
  30. ↑ a b c d M. Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006)
  31. ↑ a b c d Dehio Handbook of Art Monuments in Poland. Silesia. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich et al. 2005, ISBN 3-422-03109-X , pp. 175–177.
  32. ^ District leader of the NSDAP in Kreuzburg at the time of the extermination of the Jews (picture Alfred Rieger in uniform: Heimatkalender Kreis Kreuzburg 1942, p. 31)
  33. ^ Home calendar for the Kreuzburg district, OS., 1925, vol. 1 - Silesian Digital Library. Retrieved January 21, 2019 .
  34. ↑ Heinz Piontek: Time of my life. Autobiographical novel. Schneekluth, Munich 1984, pp. 377-386
  35. ↑ Quoted from Heinz Piontek's Kreuzburg. In: Horst Fuhrmann: Roots and work of a poet from Upper Silesia. Dülmen 1985, pp. 20-21.
  36. ↑ a b Rénald Ruiter, chairman of the Kasteelconcerten Beverweerd Foundation, in his foreword to William Hilsley: Musik hinterm Bareldraht , p. 7.