Duchy of Teschen

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Coat of arms of the Duchy of Teschen

The Duchy of Teschen (old Czech Tiessjn , Polish Cieszyn ) existed from 1290 and was a Bohemian feudal principality in Silesia from 1348 (see feudal system ). On February 18, 1327, Casimir I of Teschen received a letter of privilege from King John of Bohemia with a confirmation of succession.

After this ducal family died out in the name-bearer tribe with Friedrich Wilhelm (Teschen) (1601–1625) and the death of Elisabeth Lucretias (1599–1653), the last reigning Duchess of Teschen from the Piast family , married in 1618 to Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein (1580 –1658), Duke of Troppau and Jägerndorf, First Supreme Court Master , was reversed to the Crown of Bohemia . This Bohemian crown fief was created by Emperor Charles VI. to Leopold , Duke of Lorraine, on May 12, 1722 as the Bohemian Duke of Teschen. This was followed by the endowment of the Duchy of Teschen by Empress Maria Theresia to her daughter Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria and her husband Albert Kasimir von Sachsen-Teschen as a Bohemian fiefdom on May 31, 1766 (House, Court and State Archives Vienna, family certificate no. 2018) . The title of duke was transferred to the tertiary line of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen in 1822 .

The Duchy of Teschen existed as a separate administrative unit until 1849; then it became part of the Crown Land of Austrian Silesia (formally: Duchy of Silesia) - initially in the unified Austrian Empire , from 1867 on in Cisleithanien , the western part of Austria-Hungary . After the end of the First World War, new borders were drawn between Czechoslovakia and Poland , which meant , among other things, the division of the capital Teschen into today's cities of Cieszyn and Český Těšín .

Coat of arms of the Duchy of Teschen

Under a prince's hat with a red coat of arms adorned with Hermelia and a blue shield, the gold-crowned Upper Silesian one-headed golden eagle. Helmet gem: a natural peacock bump.

geography

The landscape is shaped by the ridge of the West Beskids , the northwestern part of the Carpathian Mountains , with the 1325 meter high Kahlberg as the highest elevation, as well as by the rivers Olsa and Vistula , which flow through the Silesian foothills . Today the western part of the former Duchy of Teschen lies in the east of the Czech Republic , the eastern part in the south of Poland .

history

Under the Piasts in the Duchy of Silesia

Chapel of St. Nicholas and St. Wenceslas and the tower of the Piast Castle in Teschen

Through an inheritance of the Duchy of Opole , the independent Duchy of Teschen was created in 1281 under Mesko I (see: Silesian Piasts ). He made the place mentioned for the first time by Pope Hadrian IV in 1155 his residence. The duchy belonged to Silesia at that time . Since the late 13th century, his dukes and their locators brought mainly Slavic but also German settlers into the country with special privileges, who were supposed to colonize and make profitable primarily the area north of the Beskids and the river basin of the Vistula . The area around Bielitz became a center of German settlers, where initially numerous Waldhufendörfer emerged. By the end of the Second World War in May 1945, the descendants formed the German Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel , which was wiped out by flight and displacement .

Together with the other Silesian duchies, the Duchy of Teschen came under the sovereignty of the Crown of Bohemia in 1327 . In 1315 the Duchy of Auschwitz was separated. Around 1494 an immigration of Wallachians from the eastern Carpathians began, mostly settling in the mountain valleys. Under Duke Wenceslaus III. Adam was introduced in the Duchy of Teschen at the earliest from 1545 (indisputably in the 1560s) the Reformation for the residents in inheritance as a change of faith to the Evangelical-Lutheran creed.

Territorial disintegration

Splintered duchy around 1580:              Land in direct possession of the dukes, from 1654 Teschener Kammer              Reign of Friedek and Mistek (Moravia)

In 1560 the area around Bielitz was together with Fryštát (German: Freistadt) and Frýdek (German: Friedek) by Duke Wenzel III. Adam was transferred to his son Friedrich Kasimir during his lifetime . After his death in 1571, the indebted manor of Bielitz was sold to Karl von Promnitz on Pless in 1572 with the consent of Emperor Maximilian II and placed under the royal office in Wroclaw . In a similar way, the manors around Fryštát and Frýdek were permanently excluded from the duchy. The minority rule Skoczów - Strumień (German Skotschau and Schwarzwasser) was incorporated into the Duchy of Teschen after a few decades. The Duchy of Teschen, however, was often combined with the neighboring class lords (and with the Duchy of Bielitz ), especially as the so-called historical landscape of Teschener Silesia .

Duchy of Teschen or Teschen Chamber under Habsburg and Habsburg-Lothringen

Teschen around 1650 (after Merian )
Duchy of Teschen 1750

After the death of Duchess Elisabeth Lukretias in 1653, the Teschen branch of the Silesian Piast family died out . The duchy fell as a settled fiefdom to the Crown of Bohemia , which had owned the House of Habsburg since 1526 . The Habsburgs initiated the re-Catholicization of the subjects in the Duchy of Teschen , especially in the Teschen Chamber ; otherwise they showed little interest and neglected the administration in the duchy. In the year 1707 in Silesia with the Altranstädter Convention , which the Swedish King Charles XII. had enforced, allowed the Evangelical Lutheran believers to build the " Silesian grace churches ". The largest of them, the Jesus Church in the city of Teschen, is still a Protestant church today after 300 years.

Habsburg Castle in Teschen

In 1722, Emperor Charles VI separated. the hereditary duchy of Teschen from Bohemia and handed it over to Leopold Joseph Karl von Lothringen , the father of the later Emperor Franz I Stephan . After the preliminary peace of Breslau , which ended the First Silesian War in 1742 , the Duchy of Teschen remained with Austrian Silesia and was referred to as the eastern part of Austrian Upper Silesia or Eastern Silesia , later Teschener Silesia .

Modernized administration and growing importance

Lords in the Teschen district around 1844

A fundamental change under the Habsburg administration came in 1766, when the son-in-law of Empress Maria Theresa , Prince Albert Casimir von Sachsen-Teschen , son of the Saxon Elector August III. , ruled under the title Duke of Saxony-Teschen until 1822. The Duke enlarged the Teschen Chamber ; Due to its skillful economic policy and, after 1772, its favorable location on the way from Vienna to Galicia , the area became one of the most economically successful in the Habsburg monarchy as industrialization began. In the years 1783–1850 it belonged to the Teschner Kreis in the Moravian-Silesian state gubernium. In 1849 Teschen became part of the Crown Land of Austrian Silesia ; after Hungary left the empire in Austria-Hungary , it was part of Cisleithania .

Eastern Silesia on the Ethnographic Map of the Austrian Monarchy by Karl von Czoernig-Czernhausen (1855)

Since the middle of the 19th century, with the strongly accelerated industrialization, the area around Teschen, between Freistadt and Ostrau , developed into one of the most important Austrian centers of hard coal mining and iron smelting . It was connected to the central area around Vienna by the Kaiser Ferdinands-Nordbahn , the first main line of the monarchy .

Election results in the constituencies of Silesia 13 and Silesia 14 in 1911

The official Austrian census of December 31, 1910 before the First World War (1914-1918) showed that 434,821 people lived in Cieszyn-Silesia, of whom 53.8% Polish, 26.6% Czech and 17.7% German-speaking were. The election results of the Reichsrat elections in 1907 and 1911 provide additional insight into the national political attitudes in individual municipalities. At that time, the area was subdivided into political districts: Bielitz-Land , Freistadt , Friedeck-Land , Teschen district, and Bielitz and Friedeck as cities with their own statutes.

Border area between Czechoslovakia and Poland

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of the First World War in 1918, the establishment of the successor state Czechoslovakia and the re-establishment of a Polish state, a race broke out in November 1918 between Czechoslovakia and Poland to take the territory of the former, industrially profitable duchy Teschen from; This led to the invasion of Czechoslovak troops in the Polish-Czechoslovak border war on January 23, 1919 , after Poland had already taken possession of the districts of Bielitz, Teschen and Freistadt in the former Duchy of Teschen in accordance with the local treaty of November 5, 1918. Negotiations at government level and a referendum did not lead to any result. In July 1920, the former Duchy of Teschen was divided along the Olsa River by an arbitration decision by the victorious powers of the First World War . As a result, Czechoslovakia received the previously profitable industrial areas in the west, while Poland received the old town of Cieszyn (German: Teschen) and Bielsko (German: Bielitz), which were incorporated into the Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship . Through this demarcation, the former residence city of Teschen was divided, the suburb to the west of the Olsa came to Czechoslovakia and thus to today's Czech Republic .

After the Munich Agreement of 1938, the beginning of the break-up of Czechoslovakia and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , Polish troops occupied a Polish- speaking strip near the border, called Zaolzie, in the area of ​​Teschen . At the beginning of the Second World War (1939-1945) and the occupation of Poland by the German Wehrmacht , in September 1939 this and, since 1920, the Polish area of ​​Teschen-Schlesien as the district of Teschen and the district of Bielitz, was incorporated into Greater Germany . After the end of the Second World War in May 1945, the former border conditions were restored and have not changed to this day.

List of the dukes of Teschen

See: Teschen in the list of the Dukes of Silesia

Silesian Piast dynasty

Seal of the first Duke Mesko I from 1288

Habsburg dynasty

Infrastructure

Since the middle of the 19th century, the north-western part of the Duchy of Teschen has been a center of coal mining and the ironworks industry. Mechanical engineering and the textile industry also dominated. The most important mining areas were in the towns of Karwin and Ostrau, while Teschen and Bielitz were important industrial locations. The industrialization had been promoted by the construction of the Košice-Oderberg Railway and the North Rail Kojetein-Bielsko. Since 1849 the duchy was divided into the three district authorities Bielitz , Friedeck and Teschen . The city of Teschen has always been the seat of government and administrative center.

Modern map of the region, with Polish labeling

The following places had the status of a city around 1900: (German name, population 1880, today's place name and nationality)

Then there are the large mining locations

In 1910 the duchy had 180,033 inhabitants, of which 69.3% were Polish, 18.2% Czech and 12.4% German.

See also

literature

  • Albin Heinrich: Attempt on the history of the Duchy of Teschen from the oldest to the present time . Teschen 1818 ( e-copy ).
  • Gottlieb Biermann : History of the Duchy of Teschen . Teschen 1863 ( e-copy ).
  • Karl August Müller: Patriotic images, or history and description of all castles and knight palaces in Silesia and the county of Glatz. Second edition, Glogau 1844, pp. 193–195.
  • Idzi Panic: Poczet Piastów i Piastówien cieszyńskich . Cieszyn 2002, ISBN 83-917095-4-X (Polish)
  • Idzi Panic: Śląsk Cieszyński w średniowieczu (do 1528) . Starostwo Powiatowe w Cieszynie, Cieszyn 2010, ISBN 978-83-926929-3-5 (Polish).
  • Moritz Landwehr von Pragenau: History of the City of Teschen . Wuerzburg 1976.
  • Christian d'Elvert: About the feudal system in Moravia and Silesia. In: Journal for Austrian legal scholarship and political law studies, 1831, I, pp. 214–256.
  • O. Grünhagen: Upper Silesia special position. In: Journal of the History of Silesia, XXXVII.
  • Frantisek Vaclav Pstross: The Bohemian Crown Fiefs in the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Margraviate of Moravia and in the Duchy of Silesia, 1861.
  • Alfred von Arneth : History of Maria Theresa, 1863–1879.
  • Alfred Vivenot: Duke Albrecht von Sachsen-Teschen as Reichsmarschall, 1864–1866.
  • Anton Peter: Local history of the Duchy of Silesia. 1880, pp. 90, 93.
  • Procházka novel : Genealogical handbook of extinct Bohemian noble families. Supplementary volume. Published by the board of the Collegium Carolinum , Research Center for the Bohemian Lands. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1990, pp. 132-134 (with an overview family tree of the dukes of Teschen from the House of Lorraine and a description of the coat of arms of the Duchy of Teschen).
  • Procházka novel: Princely titles and dignities for the historical lands of the Bohemian Crown. In: Adler, anniversary volume 1970, p. 180.
Encyclopedic Articles
  • Teschen , encyclopedia entry in: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition, Volume 19, Leipzig / Vienna 1909, p. 432 ( Zeno.org ).

Web links

Commons : Duchy of Teschen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Idzi Panic: Śląsk Cieszyński w średniowieczu (do 1528) . Starostwo Powiatowe w Cieszynie, Cieszyn 2010, ISBN 978-83-926929-3-5 , p. 75 (Polish).
  2. ↑ Ludwig Patryn: The results of the census of December 31, 1910 in Silesia. Troppau 1912, p. 80 f.