Mikołajki

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Mikołajki (disambiguation) .

Nikolaiken is a redirect to this article. Further meanings are listed under Nikolaiken (disambiguation) .

Mikołajki
	Mikołajki
Basic data
State :	Poland
Voivodeship :	Warmia-Masuria
Powiat :	Mrągowski
Gmina :	Mikołajki
Geographic location :	53 ° 48 '  N , 21 ° 35'  E Coordinates: 53 ° 48 '0 "  N , 21 ° 35' 0"  E
Height :	120 m npm
Residents :	3826 (June 30, 2019)
Postal code :	11-730
Telephone code :	(+48) 87
License plate :	NMR
Economy and Transport
Street :	DK16 Olsztyn - Ełk
	DW609 Ukta -Mikołajki
Rail route :	Czerwonka – Ełk (not in operation)
Next international airport :	Danzig

Mikołajki [ mʲikɔˈwajkʲi ] ( German Nikolaiken ) is a town in the powiat Mrągowski of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland . It is the seat of the town-and-country municipality of the same name with 8,174 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2019).

Geographical location

The town is located about 20 kilometers east-southeast of the town of Mrągowo (Sensburg) and 70 kilometers east of the town of Olsztyn (Allenstein) on a long arm of the Śniardwy (Spirdingsee) , the largest of the Masurian lakes , at an altitude of 120 meters above sea level.

history

Local history

The old church village in Masuria was first mentioned in 1444 as Nickelsdorf (or St. Niclas). The village is named after the church patron Saint Nicholas , the patron saint of fishermen. From 1610 the place can be found again under the name Nikolaiken. The three population centers with Koniec and Koslau were so far grown together in the 18th century that the town in 1726 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I , the city rights were granted. In 1911 Nikolaiken was connected to the railway network. Due to the location on the Spirdingsee , fishing has always been an important branch of business in Nikolaiken. The Nikolaiker vendace (edible fish) in particular made the small town known far beyond East Prussia .

Due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , the population in the Allenstein voting area , to which Nikolaiken belonged, voted on July 11, 1920 on whether it would continue to belong to East Prussia (and thus to Germany) or join Poland. In Nikolaiken, 1,800 residents voted to remain with East Prussia, Poland did not receive any votes.

Until 1945 the city belonged to the district of Sensburg in the province of East Prussia. During the Second World War, Nikolaiken was one of the few cities in East Prussia that was not destroyed. During the war, the German defense under Admiral Canaris was stationed there.

Towards the end of the war, the Red Army occupied the region in the spring of 1945 . Soon afterwards Nikolaiken and the southern half of East Prussia were placed under Polish administration. The city received the Polish place name Mikołajki . Most of the inhabitants, unless they had fled during the war, were expelled in 1945 or later resettled and replaced by Poles.

Even before the war, Nikolaiken was a magnet for tourism. Today the place is one of the largest tourist centers - especially for water sports - in Masuria . Ice sailing is a special attraction in winter .

Population numbers

year	Check- residents	Remarks
1782	1202	without the garrison (a squadron of hussars )
1831	1981	mostly Poland
1875	2192
1880	2277
1890	2327	including 40 Catholics and 75 Jews
1905	2284	including 75 Jews
1933	2668
1939	2631
2007	3806
2016	3854

Religions

Christianity

A church in Nikolaiken was founded in the pre-Reformation period. The Reformation gained a foothold here relatively early in the 16th century and made Lutheran teachings at home.

Protestant church

→ Main article : Evangelical Church (Mikołajki)

Evangelical parish church in Mikołajki with a statue of Christ

Church building: The Evangelical Church in Mikołajki was built between 1840 and 1842. It is the successor to a building that burned down when the Tartars invaded in 1656 and a church that was demolished in 1839 due to dilapidation. The church is a neo-Romanesque hall building based on a design by the Schinkel School . The tower was only added in 1880. The altar and pulpit of the church are combined into one wall. Above it is a painting with symbolic representations of prayers under the cross of Jesus. The organ dates from 1868. Recently, the Christ the Redeemer was created in front of the church, donated by the clergyman Franciszek Czudek († 2018), who was in office at the church .

Parish: The Protestant parish arose in Nikolaiken with the introduction of the Reformation . Until 1945 it was incorporated into the parish of Sensburg in the church province of East Prussia of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union . In 1925 it counted 5021 parishioners who lived in a large parish and were looked after by two pastors. After the local population fled and was expelled, the number of parishioners dwindled. But soon a new congregation was able to form here, which now belongs to the Masurian diocese of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland . Affiliated is the branch church in Ukta (Alt Ukta) .

Roman Catholic Church

Local parishes

Catholic Parish Church of Mother of God Rosary

Catholic parish church of St. Nicholas

Church building: In Mikołajki there are two catholic houses of worship today. Both are parish churches dedicated to the Mother of God Rosary ( Polish: Kościół Matki Boskiej Różańcowej ) and St. Nicholas ( Polish: Kościół św. Mikołaja ).

Parishes: Before 1945 there were relatively few Catholics in Nikolaiken and the surrounding area. In 1870 the city was parish off to Sensburg . The city is the seat of a deanery within the diocese of Ełk . To Nicholas parish, the subsidiary church belongs to Tałty (Talten) .

Deanery Mikołajki

Seven parishes are assigned to the Mikołajki Dean's District in the Ełk Diocese of the Polish Roman Catholic Church :

• Baranowo (Barranowen , 1938 to 1945 Hoverbeck)
• Kosewo (Kossewen , 1938 to 1945 Rechenberg)
• Mikołajki (Mother of God Rosary)
• Mikołajki (St. Nicholas)
• Ukta (Old Ukta)
• Użranki (King's Height)
• Woźnice (Wosnitzen) .

Judaism

→ Main article : Jewish cemetery (Mikołajki)

The Jewish cemetery is more than a reminder of the life of a Jewish community in Nikolaiken. It is also a memorial to the almost 100 Jews who lived in Nikolaiken before the Nazi era.

politics

coat of arms

Historical coat of arms of Nikolaiken

Blazon : “Quartered; Fields 1 and 4 silver, field 2 red, field 3 blue; the whole thing covered with a golden crowned, natural smelt (fish), which is tied to the lower jaw with a long golden chain extending from the left upper corner. "

The coat of arms was created in 1922 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the city. Blue, silver and red are considered the colors of Masuria. The fish is the stint stallion of the Spirdingsee, which was caught once, but not killed by the city council, but tied to the bridge, which is why the smelts are now always swarming around the city. The legend refers to the chained locking beam, which only released the passage after the skipper had paid the bridge toll.

Today's coat of arms of Mikołajki

Mikołajki coat of arms

Based on the earlier coat of arms of the city of Nikolaiken, the city and rural community of Mikołajki has given itself a new coat of arms. It shows a gold-crowned fish on a blue field, lying on a silver chain.

Town twinning

• Varėna ( Lithuania )
• Villard-de-Lans ( France )
• Ulricehamn ( Sweden )

Culture and sights

tourism

Nikolaiken was a well-known tourist destination with numerous hotels and restaurants even before the First World War.

Attractions

In Mikołajki

• Evangelical Church , on the site of a previous building mentioned for the first time in 1522/1535, rebuilt 1840–1842, from the school of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , tower from 1880.
• Figure of the stinth stallion under the bridge; According to legend, the Stinthengst is the king of fish, whose presence ensures the Nikolaikenern the abundance of fish.
• Jewish cemetery on ul. Dybowska.
• Surroundings with some of the most beautiful of the Masurian lakes, including Spirdingsee , Beldahnsee (Jezioro Bełdany) and Talter waters ( Jezioro Tałty ) .

and display information about the image

View of Mikołajki from the lake

In the neighborhood

The river Krutynia (Kruttinnen River) flows southwest of Mikołajki in the Masurian Landscape Park between the Jezioro Mokre (Muckersee) and Jezioro Bełdany (Beldahnsee) lakes and is ideal for canoeing.

Boating on the Krutynia

To the east of Mikołajki is Jezioro Łuknajno (Lucknainer See) , a protected biosphere reserve, especially for swans. There is a viewing platform in the village of Łuknajno.

The Popielno (Popiellnen) , located on a peninsula south of Mikołajki, is worth seeing , today with Tarpan horse breeding and the hotel of the Warsaw Academic Sailing Club. Here the Nikolaiker See meets the Spirdingsee and merges into the Beldahnsee. The place can be reached via an old ferry that was used by Marion Countess Dönhoff .

Sports

Mikołajki is now a center of sailing boat tourism, and houseboats are also rented out. Some marinas and ports have settled here. From here you can go on extensive tours across the Masurian Lake District . In addition to water sports in summer, ice sailing is a special attraction in winter.

local community

The town itself and 17 villages with school boards belong to the town-and-country community (gmina miejsko-wiejska) Mikołajki with an area of ​​256.4 km².

→ Main article : Gmina Mikołajki

Economy and Infrastructure

education

• The Społeczne Gimnazjum i Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Marion Dönhoff w Mikołajkach is an amalgamation of a middle school and a high school in the city. They are named after Marion Countess Dönhoff .

traffic

Street

An important Polish west-east thoroughfare runs through the city: the national road DK16 . It connects three voivodships from Grudziądz (Graudenz) via Olsztyn (Allenstein) and Mrągowo (Sensburg) and further via Ełk (Lyck) and Augustów and ends at the Polish-Lithuanian border.

In Mikołajki, the DW609 voivodship road from Ukta (Old Ukta) via Bobrówko (Bubrowko / Biebern) meets the DK16.

rail

Until the closure of passenger traffic on the section Mrągowo - Ełk (Sensburg – Lyck) on September 1, 2009, Mikołajki was a train station on the Czerwonka – Ełk railway , which before 1945 had a direct connection to Königsberg (Prussia) in Czerwonka (Rothfließ) . Since then, the city can only be reached by regular buses.

Personalities

A native of the city

• Horst Symanowski (1911–2009), Protestant pastor, member of the Confessing Church and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime
• Heinz Kippnick (* 1928), graphic artist and heraldist
• Hans-Heiner Kühne (* 1943), lawyer, criminologist and university professor

Connected to the city

• Otto Czygan (1814–1897), Protestant theologian, pastor in Nikolaiken from 1859 to 1888.

literature

• Johann Friedrich Goldbeck : Complete topography of the Kingdom of Prussia . Part I, Königsberg / Leipzig 1785, pp. 41–42, No. 5.
• August Eduard Preuss : Prussian country and folklore or description of Prussia. A manual for primary school teachers in the province of Prussia, as well as for all friends of the fatherland . Bornträger Brothers, Königsberg 1835, pp. 456–457, no. 69.

Web links

Commons : Mikołajki  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• City and municipality website
• Evangelical parish Nikolaiken

Footnotes

1. ↑ Herbert Marzian , Csaba Kenez : self-determination for East Germany. Documentation on the 50th anniversary of the East and West Prussian referendum on July 11, 1920. Editor: Göttinger Arbeitskreis , 1970, p. 114
2. ^ Johann Friedrich Goldbeck : Complete topography of the Kingdom of Prussia . Part I, Königsberg / Leipzig 1785, pp. 41–42, No. 5.
3. ^ August Eduard Preuss : Prussian country and folklore or description of Prussia. A manual for primary school teachers in the province of Prussia, as well as for all friends of the fatherland . Bornträger Brothers, Königsberg 1835, pp. 456–457, no. 69.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Michael Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the Reich in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. sensburg.html. (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006). 
5. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon . 6th edition, Volume 14, Leipzig / Vienna 1908, p. 693.
6. ↑ For June 30, 2007: Główny Urząd Statystyczny: Ludność - Stan i Struktura w przekroju terytorialnym, as of June 30, 2007 ( Memento of February 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Mikołajki w liczbach
8. ^ Building in Nikolaiken at ostpreussen.net
9. ↑ Walther Hubatsch : History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume 2 Pictures of East Prussian Churches. Göttingen 1968, p. 139, figs. 673–674.
10. ↑ Walther Hubatsch: History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume 3 documents. Göttingen 1968, p. 501.
11. ^ Parish Mikołajki
12. ↑ Nikolaiken / Mikołajki at GenwWiki
13. ↑ Illustration of the historical coat of arms at GenWiki
14. ↑ Erich Keyser: German city book - manual urban history , Volume 1 Northeast Germany. Stuttgart 1939, pp. 89, 90.
15. ^ Otto Hupp: German coat of arms. Kaffee-Handels-Aktiengesellschaft, Bremen 1925.
16. ↑ UNESCO description of the Luknajno Biosphere Reserve
17. ^ Czerwonka – Ełk railway line at Ogólnopolska Baza Kolejowa