Olkusz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Olkusz
Coat of arms of Olkusz
Olkusz (Poland)
Olkusz
Olkusz
Basic data
State : Poland
Voivodeship : Lesser Poland
Powiat : Olkuski
Gmina : Olkusz
Area : 25.63  km²
Geographic location : 50 ° 16 ′  N , 19 ° 34 ′  E Coordinates: 50 ° 16 ′ 0 ″  N , 19 ° 34 ′ 0 ″  E
Residents : 36,122 (Dec. 31, 2016)
Postal code : 32-300 to 32-305
Telephone code : (+48) 32
License plate : COL
Economy and Transport
Street : Krakow - Sosnowiec
Rail route : Tunel – Sosnowiec
Next international airport : Katowice



Olkusz ( 1939-1940 Olkusch , 1941-1945 Ilkenau ) is a town in the powiat Olkuski of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in Poland . It is the seat of the Powiat and the town-and-country municipality of the same name with a little over 49,500 inhabitants.

Geographical location

Olkusz is located in the Cracow-Czestochowa Jura between Cracow and Katowice at Droga krajowa 94 .

history

The first evidence of a permanent settlement in the area of ​​today's Olkusz comes from the 11th century , but was first mentioned in 1262 as Hilcus , then as Helcus (1301), Ilcus (1314), Elcus (1409), Olkusch ( 1462). The origin of the name is unclear. A popular explanation is the name from the Phoenician - Hebrew name El (or Elohim ) for god or master and Kusz for chisel or hammer , because of the finds of silver and other ores in the area. According to other researchers, the name is more of German origin : from Middle High German ëlch ( elk ) or ilke , seine ( polecat ), the Polish suffix -us (z) often came from German -hūs (wykusz, ratusz, zamtuz and so on). The exact date of the granting of the town charter is not known, but it is certain that the town already had the same in 1299 and therefore this is assumed to be the official date. At the end of the 14th century, the town hall was built, which became the seat of the city administration of the city, which is predominantly ruled by German patricians. The city was along the most important trade route from Krakow through Bytom to Breslau , the Via Regia . The ore around the city, especially lead-silver luster , made it prosperous. In 1356 the city became an important court seat . Olkusz was one of the few cities in Lesser Poland, the legal system of the "Royal Free mountain town " (Pol. Wolne królewskie miasto górnicze ) had, which to belonging privilege of Bergfreiheit , so the free search for ores without delivery to the landowner, just as mountain decade after the royal bergregal to the Polish king, and experienced miners, metallurgists , mine surveyors , Ward A , silver, mining, and metal traders, etc. from old mountain mining areas in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, upper Hungary (now Slovakia), the Erzgebirge and the resin attracted . In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the trade in lead and silver ores from Lesser Poland, mainly from Olkusz, was monopolized by the Upper Hungarian and Krakow patrician family Thurzo , who joined it with the participation of the Fuggers in the Upper Hungarian-Lesser Poland Saiger trade. For this purpose, large quantities of lead from Lesser Poland were delivered to the company's Seiger smelters , where they were melted down in the relatively newly developed seven-stage smelting process of segregation with black copper (copper-silver ore) from Upper Hungary and finally separated into copper, silver and lead. The three Seiger huts of the Fugger-Thurzo Society were in Neusohl , Moštenica and Mogiła .

At the end of the 13th century some Jewish merchants were already living in the village and about before 1317 two Jewish houses ( curie due Judeorum ) were mentioned in a source. In 1374 the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis was published for Olkusz. Their presence was not confirmed again until 1546. At that time a synagogue and probably a cemetery were built. Around 1600 Olkusz was one of the 14 cities in the Krakow Voivodeship with the largest Jewish population (see shtetl ). At the end of the 17th century, the city had lost its former glory. Famine, excessive ore excavation, fires and, last but not least, the war against the Swedes were the causes.

In 1795 the place came under Austrian rule after the third partition of Poland . In 1809 it became part of the Duchy of Warsaw and then in 1815 of Congress Poland . In 1830 the residents took part in the November uprising and in 1863 in the January uprising . 1883 to 1885 the connection to the rail network took place, which promoted the development of the city. In 1918 the city became part of the Kielce Voivodeship and in 1919 the seat of a powiat . In 1938 the number of inhabitants had doubled compared to 1918.

During the punitive action in July 1940, German law enforcement officers force Rabbi Moshe Yitzhak Hagermann to pray. Hagermann was murdered in Majdanek concentration camp in 1942 .

In September 1939 the city was occupied by the Wehrmacht . It was renamed Ilkenau and became the district town of the new district of Ilkenau in the administrative district of Katowice in the province of Silesia of the German Empire . In the further course of the Second World War , mainly Jewish , but also other residents of the place were killed.

On July 31, 1940, a punitive action called "Bloody Wednesday" took place. When a German gendarme was killed by a burglar, all Jews and non-Jews in the market square had to lie handcuffed on the pavement for a day. They were beaten with rifle butts and boots kicked. Twenty people were publicly executed as hostages. The number was later increased to 100 hostages for one German killed and 50 for one wounded German. In 1941/42, so-called ethnic Germans who had been resettled from the Buchenland ( Bukovina ) were assigned to the empty houses and apartments . In September 1941, a forced ghetto was set up on the outskirts. In June and July 1942, almost all of the remaining Jews were ghetto to Auschwitz deported . On January 20, 1945, the Red Army liberated the city ​​and the Bukowina Germans were again driven out.

The city now became part of the Krakow Voivodeship . In 1975 the city lost its seat as a powiat due to an administrative reform and became part of the Katowice Voivodeship , but received the seat again in 1999 and thus became part of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship .

Preserved parts of the city wall
St. Andrew's Basilica in Olkusz

Town twinning

Culture and sights

Museums

  • the regional museum "Antoni Minkiewicz", which was built in 1911
  • the Africa Museum "Bogdan Szczygiel"
  • the Museum of Władysław Wołkowski's Works
  • the fire brigade museum

Buildings

  • the Basilica of St. Andrew from the 14th century was rebuilt several times in the following years and has a Renaissance organ from 1612 to 1623, which is still almost in its original condition;
  • reconstructed parts of the city wall, consisting of a watchtower and a fragment of a battlement;
  • Memorial for the victims of the war 1939-1945 on the market square ( Rynek )

local community

The town-and-country community (gmina miejsko-wiejska) Olkusz is divided into 19 villages in addition to the capital of the same name, the town of Olkusz.

traffic

The Olkusz station is on the Tunel – Sosnowiec railway line , and the Hutnicza Szerokotorowa line also runs through the city.

sons and daughters of the town

literature

  • Olkusz , in: Guy Miron (Ed.): The Yad Vashem encyclopedia of the ghettos during the Holocaust . Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009 ISBN 978-965-308-345-5 , pp. 543-545

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GOV: Ilkenau
  2. ↑ Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch: Adaptacje niemieckich nazw miejscowych w języku polskim [The adaptation of German ON in Polish]. Prace Instytutu Języka Polskiego . Polska Akademia Nauk . Instytut Języka Polskiego, 1995, ISBN 83-8557933-8 , ISSN  0208-4074 , p. 76 (Polish, online ).
  3. ^ Website of the town of Olkusz on the history
  4. ↑ Christoph Bartels u. a. (Ed.): History of German mining. , Münster 2012, Volume 1, pp. 254-255, 269, 317, 321, 496-497. ; Ian Blanchard: International Lead Production and Trade in the "Age of the Saiger Process" 1460-1560. Stuttgart 1994, pp. 15-74.
  5. ^ History of the Jews in Olkusz
  6. ^ Henryk Rutkowski (editor), Krzysztof Chłapkowski: Województwo krakowskie w drugiej połowie XVI wieku; Cz. 2, Komentarz, indeksy . Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2008, p. 75 (Polish, online ).
  7. ↑ Yad Vashem: This Month in Holocaust History - July - July 31, 1940 German police unit publicly abuses and humiliates Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Hagerman in Olkusz, Poland, on “Bloody Wednesday”: http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/ en / exhibitions / this_month / july / 04.asp
  8. ↑ Yad Vashem: German Police Activity in Olkusz, 31/7/1940 - Through the Lens of History - http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/our_collections/olkusz/index.asp

Remarks

  1. ↑ The mention of Lcuhs in 1257 , when Bolesław V. set 400 grams of gold as a fee from the city for a monastery, is falsified