Province of Silesia

Prussian Province of
Silesia

flag	coat of arms
Situation in Prussia
Consist	1815-1919, 1938-1941
Provincial capital	Wroclaw
surface	40,335 km² (1910) 37,013 km² (1939)
Residents	4,868,764 (1939)
Population density	132 inhabitants / km² (1939)
administration	3 administrative districts
License Plate	IK
Arose from	Silesia
Incorporated into	Province of Lower Silesia , Province of Upper Silesia
Today part of	v. a. Poland ; Saxony , Czech Republic
map
Map of Silesia from 1905

The Prussian Province of Silesia (also unofficially known as Prussian Silesia ) was a province in the southeast of the state of Prussia . Most of the historical region of Silesia belonged to it . The capital was Breslau . The province of Silesia existed from 1815 to 1919 and again from 1938 to 1941. In the years from 1919 to 1938 and from 1941 it was divided into the provinces of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia .

history

Most of the Duchy of Silesia, along with the County of Glatz , was made a province of the Prussian state by the Prussian King Friedrich II in 1742 after the First Silesian War as a result of the Peace of Berlin . After Prussia had reorganized all of its territories as provinces in a new form after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, northern Upper Lusatia around Görlitz was added to the province of Silesia in 1816. The historical sub-landscape of Upper Silesia formed the administrative district of Opole. Lower Silesia was divided into the administrative districts of Breslau and Liegnitz , and briefly also in the administrative district of Reichenbach .

As part of Prussia, the province belonged to the German Confederation until 1866 and to the German Empire from 1871 . In the Reichstag elections , the predominantly Catholic Upper Silesians voted for the majority of the Center Party, while the Lower Silesians initially mainly voted for the “German Freethinkers”, later increasingly the SPD . With industrialization, Upper Silesia with its coal mines became an important industrial area of ​​the empire.

When the Second Polish Republic came into being after the First World War and made territorial claims to parts of the eastern Prussian provinces, the area was divided into the provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia in 1919 in order to give the many Slavic-speaking Upper Silesians more independence and to allow them to participate in the upcoming referendum To hold Upper Silesia for the Reich. As a result of the three Polish uprisings in Upper Silesia , parts of Upper Silesia ( Eastern Upper Silesia ) had to be ceded to Poland in 1922. The Hultschiner Ländchen went to Czechoslovakia as early as 1920 .

In 1938 the province was rebuilt for a short time. Territory annexed after the attack on Poland , which in the south-east extended well beyond the previous borders, was added in violation of international law at the end of 1939 .

Divided again in 1941, the area was almost entirely placed under the administration of Poland in 1945 as a result of the German defeat in World War II, and incorporated into the state. Here it is distributed today v. a. to the voivodeships of Silesia , Lower Silesia and Opole , as well as Lebus , Greater Poland and Lesser Poland . A small part remained with Germany and is distributed today within the Free State of Saxony between the districts of Bautzen and Görlitz .

Population development

year	Residents
1819	2,061,589
1846	3,065,809
1871	3,707,167
1880	4,007,925
1890	4,224,458
1900	4,668,857
1910	5,225,962
1939	4,868,764

Administrative division 1910

Urban and rural districts of Silesia (1905):

Liegnitz administrative district

Wroclaw Governorate

Opole administrative district

Language situation in the province of Silesia according to Prussian statistics 1905/06.

German language

Polish language

Czech Language

Sorbian language

Bilingual

Other languages

Wroclaw Governorate

→ Main article : Wroclaw administrative region

City districts

1. Wroclaw
2. Brieg (since 1907)
3. Schweidnitz

Counties and counties

1. Wroclaw district
2. Brzeg district
3. Frankenstein district
4. Circle of Glatz
5. Groß Wartenberg district
6. District of Guhrau
7. District of Habelschwerdt
8. Militsch district
9. Münsterberg district
10. Namslau district
11. Neumarkt district
12. Neurode district
13. Nimptsch district
14. District of Oels
15. Ohlau district
16. Reichenbach district
17. Schweidnitz district
18. Steinau district
19. Circle chasing
20. Striegau district
21. Trebnitz district
22. Waldenburg district
23. District Wohlau

Liegnitz administrative district

→ Main article : Liegnitz administrative district

City districts

1. Goerlitz
2. Liegnitz

Counties and counties

1. Bolkenhain district
2. Bunzlau district
3. Freystadt district
4. District of Glogau
5. Goldberg-Haynau district
6. Goerlitz district
7. Grünberg district
8. District of Hirschberg i. R.
9. District of Hoyerswerda
10. District of Jauer
11. Landeshut district
12. Lauban district
13. District of Liegnitz
14. Löwenberg district
15. Lüben district
16. District of Rothenburg (Ob. Laus.)
17. Sagan County
18. District of Schönau
19. Sprottau district

Opole administrative district

→ Main article : Opole administrative region

City districts

1. Bytom
2. Gliwice
3. Katowice
4. Koenigshütte
5. Neisse (since 1911)
6. Opole
7. Ratibor (since 1904)

Counties and counties

1. Beuthen district
2. District of Cosel
3. Falkenberg district
4. Groß Strehlitz district
5. Grottkau district
6. District of Hindenburg OS
7. Katowice County
8. Kreuzburg district
9. District of Leobschütz
10. Lublinitz district
11. Neisse district
12. Neustadt district
13. Opole district
14. District of Pless
15. Ratibor district
16. Rosenberg district
17. Rybnik district
18. Tarnowitz district
19. Tost-Gleiwitz district

Development of the ethnolinguistic structure

Number of Polish-speaking and German-speaking population in the Opole administrative region

year	Polish		German
	absolutely	percentage	absolutely	percentage
1819	0377.100	67.2%	0162,600	29.0%
1828	0418,437		0255.383
1831	0456.348		0257.852
1837	0495,362		0290.168
1840	0525.395		0330.099
1843	0540.402		0348.094
1846	0568,582		0364.175
1852	0584.293		0363,990
1858	0612,849		0406,950
1861	0665.865		0409.218
1867	0742.153		0457,545
1890	0918.728	58.2%	0566,523	35.9%
1900	1., 048.230	56.1%	0684.397	36.6%
1905	1,158,805	56.9%	0757.200	37.2%
1910	1,169,340	53.0%	0884.045	40.0%

Chief President

• 1816–1820: Friedrich Theodor von Merckel
• 1824–1825: Moritz Haubold von Schönberg
• 1825: Hans von Bülow
• 1825–1845: Friedrich Theodor von Merckel
• 1845–1848: Wilhelm von Wedell
• 1848: Hans David Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg
• 1848: Julius Pinder
• 1848–1868: Johann Eduard von Schleinitz
• 1869–1872: Eberhard zu Stolberg-Wernigerode
• 1873–1874: Ferdinand von Nordenflycht
• 1874–1877: Adolf von Arnim-Boitzenburg
• 1877–1879: Robert Viktor von Puttkamer
• 1879–1894: Otto Theodor von Seydewitz
• 1894–1903: Hermann von Hatzfeldt
• 1903–1909: Robert von Zedlitz-Trützschler
• 1910: Johann von Dallwitz
• 1910–1919: Hans Lauchlan von Guenther
• 1919: Felix Philipp
• 1919–1938: divided into the Province of Lower Silesia and the Province of Upper Silesia
• 1938–1941: Josef Wagner

See also

• List of coats of arms in the province of Silesia

literature

• Joseph Partsch : Silesia: a regional study for the German people. T. 1., The whole country . 1896, Breslau, Ferdinand Hirt publishing house.
• Joseph Partsch: Silesia: a regional study for the German people. T. 2., Landscapes and Settlements . 1911, Breslau, Verlag Ferdinand Hirt.
• F. Leonardi (ed.): Earth description of the Prussian monarchy . Volume 3, Halle 1794, pp. 210-303.
• Hugo Weczerka (Hrsg.): Handbook of the historical places . Volume: Silesia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 316). Kröner, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-520-31601-3 .
• Hugo Weczerka: City and market foundations and city exits in Silesia 1450-1800. In: Journal for East Research . Vol. 23, 1974, pp. 193-260.
• Lucyna Harc et al .: Cuius regio? Ideological and Territorial Cohesion of the Historical Region of Silesia (c. 1000-2000) vol. 4., Region Divided: Times of Nation-States (1918-1945) . Wrocław, 2014, eBooki.com.pl ISBN 978-83-927132-8-9
• Paul Weber: The Poles in Upper Silesia: a statistical study . 1913, Julius Springer's bookstore in Berlin
• Robert Semple: Observations made on a tour from Hamburg through Berlin, Gorlitz, and Breslau, to Silberberg; and thence to Gottenburg , London 1814
• Johann Georg Knie : Alphabetical-statistical-topographical overview of all villages, spots, towns 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 . Graß, Barth and Comp., Breslau 1830 ( e-copy ).
• Johann Georg Knie: Alphabetical-statistical-topographical overview of the villages, towns, cities and other places of the royal family. Prussia. Province of Silesia, along with the appended division of the country into the districts of the three royal governments, the principalities and districts contained therein, with details of the area, the central elevation above the sea surface, the inhabitants, buildings, the livestock, etc. 2nd edition, Breslau 1845 ( E-copy ).
• Helmut Bleiber, Walter Schmidt : Silesia on the way to civil society. Movements and protagonists of Silesian democracy around 1848 . First and second half volume, trafo verlag, Berlin 2007 (= Silesia. Silesia in the European reference field. Sources and research. Volume 6). ISBN 978-3-89626-639-2 and ISBN 978-3-89626-671-2 .

Web links

Wikisource: Silesia  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Province of Silesia  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Province of Silesia

Individual evidence

1. ^ Prussian Provinces 1910 , Gemeindeververzeichnis.de
2. ↑ ^{a b} Statistical Yearbook for the German Reich 1939/40 (digitized version)
3. ^ Peter Baumgart : Silesia as an independent province in the old Prussian state (1740-1806) . In Norbert Conrads (Hrsg.): German history in Eastern Europe. Silesia . Siedler, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-88680-775-8 , p. 346
4. ^ Statistisches Bureau zu Berlin (Ed.): Contributions to the statistics of the Prussian state . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1821, Silesia, p. 86 ( digitized version ).
5. ↑ Royal Statistical Bureau (ed.): Mittheilungen des Statistisches Bureau's in Berlin, Volume 2 . Population of the districts. ( Digitized version ).
6. ^ Michael Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. p_schlesien.html. (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006). 
7. ↑ Georg Hassel: Statistical outline of all European and the most distinguished non-European states, in terms of their development, size, population, financial and military constitution, presented in tabular form; First issue: Which represents the two great powers Austria and Prussia and the German Confederation ; Verlag des Geographisches Institut Weimar (1823), p. 34; (Total population in 1819: 561,203; Moravians: 12,000; Jews: 8,000 and Czechs: 1,600)
8. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Paul Weber: The Poles in Upper Silesia: a statistical study ; Julius Springer's publishing bookstore in Berlin (1913), pp. 8–9
9. ^ ^{A b c d} Paul Weber: The Poles in Upper Silesia: a statistical study ; Julius Springer's publishing bookstore in Berlin (1913), p. 27