Wadowice

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Wadowice
Wadowice Coat of Arms
Wadowice (Poland)
Wadowice
Wadowice
Basic data
State : Poland
Voivodeship : Lesser Poland
Powiat : Wadowice
Gmina : Wadowice
Area : 10.63  km²
Geographic location : 49 ° 53 ′  N , 19 ° 30 ′  E Coordinates: 49 ° 53 ′ 0 ″  N , 19 ° 30 ′ 0 ″  E
Height : 450 m npm
Residents : 19,056 (Dec. 31, 2016)
Postal code : 34-100
Telephone code : (+48) 33
License plate : KWA
Economy and Transport
Rail route : Krakow - Bielsko-Biała
Next international airport : Krakow Airport
Administration (as of 2018)
Mayor : Bartosz Kaliński



Wadowice [ vadɔˈvʲiʦɛ ] ( German in the Middle Ages Frauenstadt , 1939–1945 Wadowitz ) is located in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in Poland between Krakow (southwest, 48 km) and Bielsko at the foot of the Little Beskids , a mountain range of the Subcarpathian Mountains . The city on the Skawa has about 19,000 inhabitants. It is the seat of the town-and-country municipality of the same name with over 38,000 inhabitants and the administrative center of the Powiat Wadowicki . Today Wadowice is also important as the industrial center of the region.

history

The new Silesian Duchy of Auschwitz was established around 1315 . The founding of the place on the Skawa was often attributed to Duke Wladislaus († 1321/22) and it cannot be ruled out that the place was originally named after him as Władowice . In 1325 there was a church there, which remained a branch church of Mucharz until 1335 , then of Woźniki . Wladislaus' son John I entered into a vassal relationship with the Bohemian King John of Luxembourg in 1327 . The accompanying document mentioned the oppidum Wadowicz (an important market place in traditional, ducal or Polish law). The next mention only appeared in 1400, in a German-language document from King Wenceslaus IV of Prague as the stately Frawenstat . After that it was also called Jungferstadt and Frauendorf , which is dedicated to our dear lady after Rudolf Temple, an Austrian historian .

After the town charter was granted in 1430, a fire destroyed Wadowice. The place did not recover from it for a long time and sank to an insignificant little town. Wadowice still had city rights, but the reconstruction was quickly destroyed by renewed fires, wars and epidemics.

From 1445 the city belonged to the Duchy of Zator . In the 16th century, Wadowice developed into a center of trade and handicrafts. The church was under the control of the Cistercian monastery in Mogiła in the 16th and 17th centuries . In 1726 another fire broke out, which also destroyed the church.

Plac Jana Pawła II, Wadowice

After 1772

Since the first partition of Poland from 1772 to 1918, Wadowice belonged to the Duchy of Auschwitz-Zator of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which was under Habsburg rule . In 1773 the Wieliczka District (Polish : cyrkuł wielicki ) was set up on the site of the dissolved Silesia District , which included the Myślenice district with Wadowice. In 1775 the number of district districts was greatly reduced and the city was located in the Zator district. In 1780 the construction of an imperial road from Vienna to Lemberg through Wadowice began. The new administrative reform made this area subject to the Myslenice District , whose seat was moved to the city of Wadowice in 1819, probably because it was located in the middle of the district and on the Imperial Road. This meant an unprecedented upswing in the history of the city, which from the capital was now one of the 19 districts in Galicia, comprising 12 to 13 cities and market communities, as well as around 340 villages with around 350 thousand inhabitants (1843). The number of town residents rose from 1260 in 1780 to 2269 in 1820. In 1827 an Austrian garrison was stationed and the largely rebuilt town had 3,500 inhabitants in the late 1830s.

In the 19th century, important industrial companies were established in Wadowice; mainly for the production of commercial items. At this point in time over 20% of the approx. 10,000 inhabitants were Jews . Since 1867 Wadowice was an Austrian district town. From 1918 to 1939 it was the administrative seat of the Polish Powiat Wadowice in the Cracow Voivodeship .

During the time of the German occupation between 1939 and 1945, the Skawa River (then renamed to Schaue ) formed the border between the Generalgouvernement of Poland and the German Reich . Wadowice was incorporated into the German district of Bielitz . During this time, a prison camp, a penal camp and a ghetto were established in the city .

After the Second World War , Wadowice became a Polish district town again, but lost this status in 1975 and only got it again in 1999 with the reform of the district structure in Poland.

From 1975 to 1998 Wadowice was part of the Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship .

Attractions

The house where John Paul II was born - in the rear of the museum
Basilica with the museum to the right

For many years, the main attraction of Wadowice has been the home of Karol Józef Wojtyła , who was born here on May 18, 1920 as the third child of Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Wojtyłowa in a rather modest apartment on Kościelna No. 7 on the first floor. He grew up in the city. On October 16, 1978 he was elected Pope John Paul II (Polish: Jan Paweł II ) in Rome . The house is now a museum whose visitors have become an important economic factor for the city. Mostly Poles organize regular pilgrimages there.

The charming city center stretches around the basilica on Plac Jana Pawła II, a parish church whose origins go back to the 14th century. The oldest buildings date from the 19th century.

Exhibits from the city and the region can be found in the “Muzeum Miejskie w Wadowicach”, ul. Kościelna 4.

Town twinning

Wadowice has twinned cities with

sons and daughters of the town

local community

The town-and-country municipality (gmina miejsko-wiejska) Wadowice includes a number of villages with a total of more than 38,000 inhabitants.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ K. Koźbiał, 1999, p. 39.
  2. ↑ Colmar Grünhagen (Red.), Konrad Wutke (Red.): Codex Diplomaticus Silesiae T.22 Regesta on Silesian History 1327-1333 . E. Wohlfarth's Buchhandlung, Breslau 1903, p. 7 [4620] (Latin, oline ).
  3. ↑ Rudolf Temple, Historisch - Ethnographisches from the ruins of old German being in the Herzogthume Auschwitz, Pest 1868, p. 24.
  4. ↑ Dz.U. 1975 no 17 poz. 92 (Polish) (PDF file; 783 kB)

literature

  • Krzysztof Koźbiał: Wadowice na tle osad starostwa zatorskiego. Zarys dziejów do 1772 roku (=  Wadoviana: przegląd historyczno-kulturalny ). 1999 (Polish, online [PDF]).
  • Konrad Meus: Wadowice 1772-1914. Study przypadku miasta galicyjskiego [A study of a Galician town] . Księgarnia Akademicka, Kraków 2013, ISBN 978-83-7638-345-3 (Polish).