[edit]
Bielsko[edit]
Remnats of the Stare Bielsko hillfort
There has been human habitation in Bielsko since around 1400 BC, wooden tools have been found along with stone axes dating from 1000 BC. The remnants of a fortified settlement in what is now the Stare Bielsko (Old Bielsko) district of the city were discovered between 1933 and 1938 by a Polish archaeological team. The settlement was dated to the 12th – 14th centuries. Its dwellers manufactured iron from ore and specialized in smithery. The current centre of the town was probably developed as early as the first half of the 13th century. At that time a castle (which still survives today) was built on a hill.
Boundaries of the Bielsko-Biała German linguistic island (Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel)
In the second half of the 13th century, the Piast dukes of Opole invited German settlers to colonize the Silesian Foothills. As the dukes then also ruled over the Lesser Poland lands east of the Biała River, settlements arose on both banks like Bielitz (now Stare Bielsko), Nickelsdorf (Mikuszowice Śląskie), Kamitz (Kamienica), Batzdorf (Komorowice Śląskie) and Kurzwald in the west as well as Kunzendorf (Lipnik), Alzen (Hałcnów) and Wilmesau (Wilamowice) in the east. Nearby settlements in the mountains were Lobnitz (Wapienica) and Bistrai (Bystra). Those settlements did not undergo Slavonicisation in the following centuries, which led to the creation of a German language island (Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel) that survived until the 20th century.
After the partition of the Duchy of Opole in 1281, Bielsko passed to the Dukes of Cieszyn within fragmented Poland. The town was first documented in 1312 when Duke Mieszko I of Cieszyn granted a town charter. The Biała again became a border river, when in 1315 the eastern Duchy of Oświęcim split off from Cieszyn as a separate under Mieszko's son Władysław. After the Dukes of Cieszyn had become vassals of the Bohemian kings in 1327 and the Duchy of Oświęcim was sold to the Polish Crown in 1457, returning to Lesser Poland after three centuries, the Biała River for next centuries marked the border between the Bohemian crown land of Silesia within the Holy Roman Empire and the Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Duchy of Bielsko
With Bohemia and the Upper Silesian Duchy of Cieszyn, Bielsko in 1526 was inherited by the Austrian House of Habsburg and incorporated into the Habsburg monarchy. From 1560 Bielsko was held by Frederick Casimir of Cieszyn, son of Duke Wenceslaus III Adam, who due to the enormous debts his son left upon his death in 1571, had to sell it to the Promnitz noble family at Pless. With the consent of Emperor Maximilian II, the Promnitz dynasty and their Schaffgotsch successors ruled the Duchy of Bielsko as a Bohemian state country; acquired by the Austrian chancellor Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz in 1743, and afterwards by Polish aristocrat Aleksander Józef Sułkowski in 1752, the ducal status was finally confirmed by Empress Maria Theresa in 1754. It remained in possession of the Polish Sułkowski family until the dissolution of the duchy in 1849, while the castle was still owned by the Sułkowskis until World War II.
Bielsko was the first town in the Duchy of Cieszyn where the teachings of Martin Luther spread in the late 1530s, even before Duke Wenceslaus III Adam adopted Lutheranism in 1545. Also later, Bielsko was home to the strongest Protestant community in the whole of Cieszyn Silesia, which in 1587 obtained a privilege guaranteeing that only Lutheran services would be held in the town. Jiří Třanovský was active in the Bielsko castle. Bielsko retained its Protestant character also after the Thirty Years' War. The recatholisation campaign, which started in the second half of the 17th century, was not very successful. Throughout the Counter-Reformation period, Lutheran services were held—at first in the Holy Trinity Church with the permission of the authorities, later in homes or in the surrounding Beskid forests (the so-called forest churches)—and immediately after the issuing of the Patent of Toleration by Emperor Joseph II in 1781, an Evangelical district was established north of the historical centre, with the Church of the Saviour, the present seat of the Lutheran bishop and schools, known as the Bielsko Zion (Bielski Syjon). To this day, it remains a Protestant cultural centre of supra-regional significance. In 1900, a monument to Martin Luther was unveiled there. It was one of only two in the whole of Austria-Hungary (the other was erected in the Bohemian town of Aš), and now is the only one within the borders of Poland. In the second half of the 19th century, Lutherans ceased to constitute the majority of the population due to the influx of new inhabitants, mostly Catholic or Jewish.
After the Prussian king Frederick the Great had invaded Silesia, Bielsko remained with the Habsburg monarchy as part of Austrian Silesia according to the 1742 Treaty of Breslau. In late 1849 Bielsko became a seat of political district. In 1870 it became a statutory city.
From left: the theater, the main post office and the Bielsko Castle
A 1905 postcard of Franz-Josef-Strasse (now 3 Maja Street) connecting the Old Town with the railway station
The town's development in the 19th century was primarily linked to the textile industry, and to a lesser extent the engineering industry. The Bielsko-Biała area was described as the third largest centre of the textile industry in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, after Brno and Liberec. In the second half of the 19th century, new tenements, villas of wealthy industrialists and public buildings in Revival and Art Nouveau styles began to spring up in the landscape of the city. These were often inspired by the architecture of Vienna, to which the slogan "Little Vienna", which is still popular today, refers. The local architect of the Jewish origin Carl Korn had the greatest influence on the architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shaping the character of "Little Vienna", while the plan for urban regulation was prepared in 1899 by the Viennese urban planner Max Fabiani. In 1855 a branch of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was built from Dziedzice to Bielsko, which in 1877 was extended to Żywiec and connected to the Galician Transversal Railway. A 268 metres (879 ft) long tunnel under the centre of Bielsko was then built. In 1888, a railway connection to Cieszyn and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska was opened. In 1895, an electric tram line was established in Bielsko. It connected the railway station with Zigeunerwald/Cygański Las, which in the meantime was transformed into a forest-park complex on the model of the Vienna Forest with many summer villas of Bielsko's factory owners built in its surroundings.
However, the demographic boom was weaker than, for example, in the Upper Silesian conurbation, due to the restriction of the settlement of workers in the city proper. Many of them lived in the surrounding villages, which formally remained separate, even though they were taking on an increasingly urban character. According to the 1910 census, Bielsko had a population of 18,568. 84.3% used German in their domestic interactions, 14.3% used Polish, 0.7% used Czech or Slovak, and 0.7% used another language. 55.9% were Roman Catholic, 27.6% Lutheran, 16.3% Jewish, and 1.1% were of another denomination or with no religion.
After 1918, when Austria-Hungary collapsed, Bielsko found itself within a disputed territory between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Attempts to incorporate the city into the Republic of German-Austria failed. In July 1920, the Conference of Ambassadors decided to divide Cieszyn Silesia in such a way that Bielsko became part of the autonomous Silesian Voivodeship in the Second Polish Republic.
Political life during the interwar period was marked by ethnic and national tensions. The influx of Polish officials and teachers increased the proportion of the Polish population, although the city retained a significant German-speaking community.
In the 1930s, some ethnic German residents, under the leadership of Rudolf Wiesner, organized the Jungdeutsche Partei, an anti-Polish and antisemitic political movement that functioned as a de facto branch of the NSDAP. A considerable number of young Germans joined the party during the mid-1930s.
New residential district built in the 1930s
The interwar period also brought significant urban development. A new residential district in Modernist style was built beginning in 1934 on the site of the former castle gardens, and the first Polish high school (today the Nicolaus Copernicus High School) was opened in 1927. In 1938, the nearby municipality of Aleksandrowice was incorporated into the city, where an airport and a pilot school were established.
Biała[edit]
The territorial evolution of Biała over centuries
The history of Biała dates back to the second half of the 16th century. The first written mention comes from 1564 and describes a small craftsmen settlement of thirteen houses. It was located near the mouth of Niwka to the Biała River, in the area of today's Łukowa Street. Administratively, it belonged to the Silesian County of the Kraków Voivodeship within the Kingdom of Poland. The first residents most likely came from the suburbs of neighboring Bielsko. They crossed to the other side of the river tempted by the opportunity to build new houses in the face of restrictions imposed by the Bielsko town council and disputes between the suburban population and the privileged burghers of the Old Town. The settlement was established on the land of the village of Lipnik, from which it became independent in 1613. Further development of the village was associated with the influx of refugees from neighboring Silesia during the Thirty Years' War and the Counter-Reformation.
Though already named a town in the 17th century, Biała officially was granted borough rights by the Polish king Augustus II the Strong in 1723. At that time it counted only 40 inhabited houses and about 300 residents, mostly German-speaking and Lutheran. There has been a new urban layout made, in the center of which was a rectangular market square - today's Wojska Polskiego Square.
In the course of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Biała was annexed by the Habsburg Empire and incorporated into the crownland of Galicia. After that the town underwent major urban transformations in the 1780s in connection with the construction of the Central Galician Road, part of which is today's 11 Listopada Street. At that time, the New Market was also delineated - the present Wolności Square.
Market Square in Biała around 1910
The town's boundaries were artificially limited as a result of disputes with the Lipnik municipality, which refused to give up part of its territory, even though the western part of Lipnik formed an urban and functional unity with Biała. West Lipnik also formed the de facto Jewish quarter of Biała, due to the official ban on Jewish settlement in the town, which was in effect from 1757 to 1848. Joachim Adler's cloth factory, considered the first mechanized factory in the Bielsko-Biala area, was also established within Lipnik's borders in 1810. Lipnik was finally incorporated into Biała in 1925. The town thus expanded its territory more than sixteen times (before 1925 it had only 1.22 square kilometres (0.47 sq mi), while Lipnik had 20.76 square kilometres (8.02 sq mi)), and the population increased two and a half times.
In the 19th century, Biała formed a single industrial region with Bielsko, also with a predominance of textile industry. From 1867 it was the capital of Biała County. At the turn of the 20th century, a number of "Vienna-like" buildings were constructed in Biała, too, including a pompous Neo-Renaissance town hall in 1895–1897.
According to the 1910 census, Biała had a population of 8,668. 69.3% used German in their domestic interactions, 29.3% used Polish, and 1.4% used another language (mainly Czech or Ukrainian). 72.1% were Roman Catholic, 17.7% Jewish and 12.3% Lutheran. Of the remaining 0.9%, there were small groups of Greek Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Calvinists and five people with no religion.
With the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, Biała became part of the Second Polish Republic. Throughout the interwar period it belonged to the Kraków Voivodeship. From 1925, the official name of the town was Biała Krakowska.
Bielsko-Biała[edit]
German soldiers in the ruins of a destroyed synagogue in 1939
Although the two towns effectively functioned as one urban area for a long time, they were administratively combined for the first time by the Nazi authorities after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Biała became a district of Bielsko under the name Bielitz-Ost. During the World War II, the city was occupied by the Nazi Germany, within the province of Upper Silesia. Germans committed various crimes against the Polish and Jewish population. Several Polish teachers and principals were deported to Nazi concentration camps and murdered there. Many Jewish residents were murdered at the nearby Auschwitz extermination camp. Only less than 1000 people of the city's Jewish community of nearly 8000 survived the war. Several widely known Holocaust survivors from Bielsko-Biała were Roman Frister, Gerda Weissmann Klein and Kitty Hart-Moxon, all of whom wrote accounts of their experiences during the war. However, when it comes to material losses, the city survived the war almost intact. It was not bombed, and fighting during the Soviet offensive in the winter of 1945 was limited to today's peripheral districts, such as Hałcnów and the eastern part of Lipnik.
After World War II, the ethnic structure of the place changed. Most of the German population was expelled and those who remained assimilated with the Poles. In the 21st century, there is only a small German minority circle in the town. Poles transferred from the eastern areas that had been annexed to the USSR, as well as new settlers from central Poland, especially Lesser Poland, came to Bielsko-Biała.
The new Polish authorities initially restored the pre-war borders, including the division into Bielsko and Biała in two different voivodeships. But soon the decision to re-unify the two towns was made. The new municipality under the name Bielsko-Biała was created on 1 January 1951. Until 1975, it was part of the Katowice Voivodeship.
Demolition of the so-called Castle Markets to build a two-lane thoroughfare through the inner city in 1974
Production of the Polski Fiat 126p "Maluch" in the FSM factory (1970s)
In post-war Poland, the city has remained an important centre of textile industry (second only to Łódź), alongside which new branches have developed: in 1946 the Gliding Institute was established and in 1948 the car engine plant WSM, on the basis of which the FSM Automobile Factory was founded in 1972. The factory was born from an agreement between the FSO and Fiat for the construction of a new model, the Polski Fiat 126p, Polish version of Fiat 126 commonly known as Maluch. A huge industrial complex has been built in the northern part of the city. Thousands of people came from all over Poland to work then; in the 1970s Bielsko-Biała observed the biggest population boom in its history. The influx of new residents was associated with the construction of new housing estates with large panel system-buildings, like Złote Łany (1970–1975), Wojska Polskiego (1976–1980), Beskidzkie (1976–1982) or Karpackie (1979–1982). The population has also increased due to the incorporation of surrounding communes: Kamienica and Mikuszowice (together with Olszówka [pl]) in 1969, Straconka in 1973, Stare Bielsko, Komorowice, Hałcnów and Wapienica in 1977.
Beskidzkie housing estate in the 1980s
Bielsko-Biała was made famous on a large scale by the Studio Filmów Rysunkowych (Animated Film Studio), founded in 1947. It was one of five animation studios in post-war Poland. Among the children's TV series produced here were Reksio, Bolek i Lolek, Margo the Mouse and Porwanie Baltazara Gąbki.
The general strike launched by the workers of the Bewelana textile factory in January 1981 is considered the most effective strike of the first wave of Solidarity. The strikers forced the mayor of the city, the provincial governor, the commander of Milicja Obywatelska and the municipal and voivodeship secretaries of the Communist party to resign.
From 1975 to 1998, Bielsko-Biała was the capital of the Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship, covering most of Polish Cieszyn Silesia and south-western Lesser Poland (counties of Żywiec, Oświęcim, Wadowice and Sucha Beskidzka). To describe its territory, the name Podbeskidzie was adopted, which is still popular among Bielsko-Biała residents ("Bielsko-Biała - the capital of Podbeskidzie"), but elsewhere it is criticized as an artificial term that is trying to replace traditional historical and geographical lands. The subject of a lively public debate is the long-term effects of the loss of the status of a provincial capital as a result of the administrative reform in 1998, when the area of the former Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship was divided and Bielsko-Biała was incorporated into the Silesian Voivodeship.
The economic transformation after 1989 affected the industrial city with a serious socio-economic crisis. The textile industry, which almost disappeared from Bielsko-Biała, was the most affected. The car factory bought directly by Fiat limited its production only to components. The bad condition of the historic Old Town was the clearest sign of the city's decline in the 1990s, while its gradual revitalization started in 2002 became an important symbol of changes for the better. During the first and second decades of the 21st century, Bielsko-Biała managed to return to the path of economic prosperity. Between 2001 and 2009, on the site of the demolished Lenko and Finex textile factories, a large shopping mall, Galeria Sfera, was built. It is a characteristic post-modernist architectural structure on the banks of the Biała river, however criticised for its negative influence on the traditional commercial zone located around the nearby 11 Listopada Street pedestrian zone. Like other contemporary cities, Bielsko-Biała is strongly affected by suburbanization, which results in a decrease in the number of inhabitants while the population of the neighboring communes is increasing.
