Görlitz

Görlitz, first mentioned in 1071, developed as a key trading town on the Via Regia route linking Western and Eastern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, it prospered through the cloth trade and became a member of the Lusatian League, enjoying considerable autonomy. The town came under Bohemian, Austrian and Saxon rule before becoming part of Prussia in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna. During World War II, Görlitz was spared major destruction, but the new Oder–Neisse line in 1945 divided it from its eastern districts, which became Zgorzelec in Poland. In the GDR era, Görlitz was a border town with limited cross-border contact, but after German reunification and Poland’s EU accession, cooperation with Zgorzelec increased. Today, Görlitz is renowned for its well-preserved historic architecture and frequent use as a film location.

Görlitz is culturally diverse. Immediately to the west of Görlitz lie Sorbian-speaking parts of Lusatia, and Görlitz was founded and first settled by the Sorbs, a Slavic people. This is evidenced by the name of the town and the etymology of some of its surrounding villages and geographical features being of Slavic origin. Görlitz itself speaks the East Lusatian dialect of German (Ostlausitzer Mundart), which is related to Silesian German dialects and differs from the Upper Saxon dialects spoken in most parts of Saxony. It is home to the Schlesisches Himmelreich and Liegnitzer Bombe, a Silesian Museum (Schlesisches Museum zu Görlitz), and the Silesian Christmas Market (Schlesischer Christkindelmarkt).

History

Early Middle Ages

Slavs migrated into the area during the Early Middle Ages. The nearby Landeskrone (Upper Sorbian: Sedło) mountain, as Businc, is considered the main stronghold of the Bieżuńczanie tribe and Gorelic is said to mean a small village. Other references state the origin of the name Görlitz is the Slavic word for 'burned land', referring to the technique used to clear land for settlement. Polish Zgorzelec and Czech Zhořelec have the same derivation.

In the Early Middle Ages, the area was inhabited by the Bieżuńczanie tribe, one of the old Polish tribes. In the late 9th or 10th century, the Bieżuńczanie were subjugated by the Sorbian Milceni tribe, who bordered from the west, who in turn were subjugated in 990 by the Margraviate of Meissen, a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire. The area was then conquered by Polish ruler Bolesław I the Brave in 1002 and formed part of Poland until 1031, after which the region fell back to the Margraviate of Meissen.

Earliest record and urban formation

Görlitz, as Goreliz, was first mentioned in a document from the King of Germany, and later Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in 1071. This document granted Görlitz to the religious Diocese of Meissen, then under Bishop Benno of Meissen. This document can now be found in the Saxony State Archives in Dresden. In 1075 the village was assigned to the Duchy of Bohemia. In 1126–1131 Bohemian Duke Soběslav I erected a castle, one of several new castles on the Bohemian-Polish border. It may have been on the site of the present St Peter and Paul church. The date the town was founded is unknown but in the 13th century the village gradually became a town. Owing to its location on the Via Regia, an ancient and medieval trade route, the settlement prospered. In 1319 it became part of the Piast-ruled Duchy of Jawor, and Duke Henry I of Jawor confirmed the town's privileges. In 1329, the town fell back to Bohemia.

From 1346, Görlitz was a wealthy member of the Lusatian League, which consisted of Bautzen, Görlitz, Kamenz, Lubań, Löbau and Zittau. Around 1348 a Jewish woman, Adasse, was made a citizen of the town. In 1352 during the reign of Polish King Casimir III the Great, Lusatian German colonists from Görlitz founded the town of Gorlice in southern Poland near Kraków. From 1377 to 1396 it was the capital of an eponymous duchy. In the conflict over the Bohemian throne between George of Poděbrady and Matthias Corvinus, Görlitz, along with the Lusatian League, recognized Corvinus as ruler between 1469 and 1490.

Modern period

The Protestant Reformation came to Görlitz in the early 1520s and, by the last half of the 16th century, the town and its surrounding area became almost completely Lutheran. In 1547, the town was subjected to the Upper Lusatian Pönfall, a punitive measure imposed by Ferdinand I in his capacity as King of Bohemia after political disobedience during the Schmalkaldic War. As a result, the city lost important privileges, including customs and toll rights, which weakened its economic position.

In 1623, during the Thirty Years' War, the town was captured and occupied alternately by Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1635, the region of Upper Lusatia (including Görlitz) was ceded to the Electorate of Saxony. From 1639, the town was occupied by Sweden again; it was besieged by Imperial and Saxon forces in 1641. After the war, it was part of the Electorate of Saxony, from 1697 within the Polish–Saxon personal union. One of two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through the town in the 18th century and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland often travelled that route. Napoleon visited the town several times in 1807, 1812 and 1813.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the 1815 Congress of Vienna transferred the town from the Kingdom of Saxony to the Kingdom of Prussia. Görlitz was subsequently administered within the Province of Silesia and, after World War I, the Province of Lower Silesia, until 1945. During World War I an internment camp for Greek soldiers was located in present-day Zgorzelec, whilst 500 Greek officers lived in private quarters throughout the town. A burial ground for Greek soldiers was located in the local cemetery.

Interbellum and World War II

Shortly after the Nazi Party's rise to power, in March 1933, the SA established the Leschwitz concentration camp in the present-day district of Weinhübel. Political prisoners were held and tortured in the camp before it was dissolved in August 1933 and the prisoners were deported to other Nazi concentration camps. In 1936, during a nationwide Nazi campaign of changing of placenames, two present-day districts of Görlitz were renamed to erase traces of Slavic origin—Leschwitz to Weinhübel and Nikrisch to Hagenwerder. On Kristallnacht, in November 1938, an arson attack was carried out on the Görlitz Synagogue. The building survived the attack without major damage because firefighters resisted the order not to extinguish the fire. It is the only synagogue in present-day Saxony that survived Nazi rule. In the interwar period most of the Jews had left the city and their number dropped from 567 in 1925 to 134 in 1939. Many remaining Jews were then killed in the Holocaust.

During World War II, a Nazi prison was operated in the town, with four forced labour subcamps within the town limits and three in nearby villages. The Nazis also established and operated two subcamps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, located in present-day districts of Biesnitz and Kunnerwitz, in which over 1,500 Jewish men and women were used as forced labour, and 470 of whom died. Numerous subcamps of the Stalag VIII-A prisoner-of-war camp were located in the town, in which over 10,000 POWs worked as forced labour in 1942, and one of the largest subcamps was located in nearby Weinhübel (district of Görlitz since 1949). After the Soviet offensive of 1944 and the partial evacuation of the German court staff from the General Government in German-occupied Poland, a special court of the General Government was established at the local courthouse. Several Polish citizens were detained in Görlitz and sentenced to prison or death at this court for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust. Near the end of World War II German troops destroyed all bridges crossing the Lusatian Neisse.

German Democratic Republic and reunited Germany

The redrawing of boundaries in 1945—in particular the location of the German-Polish border to the present Oder-Neisse line—divided the town. The right bank was placed under the administration of the Polish People's Republic and was initially renamed Zgorzelice, and then Zgorzelec in 1948, with both names being historically used in the Polish language, while the main portion on the left bank became part of the state of Saxony in the Soviet occupation zone in Germany, from which the German Democratic Republic (GDR) emerged in 1949.

The residents of the part of the town located east of the Neisse River (modern-day Zgorzelec) were almost entirely expelled to the western part of the town. In the 1950s, about 40 percent of the population in and around Görlitz consisted of expellees from the former eastern territories of Germany.

When the East German states were dissolved in 1952 Görlitz became part of the Dresden District, but the states were restored on German reunification in 1990. In 1972 the East German-Polish border was opened for visa-free travel, resulting in intense movement between Görlitz and Zgorzelec, which lasted until 1980, when East Germany unilaterally closed the border because of anti-communist protests and the emergence of the Solidarity movement in Poland. On 27 June 1994 the town became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Görlitz, but it remains a Lutheran Protestant stronghold. In 2002 Lake Berzdorf, occupying a former open-cast lignite mine south of Görlitz, began to be filled.

The Altstadtbrücke (literally old town bridge) between Görlitz and sister city Zgorzelec was rebuilt between 2003 and 2004. It was officially opened on 20 October 2004. As soon as Poland signed the Schengen Agreement (20 December 2007), movement between the two banks of the river again became unrestricted, since border controls were eliminated. Indeed, users of the new pedestrian bridge are not informed by any signs that they are leaving one country and entering another. Today Görlitz and Zgorzelec are well connected. A bus line connects the German and Polish parts of the town and there is a common urban management, with annual joint sessions of both town councils.

Since reunification and as of 2013, more than 700 buildings in Görlitz have been renovated. It is a popular place for retirement among the elderly of Germany, being quiet and relatively affordable by German standards. Its tourist potential is rapidly expanding since it is very much an eastern counterpart to towns such as Heidelberg. In the case of Görlitz much of the funding for the renovations of the town's buildings has come from an anonymous donor, who, since 1995, has sent an annual donation of more than €500,000, totalling more than €10,000,000.

In 2021, the surviving old synagogue was reopened.