UPPER SILESIA HISTORY
Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. The region is situated on the upper Oder River, north of the Eastern Sudetes mountain range and the Moravian Gate, which form the southern border with the historic Moravia region. Within the adjacent Silesian Beskids to the east, the Vistula River rises and turns eastwards; the Biała and Przemsza tributaries mark the eastern border with Lesser Poland. In the north, Upper Silesia borders on Greater Poland and in the west on the Lower Silesian lands, the adjacent region around Wrocław also referred to as Middle Silesia.
It is currently split into a larger Polish and the smaller Czech Silesian part, which is located within the Czech regions of Moravian-Silesia and Olomouc. The Polish Upper Silesian territory covers most of the Opole Voivodeship ("Opole Silesia"), except for the Lower Silesian counties of Brzeg and Namysłów, and the Silesian Voivodeship, except for the Lesser Polish counties of Będzin, Bielsko (eastern part), Częstochowa with the city of Częstochowa, Kłobuck, Myszków, Zawiercie and Żywiec as well as the cities of Dąbrowa Górnicza, Jaworzno and Sosnowice.
History
Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of the Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1526.
Upon the death of the Jagiellonian king Louis II in 1526, the Bohemian crown lands were inherited by the Austrian House of Habsburg.
In the 16th century, large parts of Silesia had turned Protestant. After the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, the Catholic Emperors of the Habsburg dynasty forcibly re-introduced Catholicism, led by the Jesuits.
Lower Silesia and most of Upper Silesia were occupied by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1742 during the First Silesian War and annexed by the terms of the Treaty of Breslau (Wroclaw). A small part south of the Opava River remained within the Habsburg-ruled Bohemian Crown as the "Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia", colloquially called Austrian Silesia. Incorporated into the Prussian Silesia Province from 1815, Upper Silesia became an industrial area taking advantage of its plentiful coal and iron ore. Prussian Upper Silesia became a part of the German Empire in 1871.
After World War I, in 1919, the eastern part of Prussian Upper Silesia (with a majority of ethnic Poles) came under Polish rule as the Silesian Voivodeship, while the mostly German-speaking western part remained part of the German Reich as the newly established Upper Silesia Province.
From 1919-1921 three Silesian Uprisings occurred among the Polish-speaking populace of Upper Silesia.
In the Upper Silesia plebiscite of March 1921, a majority voted against merging with Poland, with clear lines dividing Polish and German communities. On June 20, Germany ceded, de facto, the eastern parts of Upper Silesia, becoming part of Silesian Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic.
After 1945, almost all of Upper Silesia that was not ceded to Poland in 1922 was transferred to the Republic of Poland.
A majority of the German-speaking population was expelled in accordance with the decision of the victorious Allied powers at their 1945 meeting at Potsdam. This expulsion program also included German speaking inhabitants of Lower Silesia, eastern Pomerania, Gdańsk (Danzig), and East Prussia. The German expellees were transported to the present day Germany (including the former East Germany), and they were replaced with Poles, many from former Polish provinces taken over by the USSR in the east.
With the fall of communism and Poland joining the European Union, there were enough of these remaining in Upper Silesia to allow for the recognition of the German minority in Poland by the Polish government.
Upper Silesia Plebiscite
After the First World War, Poland laid claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland.
Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first of two Silesian Uprisings.
A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 percent of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany. Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.
On 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas – for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependency of the two areas.
In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry.
The exact border, the maintenance of cross-border railway traffic and other necessary co-operations, as well as equal rights for all inhabitants in both parts of Upper Silesia, were all fixed by the German-Polish Accord on East Silesia, signed in Geneva on May 15, 1922.
When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.
It is currently split into a larger Polish and the smaller Czech Silesian part, which is located within the Czech regions of Moravia-Silesia and Olomouc. The Polish Upper Silesian territory covers most of the Opole Voivodeship ("Opole Silesia"), except for the Lower Silesian counties of Brzeg and Namysłów, and the Silesian Voivodeship, except for the Lesser Polish counties of Będzin, Bielsko (eastern part), Częstochowa with the city of Częstochowa, Kłobuck, Myszków, Zawiercie and Żywiec as well as the cities of Dąbrowa Górnicza, Jaworzno and Sosnowice.
Divided Cieszyn Silesia as well as former Austrian Silesia is historical parts of Upper Silesia.
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