Place:Mikulov, Mikulov, Morava, Czechoslovakia

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Mikulov (; ; , Nikolshburg) is a town in Břeclav District in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 7,400 inhabitants. The historic centre of Mikulov is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The first written mention of Mikulov is from 1173. In a 1249 deed, issued by the Přemyslid margrave Ottokar II who granted it, including a castle and the surrounding area, to the Austrian noble Henry I of Liechtenstein. After King Rudolf I of Germany had defeated Ottokar at the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld, he then vested Henry II of Liechtenstein with market rights in villa Nicolspurch. German citizens were called to settle in Mikulov.

In 1526, the Anabaptist leader Balthasar Hubmaier came from Switzerland to Nikolsburg, where he was captured and arrested by the forces of the King Ferdinand I in the following year. The town remained in the Liechtenstein family until 1560, and in 1572 Emperor Maximilian II granted the fief to his ambassador to the Spanish court Adam von Dietrichstein. From 1575 until the 20th century, Nikolsburg remained the proprietary possession of the Dietrichstein noble family and its Mensdorff-Pouilly successors.^[1]

After 1575, the renaissance reconstruction of the town began. During the rule of Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein, the town was transformed into a representative economic, building and cultural residence and for a time became one of the most important towns in Moravia.^[1] In 1621, during the Thirty Years' War, Franz von Dietrichstein signed the Treaty of Nikolsburg with the Transylvanian prince Gabriel Bethlen at Mikulov Castle. Four years later, Emperor Ferdinand II and his aulic council met at the castle, where General Albrecht von Wallenstein received his commission and was elevated to a Duke of Friedland. Franz von Dietrichstein also established the first Piarist college north of the Alps in Nikolsburg.

After a fire damaged the original Mikulov Castle in 1719, the Dietrichstein family reconstructed the château to its present appearance. After the Austro-Prussian War, Count Alajos Károlyi began work on a peace treaty in Nikolsburg that led to the Treaty of Prague in 1866.

The German population formed majority until 1945. In 1890, it formed 98% of the population and in 1930 formed 82% of the population. Following the World War II, the town's German population was expelled by the Czechoslovak government according to the Beneš decrees.

Jewish population

The beginning of the Jewish settlement in Nikolsburg dates as far as 1421, when Jews were expelled from Vienna and the neighboring province of Lower Austria by the duke of Austria, Albert II of Germany. The refugees settled in the town situated close to the Austrian border, some from the Austrian capital, under the protection of the princes of Liechtenstein, and additional settlers were brought after the expulsions of the Jews from the Moravian royal boroughs by the king Ladislaus the Posthumous after 1454.

The settlement grew in importance and in the first half of the 16th century Nikolsburg became the seat of the regional rabbi of Moravia, thus becoming a cultural centre of Moravian Jewry. The famous rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609), who is said to have created the golem of Prague, officiated here for twenty years as the second regional rabbi between 1553 and 1573. Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein, son of Adam von Dietrichstein, was a special protector of the Jews, whose taxes were necessary to finance the Thirty Years' War.

In the first half of the 18th century, the congregation in Nikolsburg totalled over 600 families, being the largest Jewish settlement in Moravia. The census of 1754 decreed by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria ascertained that there were some 620 families established in Nikolsburg, i.e. the Jewish population of about 3,000 comprised half of the town's inhabitants.^[2] Only a small number of Jews could make their living in the town as artisans; the rest had to become merchants. The congregation suffered severely during the Silesian Wars between 1740 and 1763, when they had to furnish the monarchy with their share in the supertaxes exacted by the government of Maria Theresa from the Jews of Moravia.^[3]

Quite a number of Nikolsburg Jews continued to earn their livelihood in Vienna, where they were permitted to stay for some time on special passports. The freedom of residence, which was conceded to the Jews in Austria in 1848, reduced the number of resident Jews in Nikolsburg to less than one-third of the population which it contained at the time of its highest development. In 1904, there were 749 Jewish residents in the town, out of a total population of 8,192.^[3] In 1938, prior to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the town population totaled about 8,000 mostly German-speaking inhabitants. Out of these, 472 were Jewish at this time.^[2] The Jewish settlement in Nikolsburg ceased to exist during World War II, as only 110 managed to emigrate in time, and 327 of Mikulov's Jews did not survive the Holocaust.^[2] On 15 April 1945, 21 Hungarian Jewish prisoners working in a clay pit were massacred.

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