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Piotrków Trybunalski (; also known by alternative names), often simplified to Piotrków, is a city in central Poland with 72,250 inhabitants (2020). It is the second-largest city situated in the Łódź Voivodeship. Previously, it was the capital of an independent Piotrków Voivodeship (1975–1998); it is now the capital of Piotrków County. Founded in the late Middle Ages, Piotrków was once a royal city and an important place in Polish history; the first parliament sitting was held here in the 15th century. It then became the seat of a Crown Tribunal, the highest court of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The city also hosted one of Poland's oldest Jewish communities, which was entirely destroyed by the Holocaust. The old town in Piotrków features many historical and architectural monuments, including tenements, churches, synagogues and the medieval Royal Castle.
[edit] History
[edit] Middle AgesIn the early Middle Ages the Piotrków region was part of the province of Łęczyca of Poland ruled by the Piast dynasty. In c1264 it became part of a separate principality. The foundation of the city and its development were connected with its geographical position and the advantageous arrangement of the roads linking the provinces of Poland in Piast times. At first, a market town and a place of the princes' tribunals (in the 13th and 15th centuries), Piotrków became an administrative centre (the capital of the district since 1418), and in later centuries it also became an important political centre in Poland. The first record of Piotrków is in a document issued in 1217 by Polish monarch Leszek I the White, where there is a mention of the duke's tribunal held "in Petrecoue". Mediaeval Piotrków was a trading place on the trade routes from Pomerania to Russia and Hungary, and later from Masovia to Silesia.
The first certificate of foundation and the other documents were burnt in a great fire which destroyed the city around 1400. The privileges and rights were re-granted by King Władysław II Jagiełło in 1404. The city walls were built during the reign of King Casimir III the Great, and after the great fire, they were rebuilt at the beginning of the 15th century. During the reign of Casimir III, many expelled German Jews from the Holy Roman Empire migrated to the town, which grew to have one of the largest Jewish settlements in the kingdom.
[edit] Modern periodPiotrków became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. When the seat of the Parliament was moved to Warsaw, the town became the seat of the highest court of Poland, the Crown Tribunal, and trials were held there from 1578–1793; the highest Lithuanian court was held in Grodno. Piotrków's Jewish population was expelled in 1578 and only allowed back a century later. The town became a post station in 1684. Around 1705, German settlers (often Swabians) arrived in the town's vicinity and founded villages; they largely retained their customs and language until 1945.
The first official inventory of important buildings in Poland, A General View of the Nature of Ancient Monuments in the Kingdom of Poland, led by Kazimierz Stronczyński from 1844–55, describes the Great Synagogue of Piotrków as one of Poland's architecturally notable buildings. In 1793, the Kingdom of Prussia annexed the town in the Second Partition of Poland and administered it as part of the Province of South Prussia. During the Napoleonic Wars, Piotrków became part of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–15) and was a district seat in the Kalisz Department. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Piotrków became part of Congress Poland, a puppet state of the Russian Empire. When the Warsaw-Vienna railway was built in 1846, there was a slight increase in the economic and industrial development of Piotrków.
In 1867 the Russian authorities formed the Piotrków Governorate, which included Łódź, Częstochowa, and the coal fields of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Sosnowiec. According to the Russian census of 1897, out of the total population of 30,800, Jews constituted 9,500 (around 31% percent). The province had the best developed industry of all of Congress Poland until 1914. Many Poles demonstrated and went on strike during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
In the interwar period, Piotrków was the capital of Piotrków County in the Łódź Voivodeship, and lost its previous importance. In 1922, the old monastery was restored to the Bernardines.[1] In 1938 the town had 51,000 inhabitants, including 25,000 Jews and 1,500 Germans. The town had a large Jewish settlement and until the Holocaust a thriving Hebrew printing and publishing industry. [edit] World War IIDuring the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, Piotrków was the setting for fierce fighting between the Polish 19th Infantry Division and the 16th Panzer Corps of the German Wehrmacht on September 5, 1939. The Einsatzgruppe II then entered the city to commit various crimes against the population. The town was occupied by Nazi Germany for the following six years. In autumn of 1939, the Germans carried out mass arrests of dozens of Poles, including teachers, local activists, judges, parliamentarians, editors and bank employees, however some were later released. 47 Poles arrested in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, including Tomaszów's mayor, were also imprisoned in Piotrków. Further mass arrests of hundreds of Poles were carried out in January, March, June and August 1940. Among Poles arrested in March were 12 teachers and students of secret Polish schools. On June 29, 1940, the Germans carried out a massacre of 42 Poles from the prison in the Wolborski Forest in the northern part of the city. Among the victims were 14 students aged 17–18, eight reserve officers, and people of various professions, including pharmacists, an architect, railwayman, teacher, farmer and local secretary.[2] 121 Poles from the local prison were deported to the Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Dachau concentration camps in June 1940. Many Poles, who were born or lived in the city, were murdered by the Russians in the large Katyn massacre in April–May 1940.
From the first months of the war, Piotrków was a centre for underground resistance. From the spring of 1940, it was the seat of the district headquarters of the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army. In the summer of 1944, the 25th Infantry Regiment of the Home Army was formed in the district; it was the largest military unit of the Łódź Voivodeship, and fought against the Germans until November 1944. In the city and district, there were also other partisan groups: the Military Troops (connected with the Polish Socialist Party), People's Guard and People's Army (Polish Workers' Party), Peasants' Battalions (Polish People's Party), the National Military Organization and the National Armed Forces (National Party). In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans deported over 15,000 Varsovians from the Dulag 121 camp in Pruszków, where they were initially imprisoned, to Piotrków. Those Poles were mainly old people, ill people and women with children.[3] After the fall of the uprising, the headquarters of the Polish Red Cross was temporarily located in the local Royal Castle from October 1944 to January 1945. On January 18, 1945, the Soviet Red Army entered the city, dislodging the German troops. The city was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. Anti-communist partisans continued to fight in the vicinity in the following years. [edit] Recent timesFrom 1949–1970, Piotrków was transformed into an industrial centre. Piotrków remained a district capital in the Łódź Voivodeship, until 1975. Then, following the changes in the administrative division of the country, the city became the capital of the new Piotrków Voivodeship, thus regaining the status of an important administrative, educational and cultural centre of Poland. In 1999, the Piotrków Voivodeship was dissolved and Piotrków became the capital of Piotrków County within the Łódź Voivodeship. [edit] Research Tips
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