A lot of shop – Wikipedia

L’ High Silesia (in Slesian: Gōrny Ślōnsk ^[first] ; in Polish: Upper Silesia ; Czech: Upper Silesia ; in German: Upper Silesia ; In Slesian German: Oberschläsing ; in latino: Silesia Superior ) is the sweaty part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located today mostly in Poland and in a small part in the Czech Republic.

Since the 9th century, the Alta Silesia has been part (in chronological order) of the great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Poland of the Plates, still of the lands of the Bohema crown and the Sacred Roman Empire, as well as the Habsburg monarchy since 1526 . In 1742 most of the upper Silesia was annexed to the kingdom of Prussia and in 1871 it became part of the German empire. After the Second World War he was placed under the Administration of the Republic of Poland, in 1945. Following the Treaty on the German-Polac border of 14 November 1990 he became Polish.

The Alta Silesia is located on the upper course of the Oder River, north of the Eastern Sudeti mountain range and Porta Morava, which form the southern border with the historical region of Moravia. The initial stretch of the Vistola as well as the tributaries Biała and Przemsza mark the eastern border with the region of small Poland. In the north, the Alta Silesia borders the region of the great Poland and to the west with the region of the lower Silesia (the region around Breslavia).

He is currently divided between Poland (for the most part) and the Czech Republic (regions of Moravia-Slesia and Olomouc). The Polish territory of the upper Silesia covers most of the voivoded of Opole, except for the municipalities of Brzeg and Namysłów, which are found in the voivoded of the low silesia, and the western part of the Voivodato of Silesia.

Cieszyn’s silesia and the Austrian silesia are historical parts of the upper Silesia.

According to the IX century Bavarian geographer, the Western Slavic tribe of the Opolani had settled along the superior course of the Oder river since the time of the barbaric invasions of the fifth century, in particular in gord Opole. At the time of Prince Svotopluk I (871-894), the whole Silesia was part of his kingdom of the great Moravia. After its dissolution after 906, the Region fell under the influence of the puteslids of Bohemia, the Duke Spytihněv I (894-915) and his brother Vratislao I (915-921), perhaps the founder and the one who gave the name to the City of Silesia Breslavia (in Czech: Vratislav).

Polish domain [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 990 the Duke of the Dynasty of the Plasty Miesko I, belonging to the people of the Polani, just installed, had conquered vast areas of Silesia. From the fortress of the media silesia of Niemcza, his son and successor Boleslao the brave Intrepid (992-1025), having established the diocese of Breslavia, subjugated the territories of the high Silesia degli Opolani, pagans, who for several hundred years were part of Poland, even if contested by the Bohemian Dukes such as Bretislao I, who invaded from 1025 Silesia several times. In the end in 1137, the Polish prince Boleslao III (1107-1138) agreed with the Duke Sobeslao and peace was signed by establishing the border along the Sudes.

However, this agreement failed when the fragmentation of Poland began to the death of Boleslao III, with its will, which decidedly weakened its central authority. The Duchy of Silesia just set up became the ancestral homeland of Silesia’s plest, descendants of the eldest son of Boleslao, Ladislao II the exile, which however were excluded from the succession to the Polish throne and were able to regain their territory of origin alone with the help of the Holy Roman Empire.

The failure of the principle of succession agnatizia also led to the division of the Slesian province: in 1172 the second son of Ladislao, Miecislao IV (Miecislao the “crooked legs” – Mieszko and Plądtonoga ), claimed his rights and received the Duchy of Racibórz in the upper Silesia as an to the hands of his elderly brother Boleslao I The High, Duke of Silesia. In the struggle for the Polish throne, Miecislao also received the lands (in the historical region of small Poland) of Byom, Oświęcim, Zoror, Siewierz and Pszczyna with the new Grand Duke Polish Casimiro II in 1177. When in 1202 Miecislao IV had annexed the Duchy of Opela of his deceased granddaughter Iaroslaus, he became sovereign of all the high silesia as Duke of Opole and Racibórz.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the ties of the Plasses of Silesia with the nearby Sacro Romano Empire became stronger since many dukes married the scions of the German nobility. With the encouragement of the Duke of Bassa Silesia Enrico I Il Barbuto, from 1230 regent also in Alta Silesia for the minor children of the late cousin Duke Casimiro I of Opole, vast parts of the lands of the Silesia were colonized with German immigrants during the hostsiedlung , establishing numerous cities with German legislation. The plans to reunite the Silesia shattered with the Mongolian invasion of Poland and the death of Duke Henry II The Pio in the battle of Legnica of 1241. The Alta Silesia further fragment with the death of the Duke Ladislao of Opole in 1281 in the Ducati of Byom, Opole, Racibórz and Cieszyn. Around 1269 the Duchy of opava was founded in the nearby Moravo territory, governed by Duke Pizeyslide Nicola I, whose descendants inherited the Duchy of Racibórz in 1336. given that they ruled both Ducati in the personal union, opaVa within the territory of the territory of the ‘Alta Silesia.

Bohemia, Austria and Prussia [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1327 the Dukes of Upper Silesia, like most of their cousins ​​of the Lower Silesia, had sworn loyalty to King John of Bohemia, thus becoming vassals of the Kingdom of Bohemia. During the period of reforms of the Kingdom of Poland under King Casimiro III the Great, all Silesia was excluded as a non -Polish land by the Trenčín Treaty of 1335 becoming a land of the Bohemian crown and – indirectly – of the Holy Roman Empire. In the mid -fourteenth century, the influx of German settlers in Alta Silesia was stopped by the epidemic of the black plague. Unlike Lower Silesia, the Germanization process interrupted; Most of the population still spoke the Polish language and the Slesian as a mother tongue, often together with the German (Slesian German) as a second language. In the southernmost areas, spoken lachs were also spoken. While Latin, Czech and German languages ​​were used as official languages ​​in cities and countries, only in the 1550s (during the Protestant Reform), documents with Polish names began to appear.

The high silesia was hit by the Hussite wars and in 1469 it was conquered by King Mattia Corvino of Hungary, while the Ducati of Oświęcim and Zoror returned to the Polish crown. Upon the death of King Luigi II Jagellone in 1526, the lands of the Bohemian crown were inherited from the Austrian House of Habsburgs. In the 16th century, most of the Silesia had become Protestant, thanks to reformers such as Kaspar Schwenckfeld. After the battle of the White Mountain of 1620, the Catholic emperors of the Habsburg dynasty reintroduced Catholicism by force, helped in this by the Jesuits. ^{[ without source ]}

The low Silesia and most of the upper Silesia were occupied by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1742 during the First War of Silesia and annexed according to the terms of the Breslavia Treaty. A small part south of the opava river remained at the Bohema crown governed by the Habsburgs as “Duchy of the upper and low slesia”, colloquially called the Austrian Silesia. Incorporate in the province of Prussian Silesia since 1815, the high silesia became an industrial area exploiting the abundance of coal and iron mineral. The High Prussian Silesia became part of the German Empire in 1871.

Ethnolinguistic structure before the plebiscite [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The first data of the exact census on the ethnolinguistic or national structure ( National difference ) of the Prussian part of the Upper Silesia, date back to the year 1819. The latest data of the general pre -Prima World War census available dates back to 1910 (if the 1911 census of school -age children does not include – Language count among the school children – which revealed a higher percentage of Polish speakers among school children than the 1910 census among the general population). The figures (table 1) show that the great demographic changes occurred between 1819 and 1910, with the quadrupling of the total population of the region, with a significant growth of the percentage of German -speaking people and a considerable drop in that of speakers Poles. Even the total surface in which the Polish language was spoken, as well as the land area where it was spoken by the majority, decreased between 1790 and 1890. ^[2] The Polish authors before 1918 estimated the number of Poles in the Alta Prussian Silesia slightly higher than the official German censuses. ^[3]

Table 1. Number of Polish and German -speaking inhabitants (Regierungsbezirk Oppeln)
Year	1819 [4]	1828 [5]	1831 [5]	1837 [5]	1840 [5]	1843 [5]	1846 [5]	1852 [5]	1858 [5]	1861 [5]	1867 [5]	1890 [6]	1900 [6]	1905 [6]	1910 [6]
Polish	377,100 (67.2%)	418,437	456,348	495,362	525,395	540,402	568,582	584,293	612,849	665,865	742,153	918,728 (58.2%)	1,048,230 (56.1%)	1,158,805 (56.9%)	Census date, monolile de poles: $,169,340 (53.0%) Up to 1,560,000 with bilinguals [3]
German	162,600 (29.0%)	255,383	257,852	290,168	330,099	348.094	364,175	363,990	406,950	409,218	457,545	566,523 (35.9%)	684,397 (36.6%)	757,200 (37.2%)	884.045 (40.0%)

The US immigration commission in 1911 classified the Slesiani of Polish language as Poles. ^[7]

Plebiscite and partition [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1919, after the First World War, the eastern part of the Alta Prussian Silesia (with a majority of Polish ethnicity population) passed under Polish domination as Voivodato di Silesia, while the western part of a large part of the German language remained part of the Weimar Republic, like the newly established province of Alta Silesia. At the beginning of 1919, the Polish-cecoslovak war broke out around the contesting region of the Silesia of Caszyn, from then on the Czechoslovakia obtained the strip of Zaolzie in addition to the Hlučín region.

From 1919 to 1921 three Slesian revolts took place among the Polish language population of the upper Silesia; The battle of Annaberg was fought in the region in 1921. In the plebiscite of the upper Silesia of March 1921, a majority of 59.4% voted against the merger with Poland and a 40.6% minority voted in favor, ^{[8] [9]} with clear division lines between the Polish and German communities. The plan to divide the region was suggested by the Integrallled Commission in Alta Silesia, led by French General Henri Le Rond. The plan was decided by a conference of ambassadors in Paris on October 20, 1921. The exact border, the maintenance of cross -border rail traffic and other necessary cooperations, as well as the equality of rights for all the inhabitants of both parts of the upper Silesia, were set by the German-polac agreement on Eastern Silesia, ^[ten] , signed in Geneva on May 15, 1922. On June 20, 1922, the Republic of Weimar Cedette, in fact , the region of the Eastern high Silesia, which became part of the voivoded of Silesia of the second Polish Republic.

After 1945, almost all the high silesia that had not already been sold to Poland in 1922 was placed under the administration of the Republic of Poland. A majority of the German -speaking population had fled or had been expelled, an act that was defined with an understatement as “transfers [from] to be carried out in an orderly and human way” in accordance with the decision of the winning allies in their 1945 meeting in Potsdam. This expulsion program also included German -speaking inhabitants of the Lower Silesia, the Eastern Brandenburg, the Eastern Pomeranian, the Danzica and the Eastern Prussia. The German populations were transported to today’s territory of Germany (including the former East Germany), and were replaced by Poles, many of which from the Polish Provinces conquered by the UST to the east. A good number of inhabitants of the German -speaking high silesia was transferred to Bavaria. A small part of the high silesia remained as part of Czechoslovakia as Czech Silesia.

The expulsions of the Germans did not completely eliminate the presence of people who considered themselves Germans. In 1945 the high silesia had a considerable number of mixed bilingual Roman Catholic inhabitants who spoke German and pole dialects, and their Polish linguistic skills were considered solid enough to be able to remain in the area.

The area formally became part of the Republic of Poland by virtue of the German border treaty on November 14, 1990.

With the fall of communism and the adhesion of Poland to the European Union, there were enough of those who remained in high slesia to allow the recognition of the German minority in Poland by the Polish government.

The historical capital of the upper Silesia is opal but the largest cities in the region, including Katowice, are located in the industrial area of ​​the upper Silesia, whose total population is around 3 million.

Population in 1995 (all cities are located in Poland, except where they are indicated differently)

• H. Förster, B. Kortus (1989) “Social Geographical Problems of the Cracow and Upper Silesia Agglomerations”, Paderborn. (Bochum geographical work No. 51)
• Bernhard Gröschel (1993) The press of Upper Silesia from the beginning to 1945: Documentation and structural description . Writings of the Haus Upper Silesia Foundation: Landeskundliche Series, Vol. 4 (in German). Berlin: Gebr. Man, p. 447. ISBN 3-7861-1669-5
• Bernhard Gröschel (1993) Studies and materials on the Upper Silesian tendency publication of the 19th and 20th centuries . Writings of the Haus Upper Silesia Foundation: Landeskundliche Series, Vol. 5 (in German). Berlin: Gebr. Man, p. 219. ISBN 3-7861-1698-9
• Bernhard Gröschel (1993) Topics and tendencies in headlines of the Katowitzer Zeitung and the Upper Silesian Kurier 1925 – 1939: Analysis of reporting on the location of the German minority in Eastern Upper Silesia . Writings of the Haus Upper Silesia Foundation: Landeskundliche Series, Vol. 6 (in German). Berlin: Gebr. Man, p. 188. ISBN 3-7861-1719-5
• Krzysztof Gwozdz (2000) “The Image of Upper Silesia in Geography TextBooks 1921-1998”, in: Boleslaw Domanski (ed.), Geographical works, No. 106, Institute of Geography of the Jagiellonian University Krakow. pp. 55–68
• Rudolf Carl Virchow. ” Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia .” (1848) Am J Public Health 2006;96 2102–2105. (Excerpted from: Virchow RC. Collected Essays on Public Health and Epidemiology. Vol 1. Rather LJ, ed. Boston, Mass: Science History Publications; 1985:204–319.)