Lower Silesia's historical coat of arms.Upper Silesia's historical coat of arms.
In the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C. (late Bronze Age), Silesia belonged to the Lusatian culture. About 500 BC Scyths arrived, and later Celts in the South and Southwest.[1]
During the 1st century BC Silingi and other Germanic people settled in Silesia. For this period we have written reports of antique authors who included the area.
Slavs arrived in this territory around the 6th century.
The first known states in Silesia were those of Greater Moravia and Bohemia. In the 10th century, Mieszko I incorporated Silesia into Civitas Schinesghe, a Polish state. It remained part of Poland until the Fragmentation of Poland. Afterwards it was divided between Piast dukes, descendants of Władysław II the Exile, High Duke of Poland.
In the Middle Ages, Silesia was divided among many duchies ruled by various dukes of the Piast dynasty. During this time, cultural and ethnic German influence increased due to immigrants from the German-speaking components of the Holy Roman Empire, as the region's economy developed, and towns were founded under German town law.
Between the years 1289–1292 Bohemian king Wenceslaus II became suzerain of some Upper Silesian duchies. Silesia subsequently became a possession of the Crown of Bohemia under the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century, and passed with that Crown to the Habsburg monarchy in 1526. The Duchy of Crossen was inherited by the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1476 and, with the renunciation by King Ferdinand I and estates of Bohemia in 1538, it became an integral part of Brandenburg.
In 1742, most of Silesia was seized by King Frederick the Great of Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession and subsequently made the Prussian Province of Silesia.
After World War I, Lower Silesia, having by far a German majority, remained with Germany while Upper Silesia, after a series of insurrections by the Polish inhabitants, was split. Part joined the Second Polish Republic and was administered as the Silesian Voivodeship. The Prussian Province of Silesia within Germany was divided into the Provinces of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia. Austrian Silesia (officially: Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia; almost identical with modern-day Czech Silesia), the small portion of Silesia retained by Austria after the Silesian Wars, became part of the new Czechoslovakia. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany invaded Polish parts of Upper Silesia. Jews were subject to genocide in the Holocaust, while German plans towards Poles involved ethnic cleansing and biological extermination.[2]
In 1945 both provinces were occupied by the Soviet Union. Under the demands in the Potsdam Agreement, most of this territory was afterwards transferred to the Polish People's Republic. Most of the German population, who had not been evacuated or had fled, were expelled by the newly arrived Polish administration, while Poles expelled from the eastern Polish Borderlands then settled in the region.
^"Schlesien".
^Element polski zaś miał być ze Śląska usunięty przez zastosowanie różnych form wysiedleń do Generalnej Gubernii do biologicznej eksterminacji włącznie.Górny Śląsk: szczególny
Mirosława Błaszczak-Wacławik
J. Szumacher, 1990, page 44 -
and 27 Related for: History of Silesia information
In the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C. (late Bronze Age), Silesia belonged to the Lusatian culture. About 500 BC Scyths arrived, and later Celts...
Silesia (/saɪˈliːʒə, saɪˈliːʃiə/, also UK: /-iːziə/, US: /-iːʒiə, -iːʃə, sɪˈ-/; see below) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within...
The Province ofSilesia (German: Provinz Schlesien; Polish: Prowincja Śląska; Silesian: Prowincyjŏ Ślōnskŏ) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1919...
Duchies ofSilesia were the more than twenty divisions of the region ofSilesia formed between the 12th and 14th centuries by the breakup of the Duchy of Silesia...
The Province of Upper Silesia (German: Provinz Oberschlesien; Silesian German: Provinz Oberschläsing; Silesian: Prowincyjŏ Gōrny Ślōnsk; Polish: Prowincja...
Eastern Silesia was formerly the Austrian crownland Austrian Silesia, which was occupied by Czechoslovakia after World War I. It had an area of 1,987 sq...
of the Free State of Prussia from 1919 to 1945. Between 1938 and 1941 it was reunited with Upper Silesia as the Province ofSilesia. The capital of Lower...
New Silesia (German: Neuschlesien or Neu-Schlesien) was a small province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1795 to 1807, created after the Third Partition...
Aubin and Ludwig Petry (eds.): Von der Urzeit bis zum Jahre 1526 (HistoryofSilesia, vol. 1), Edition Brentano, Sigmaringen, 1988, ISBN 3-7995-6341-5...
German: Oberschläsing; Latin: Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region ofSilesia, located today mostly in Poland...
at the village of Legnickie Pole (Wahlstatt), approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) southeast of the city of Legnica in the Duchy ofSilesia on 9 April 1241...
Henryk II Pobożny; 1196 – 9 April 1241) was Duke ofSilesia and High Duke of Poland as well as Duke of South-Greater Poland from 1238 until his death....
Austrian Silesia, officially the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia, was an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Habsburg monarchy (from 1804...
serves as the symbol of the historical and geographical regions of the Silesia, and Lower Silesia, and as one of the symbols of the Silesian people, is...
were a Germanic tribe, part of the larger Vandal group. The Silingi at one point lived in Silesia, and the names Silesia and Silingi may be related. The...
Czeski) is the part of the historical region ofSilesia now in the Czech Republic. Czech Silesia is, together with Bohemia and Moravia, one of the three historical...
as Upper Silesia (Górny Śląsk), with Katowice serving as its capital. Despite the Silesian Voivodeship's name, most of the historic Silesia region lies...
Silesia in February and March 1945 by the Soviet Red Army against the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in World War II, to protect the flanks of...
Silesian is a West Slavic ethnolect of the Lechitic group spoken by a small percentage of people in Upper Silesia. Its vocabulary was significantly influenced...
The Duchy ofSilesia (Polish: Księstwo śląskie, German: Herzogtum Schlesien, Czech: Slezské knížectví) with its capital at Wrocław was a medieval duchy...
Upper Silesia and Cieszyn Silesia to become a sovereign state. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia...
death of King Casimir III the Great. Branches of the Piast dynasty continued to rule in the Duchy of Masovia (until 1526) and in the Duchies ofSilesia until...
it annexed the western part of the country (taking East Upper Silesia, creating the new entities of the Reichsgaue of Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland...
Heine written in 1844. It is exemplary of the political poetry of the Vormärz movement. It is about the misery of the Silesian weavers, who in 1844 ventured...
Upper Silesia (German: Ostoberschlesien) is the easternmost extremity ofSilesia, the eastern part of the Upper Silesian region around the city of Katowice...
of the oldest towns in Silesia and has a history that has been traced back to at least the 7th century. Cieszyn, one of the oldest towns in Silesia,...
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