A 19th-century map of the 13th-century Duchy of Greater Poland of fragmented Poland. Lubusz Land, stretched on both sides of the Oder, marked in yellow
When in 928 King Henry I of Germany crossed the Elbe river to conquer the lands of the Veleti, he did not subdue the Leubuzzi people settling beyond the Spree. Their territory was either already inherited by the first Polish ruler Mieszko I (~960-992) or conquered by him in the early period of his rule. After Mieszkos' death the whole country was inherited by his son Duke, and later King, Bolesław I the Brave. After the German Northern March got lost in a 983 Slavic rebellion, Duke Bolesław and King Otto III of Germany in 991 agreed at Quedlinburg to jointly conquer the remaining Lutician territory, Otto coming from the west and Bolesław starting from Lubusz in the east. However, they did not succeed. Instead Otto's successor King Henry II of Germany in the rising conflict over the adjacent Lusatian march concluded an alliance with the Lutici and repeatedly attacked Bolesław.
Lubusz Land remained under Polish control even after King Mieszko II Lambert in 1031 finally had to withdraw from the adjacent, just conquered March of Lusatia and accept the overlordship of Emperor Conrad II. In 1125 Duke Bolesław III Wrymouth of Poland established the Bishopric of Lubusz to secure Lubusz Land. 1124-1125 records note that the new Bishop of Lubusz was nominated by Duke Bolesław under the Archbishopric of Gniezno. However, from the beginning Gniezno's role as metropolia of the Lubusz diocese was challenged by the claims of the mighty Archbishops of Magdeburg, who also tried to make Lebus their suffragan. The Polish position was decisively enfeebled by the process of fragmentation after the death of Duke Bolesław III in 1138, when Lubusz Land became part of the Duchy of Silesia.[1] The Duchy of Silesia was restored to the descendants of Władysław II the Exile in 1163, and Lubusz Land together with Lower Silesia was given to his eldest son Bolesław I the Tall.
Lubusz remained under the rule of the Silesian Piasts, though Bolesław's son Duke Henry I the Bearded in 1206 signed an agreement with Duke Władysław III Spindleshanks of Greater Poland to swap it for the Kalisz Region. This agreement however did not last as it provoked the revolt of Władysław's nephew Władysław Odonic, while in addition the Lusatian margrave Conrad II of Landsberg took this occasion to invade Lubusz. Duke Henry I appealed to Emperor Otto IV and already started an armed expedition, until he was once again able to secure his possession of the region after Margrave Conrad had died in 1210. Nevertheless, the resistance against the Imperial expansion waned as the Silesian territories were again fragmented after the death of Duke Henry II the Pious at the Battle of Legnica in 1241. His younger son Mieszko then held the title of a "Duke of Lubusz", but died only one year later, after which his territory fell to his elder brother Bolesław II the Bald. In 1248 Bolesław II, then Duke of Legnica, finally sold Lubusz to Magdeburg's Archbishop Wilbrand von Käfernburg and the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg in 1249, wielding the secular reign.
As to secular rule Lubusz Land was finally separated from Silesia, according to canon law however, the Lubusz diocese, comprising most of Lubusz Land, remained subordinate to the Gniezno metropolis. Meanwhile, the Brandenburg margraves forwarded the incorporation of Lubusz Land into their New March, created and expanded further to the northeast after the acquisition of the Santok castellany in 1296 on the forest areas between the Duchy of Pomerania and Greater Poland.
The Lebus bishops tried to maintain their affiliation with Poland and in 1276 therefore moved their residence east of the Oder river to Górzyca (Göritz upon Oder), an episcopal fief. When in 1319 the Brandenburg House of Ascania became extinct, the Lubusz Land became the subject of rivalry between the Piasts (duchies of Jawor and Żagań), Griffins (Duchy of Pomerania) and the Ascanians (Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg).[3] In 1319, the region was captured by Wartislaw IV, Duke of Pomerania, in 1320 a large portion passed to Duke Henry I of Jawor, who tried to reclaim the Lubusz Land as region lost by his grandfather Bolesław II the Horned, later that year the western part was conquered by Rudolf I, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, and the eastern outskirts with Torzym were controlled by Duke Henry IV the Faithful of Żagań by 1322.[4] In 1322–1323, there were heavy fights between Pomerania and Saxe-Wittenberg in the northern part of the region, around Kostrzyn nad Odrą.[5]
After the Battle of Mühldorf, the House of Wittelsbach took an interest in the region in 1323, and King Louis IV the Bavarian decided to grant the Margraviate of Brandenburg with the Lubusz Land to his son Louis V.[6] The emergence of a new powerful rival prompted the previously warring parties to make peace with each other and cooperate.[6] Bavarian forces soon entered the region, but in October 1323 Pope John XXII called Louis IV to annul the grant of Brandenburg to Louis V, declaring it unlawful.[7] The Pope supported the dukes of Pomerania and Głogów and local bishop Stephen II, and urged the region's inhabitants to resist the Wittelsbachs.[8] King Władysław I the Elbow-high of Poland also took the chance, allied with Bishop Stephen II and campaigned the Lubusz Land. In return the head of secular government in Lubusz, governor Erich of Wulkow, loyal to the new Brandenburg margrave Louis V, raided and captured the episcopal possessions in 1325, burning down the Górzyca cathedral. Bishop Stephen fled to Poland.
In 1354 Bishop Henry Bentsch reconciled with Margrave Louis II and the episcopal possessions were returned. The see of the bishopric returned to Lebus, where a new cathedral was built. In 1373 the diocese was again devastated by a Bohemian army, when Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg took the Brandenburg margraviate from the House of Wittelsbach. It became part of the Lands of the Bohemian (Czech) Crown. The see of the bishopric now moved to Fürstenwalde (Przybór) (St Mary's Cathedral, Fürstenwalde). Polish monarchs still made peaceful attempts to regain the region. The northern part of the diocese of Lubusz, the Kostrzyn land, administratively became part of the New March, a peripheral region for Czech rulers who were willing to sell it. In 1402, an agreement was reached in Kraków between them and the Poles, under which Poland was purchase and reincorporate this region,[9] however in the same year the Luxembourgs sold the region to the Teutonic Knights, Poland's arch-enemy. In 1454, after the Thirteen Years’ War broke out, the Teutonic Knights sold the region to Brandenburg in order to raise funds for war against Poland. The bulk of the Lubusz Land remained part of the Bohemian (Czech) lands until 1415.
In 1424 the Lebus bishopric became a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg, finally leaving the Gniezno ecclesiastical province. In 1432, the Czech Hussites captured the city of Frankfurt (Oder).[10] In 1518 Bishop Dietrich von Bülow bought the secular lordship of Beeskow-Storkow, in secular respect a Bohemian fief, in religious respect mostly no part of his diocese but of the Diocese of Meissen.[11] The castle in Beeskow became the episcopal residence. The last Catholic bishop was Georg von Blumenthal, who died in 1550 after a heroic non-military counter-reformatory campaign. However, when in 1547 Bishop Georg tried to recruit and arm troops in order to join the Catholic Imperial forces in the Smalkaldic War, his vassal city of Beeskow refused to obey.
From 1555 the bishopric was secularised and became a Lutheran diocese and the area east of the Oder was later called Eastern Brandenburg. In 1575 King Maximilian II of Bohemia granted the Beeskow lordship of the Lebus diocese to Brandenburg as a Bohemian fief, which it remained until the First Silesian War in 1742.[12] When in 1598 the Magdeburg administrator Joachim Frederick of Hohenzollern became Elector of Brandenburg, all official links with Poland had long been cut.
In the 16th century, many Polish exports, including grain, wood, ash, tar and hemp, were floated from western Poland via Frankfurt (Oder) in Lubusz Land to the port of Szczecin, with the high Brandenburgian customs duties on Polish goods lowered in the early 17th century.[13]
Prussia and Germany
Modern view of Lebus (Lubusz), the historical capital of the region
By the 17th century most of the population, consisting of autochthon Poles and German settlers, had mingled and assimilated to German language.
One of the main escape routes for insurgents of the unsuccessful Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the region.[14]
In early 1945, the death marches of prisoners of various nationalities from the dissolved camps in Świecko and Żabikowo to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp passed through the region.[22][24] On 30–31 January, the SS and Gestapo perpetrated a massacre of over 800 prisoners of the Sonnenburg concentration camp.[23]
Lubusz Land was the site of fierce fighting on the Eastern Front of World War II in 1945. In February and March the battle for Kostrzyn nad Odrą (then Küstrin) was fought, which resulted in 95% of the town being destroyed,[25] making it the most destructed town of post-war Poland. Shortly after the liberation of the Stalag III-C POW camp in Kostrzyn, Soviet troops killed some American POWs mistaking them for German troops.[19] In April the Battle of the Seelow Heights took place, ending in a Soviet-Polish victory. It was one of the last battles before the capitulation of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe.
In Poland and Germany
Lubusz Land (ziemia lubuska) and other historical lands of Poland against the background of modern administrative borders (names in Polish)
The portion of Lubusz Land east of the Oder River became again part of Poland by the 1945 Potsdam Conference, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the 1980s, whereas the western portion with the historical capital Lebus remained under Soviet occupation and became a part of communist East Germany in 1949.
Polish and Soviet authorities expelled most of the German population from the Polish annexed part of Lubusz Land in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. Refugees who had fled before the Soviet forces were prevented from returning to their homes. The area was then resettled with Poles expelled from Soviet-annexed eastern Poland and migrants from central Poland. The largest cities and capitals of the Polish Lubusz Voivodeship today are Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski, which however were not part of the historical Lubusz Land (cf. map above), but were parts of Lower Silesia and Greater Poland (the Santok castellany) respectively. Today, the largest town of Lubusz Land is Frankfurt (Oder), located in the German part of the region. On the Polish side the largest town is Kostrzyn nad Odrą. The region's historic capital, Lebus, is one of the smallest towns.
↑ Rymar, Edward (1979). "Rywalizacja o ziemię lubuską i kasztelanię międzyrzecką w latach 1319–1326, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem stosunków pomorsko-śląskch". Śląski Kwartalnik Historyczny Sobótka (in Polish). XXXIV (4). Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk: 481.
↑ Rogalski, Leon (1846). Dzieje Krzyżaków oraz ich stosunki z Polską, Litwą i Prussami, poprzedzone rysem dziejów wojen krzyżowych. Tom II (in Polish). Warszawa. pp.59–60.
↑ Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom II (in Polish). Warszawa. 1881. p.402.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Dirk Schumann, Beeskow (12001), Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger and Christine Herzog (collab.) for the Freundeskreis Schlösser und Gärten der Mark (ed.), slightly altered ed., Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft, 22006, (Schlösser und Gärten der Mark; part: Beeskow), p. 4. No ISBN
↑ Dirk Schumann, Beeskow (12001), Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger and Christine Herzog (collab.) for the Freundeskreis Schlösser und Gärten der Mark (ed.), slightly altered ed., Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft, 22006, (Schlösser und Gärten der Mark; part: Beeskow), p. 7. No ISBN
↑ Rutkowski, Jan (1923). Zarys gospodarczych dziejów Polski w czasach przedrozbiorowych (in Polish). Poznań. pp.200–201.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Umiński, Janusz (1998). "Losy internowanych na Pomorzu żołnierzy powstania listopadowego". Jantarowe Szlaki (in Polish). No.4 (250). p.16.
↑ Orłow, Aleksander (2011). "Oficerski obóz jeniecki twierdzy Kostrzyn nad Odrą 1914−1918". In Mykietów, Bogusław; Bryll, Wolfgang Damian; Tureczek, Marceli (eds.). Forty. Jeńcy. Monety. Pasjonaci o Twierdzy Kostrzyn (in Polish). Zielona Góra: Księgarnia Akademicka. pp.18, 21.
↑ Wardzyńska, Maria (2009). Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion (in Polish). Warszawa: IPN. p.60.
1 2 Megargee, Geoffrey P.; Overmans, Rüdiger; Vogt, Wolfgang (2022). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945. Volume IV. Indiana University Press, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. p.408–409. ISBN978-0-253-06089-1.
↑ Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2009). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945. Volume I. Indiana University Press, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp.1303–1305, 1321–1322, 1345. ISBN978-0-253-35328-3.
Lubusz Voivodeship is a voivodeship (province) in western Poland.
The Neumark, also known as the New March or as East Brandenburg, was a region of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and its successors located east of the Oder River in territory which became part of Poland in 1945 except some villages of former districts of Königsberg in the New March and Weststenberg remained in Germany.
Słubice is a border town in the Lubusz Voivodeship, in western Poland. Located on the Oder river, it lies directly opposite the city of Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany, which it was a part of as Dammvorstadt until 1945. As of 2019, the town had a population of 16,705, with an urban agglomeration of Słubice-Frankfurt counting 85,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of Słubice County and the administrative seat of the Gmina Słubice. It is part of the historical region of Lubusz Land.
The Duchy of Pomerania was a duchy in Pomerania on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, ruled by dukes of the House of Pomerania (Griffins). The country existed in the Middle Ages between years 1121–1160, 1264–1295, 1478–1531, and 1625–1637.
Krosno Odrzańskie is a town in Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland, on the east bank of Oder River, at the confluence with the Bóbr. With 11,319 inhabitants (2019) it is the capital of Krosno County.
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Farther Pomerania, Hinder Pomerania, Rear Pomerania or Eastern Pomerania, is a subregion of the historic region of Pomerania in north-western Poland, mostly within the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, while its easternmost parts are within the Pomeranian Voivodeship.
Lebus is a historic town in the Märkisch-Oderland District of Brandenburg, Germany. It is the administrative seat of Amt Lebus. The town, located on the west bank of the Oder river at the border with Poland, was the centre of the historical region known as Lubusz Land, which provides the name for the present-day Polish Lubusz Voivodeship.
Fürstenwalde/Spree is the most populous town in the Oder-Spree District of Brandenburg, in eastern Germany.
Kostrzyn nad Odrą is a town in Gorzów County, Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland, on the border with Germany.
The Province of Brandenburg was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1947. Brandenburg was established in 1815 from the Kingdom of Prussia's core territory, comprised the bulk of the historic Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Lower Lusatia region, and became part of the German Empire in 1871. From 1918, Brandenburg was a province of the Free State of Prussia until Prussia was dissolved in 1945 after World War II, and replaced with reduced territory as the State of Brandenburg in East Germany, which was later dissolved in 1952. Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, Brandenburg was re-established as a federal state of Germany, becoming one of the new states.
The Diocese of Lebus is a former diocese of the Catholic Church. It was erected in 1125 and suppressed in 1598. The Bishop of Lebus was also, ex officio, the ruler of a lordship that was coextensive with the territory of the diocese. The geographic remit included areas that are today part of the land of Brandenburg in Germany and the Province of Lubusz in Poland. It included areas on both sides of the Oder River around the town of Lebus. The cathedral was built on the castle hill in Lubusz and was dedicated to St Adalbert of Prague. Later, the seat moved to Górzyca, back to Lebus and finally to Fürstenwalde on the River Spree.
The Archdiocese of Berlin is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Germany. The archepiscopal see is in Berlin, with the archdiocese's territory extending over Northeast Germany.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that, having electoral status although being quite poor, grew rapidly in importance after inheriting the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 and then came to play a pivotal role in the history of Germany and that of Central Europe as core of the Prussian kingdom.
Torzym is a small town in Sulęcin County, Lubusz Voivodeship, in western Poland. It is the administrative seat of the urban-rural Gmina Torzym.
Mieszkowice is a town in Gryfino County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship in western Poland, about 15 km (9.3 mi) east of the Oder river and the border with Germany. It is the administrative seat of the urban-rural gmina (municipality) of Mieszkowice.
The Uckermark is a historical region in northeastern Germany, which currently straddles the Uckermark District of Brandenburg and the Vorpommern-Greifswald District of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Its traditional capital is Prenzlau.
Pomerania during the High Middle Ages covers the history of Pomerania in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Henry IV (II) the Faithful was a Duke of Żagań and parts of Greater Poland from 1309 until 1317, Duke of Głogów from 1318 until 1321 and sole ruler over Żagań from 1321 until his death.
The Battle of Lubusz (1239) was a conflict between the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Polish Duke Henry II the Pious, the conflict ended in victory for Henry. Lebus Land remained under Polish control and Cedynia and Kienitz were retained by Pomeranian Prince Barnim I.
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