Waksmund

Waksmund
Waksmund
	Village
	Waksmund from Gorce
	Waksmund
	Coordinates: 49°29′N20°5′E / 49.483°N 20.083°E
Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Lesser Poland
County	Nowy Targ
Gmina	Gmina Nowy Targ
Highest elevation	670 m (2,200 ft)
Lowest elevation	545 m (1,788 ft)
Population	2,439

Last updated April 22, 2019

Waksmund [ˈvaksmunt] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nowy Targ, within Nowy Targ County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately 3 kilometres (2 mi) east of Nowy Targ and 80 km (50 mi) south of the regional capital Kraków.^[1]

Village Small clustered human settlement smaller than a town

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, with a population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Though villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement.

Gmina Nowy Targ is a rural gmina in Nowy Targ County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. Its seat is the town of Nowy Targ, although the town is not part of the territory of the gmina.

Nowy Targ County is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, southern Poland, on the Slovak border. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. Its administrative seat and largest town is Nowy Targ, which lies 67 kilometres (42 mi) south of the regional capital Kraków. The county also contains the towns of Rabka-Zdrój, lying 18 km (11 mi) north of Nowy Targ, and Szczawnica, 35 km (22 mi) east of Nowy Targ.

History

The current village was settled by German immigrants under Magdeburg Law in the years 1334-1338. Previously, a village under the name Wilcze Pole or Wolf's Field existed. During the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 the village became famous for sending five armed men to fight on the side of King Władysław II Jagiełło for which the village received land in the nearby Tatra Mountains - Hala Waksmundzka (Meadow of Waksmund) and Dolina Waksmundzka (Valley of Waksmund) near Morskie Oko. During the Second World War, on June 29, 1943 the village was the site of one of the worst massacres carried out by the Nazi occupiers in the Podhale region, after the break-up of the Tatra Confederation revealed that many members of the resistance organization were from this village.

The Battle of Grunwald, First Battle of Tannenberg or Battle of Žalgiris, was fought on 15 July 1410 during the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, led respectively by King Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) and Grand Duke Vytautas, decisively defeated the German–Prussian Teutonic Knights, led by Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen. Most of the Teutonic Knights' leadership were killed or taken prisoner. Although defeated, the Teutonic Knights withstood the siege of their fortress in Marienburg (Malbork) and suffered minimal territorial losses at the Peace of Thorn (1411) (Toruń), with other territorial disputes continuing until the Peace of Melno in 1422. The knights, however, would never recover their former power, and the financial burden of war reparations caused internal conflicts and an economic downturn in the lands under their control. The battle shifted the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe and marked the rise of the Polish–Lithuanian union as the dominant political and military force in the region.

Morskie Oko is the largest and fourth-deepest lake in the Tatra Mountains. It is located deep within the Tatra National Park, Poland, in the Rybi Potok Valley, of the High Tatras mountain range at the base of the Mięguszowiecki Summits, in Lesser Poland Voivodeship.

Podhale is Poland's southernmost region, sometimes referred to as the "Polish highlands". The Podhale is located in the foothills of the Tatra range of the Carpathian mountains.

Geography

Waksmund lies at an elevation of 565 metres primarily on the south bank of the river Dunajec in a hollow between two fossil sandar from the ice age. On the north bank of the Dunajec the land rises abruptly into the Gorce Mountains, on the south bank it slopes much gentler further south until it reaches the foothills of the Tatra Mountains some 6 to 8 kilometres further to the south near Białka Tatrzańska. The westernmost outlier of the Pieniny range, Gisowa Skała, lies a few kilometres to the southeast of the village near to Gronków. Within twenty kilometres of Waksmund, three national parks can be found: Gorczański, Tatrzański and Pieniński National Park.

The Dunajec is a river running through northeastern Slovakia and southern Poland. It is a right tributary of the Vistula River. It begins in Nowy Targ at the junction of two short mountain rivers, Czarny Dunajec and Biały Dunajec. Dunajec forms the border between Poland and Slovakia for 17 kilometers in the Pieniny Środkowe range, east of the Czorsztyn reservoir.

An outwash plain, also called a sandur, sandr or sandar, is a plain formed of glacial sediments deposited by meltwater outwash at the terminus of a glacier. As it flows, the glacier grinds the underlying rock surface and carries the debris along. The meltwater at the snout of the glacier deposits its load of sediment over the outwash plain, with larger boulders being deposited near the terminal moraine, and smaller particles travelling further before being deposited. Sandurs are common in Iceland where geothermal activity accelerates the melting of ice flows and the deposition of sediment by meltwater.

The Gorce Mountains are part of the Western Beskids mountain range spreading across southernmost Poland. They are situated in Małopolska Province, at the western tip of the long Carpathian range extending east beyond the Dunajec River for some 1,500 kilometres (930 mi). The Gorce are characterized by numerous ridges reaching in all directions for up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) east–west with a series of higher elevations cut by deep river valleys.

Climate

On average, Waksmund has a fairly similar climate to other places in lower Podhale, although slightly colder - average annual temperature is around 5.6 °C, with the warmest month, July, averaging 16.5 °C, and the coldest month, January, averaging -6.2 °C, placing it firmly within the Dfb climate zone. Annual precipitation is around 850 millimetres, annual sunshine hours around 1500. Snow remains on the ground on average 111 days per year, and the average length of the growing season is 189 days. Spring sees large diurnal ranges - it can be up to 20 °C during mid day, while in the meanwhile at night it can still cool down to -10 °C. Winter temperatures however, are among the coldest in the whole of Poland due to the unique geography which causes the area to function quite like a cold sink; -35 °C is not unheard of on calm and clear nights above a fresh snow cover during a cold spell, and an unofficial all-time record low of -49 °C was reported in the winter of 1929. Whether this is valid or due to faulty equipment can never be known, fact is that Waksmund on such nights can be 5 to 7 °C colder than nearby Nowy Targ or Białka Tatrzańska. A similar effect, although far more pronounced, happens at Funtensee in Germany. The opposite has also known to happen, the area is especially susceptible to foehn winds, known locally as halny which can come from both the south as well as the north here, and rising air temperatures with as much as 15 °C in a matter of an hour, accompanied by low humidity and strong winds. Summers are mild, with average highs around 20 to 25 °C, and nighttime lows around 10 °C.

Funtensee is a lake in the Steinernes Meer plateau in the Nationalpark Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany located on the larger of the two sinkholes of the uvala, known for record low temperatures up to 30 °C (54 °F) lower than the surrounding area. Its primary inflows are the Steingraben, Stuhlgraben and Rennergraben.

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, and the Alps, Lake Constance and the High Rhine to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.

Notable residents

Józef Kuraś, resistance fighter
Andrzej Waksmundzki, chemist

Józef Kuraś,, noms-de-guerre "Orzeł" (Eagle) and from June 1943 "Ogień" (Fire); was born in Waksmund near Nowy Targ. He served as lieutenant in the Polish Army during the invasion of Poland, and became the underground member of Armia Krajowa and Bataliony Chłopskie in the Podhale region. Soon after the end of World War II, he was one of the leaders of anticommunist resistance.

Andrzej Waksmundzki was a Polish chemist who became well known for his work in the field of chromatography.

Related Research Articles

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References

↑ "Central Statistical Office (GUS) – TERYT (National Register of Territorial Land Apportionment Journal)" (in Polish). 2008-06-01.

Coordinates: 49°29′N20°5′E / 49.483°N 20.083°E / 49.483; 20.083

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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[TERYT-1] "Central Statistical Office (GUS) – TERYT (National Register of Territorial Land Apportionment Journal)" (in Polish). 2008-06-01.

v t e Gmina Nowy Targ
Seat (not part of the gmina)	Nowy Targ
Villages	Dębno Długopole Dursztyn Gronków Harklowa Klikuszowa Knurów Krauszów Krempachy Lasek Łopuszna Ludźmierz Morawczyna Nowa Biała Obidowa Ostrowsko Pyzówka Rogoźnik Szlembark Trute Waksmund