and
Neptune's Fountain
11th–16th centuries In the 11th or 12th century, a settlement named Habersdorf, which was the predecessor of Liberec, was established on the
trade route from
Bohemia to
Lusatia by Czech settlers and German colonizers. In the 13th century, a second settlement named Reichenberg was established near the first one. The two settlements later merged. The first written mention of Liberec under its German name Reichenberg is from 1352. Starting in 1278, the area was owned by the noble Bieberstein family. Reichenberg suffered from the passing through of troops during the
Hussite Wars, then was burned down in 1469 during a battle with the army of King
George of Poděbrady. After the Biebersteins died out, the
Frýdlant estate, which included Reichenberg, was bought by the Redern family in 1558. The Rederns contributed significantly to the development of the settlement, as they built new buildings, modernized the settlement and laid the foundation of the textile industry. In 1577, Reichenberg was promoted to a town by Emperor
Rudolf II. He gave the town the coat of arms it still uses today. After the end of World War I, Austria-Hungary fell apart and the Czechs of Bohemia joined newly established
Czechoslovakia on 29 October 1918 whilst the Germans wanted to stay with Austria to form reduced
German Austria on 12 November 1918, both citing
Woodrow Wilson's
Fourteen Points and the doctrine of
self-determination. Liberec was declared the capital of the German-Austrian province of
German Bohemia. Czechs however argued that these lands, though German-settled since the Middle Ages, were historically an integral part of the Duchy and Kingdom of Bohemia. On 16 December 1918, the Czechoslovak Army entered Liberec and the whole province remained part of Bohemia. The
Great Depression devastated the economy of the area with its textile, carpet, glass and other light industry. The high number of unemployed people, hunger, fear of the future and dissatisfaction with the Prague government led to the flash rise of the populist
Sudeten German Party (SdP), founded by
Konrad Henlein, born in the suburbs of Liberec. The city became the centre of
Pan-German movements and later of the
Nazis, especially after the 1935 election, despite its important democratic mayor,
Karl Kostka (
German Democratic Freedom Party). The final change came in Summer 1938, after the radicalization of the terror of the SdP, whose death threats forced Kostka and his family to flee to Prague. In September 1938, the
Munich Agreement awarded the city to
Nazi Germany. In 1939, it became the capital of
Reichsgau Sudetenland. Most of the city's Jewish and Czech population fled to the rest of Czechoslovakia or were expelled. The important synagogue was burned down. Henlein himself confiscated a villa in Liberec that had belonged to a Jewish businessman, which remained Henlein's home until 1945. After World War II, the city again became a part of Czechoslovakia and nearly all of the city's German population was
expelled following the
Beneš decrees. The region was then resettled with Czechs. ==Demographics==