Bielsko There has been human habitation in Bielsko since around 1400 BC, wooden tools have been found along with stone axes dating from 1000 BC. The remnants of a fortified settlement in what is now the
Stare Bielsko (Old Bielsko) district of the city were discovered between 1933 and 1938 by a Polish archaeological team. The settlement was dated to the 12th – 14th centuries. Its dwellers manufactured
iron from
ore and specialized in
smithery. The current centre of the town was probably developed as early as the first half of the 13th century. At that time a castle (which still survives today) was built on a hill. In the second half of the 13th century, the
Piast dukes of
Opole invited
German settlers to colonize the
Silesian Foothills. As the dukes then also ruled over the Lesser Poland lands east of the Biała River, settlements arose on both banks like
Bielitz (now
Stare Bielsko),
Nickelsdorf (
Mikuszowice Śląskie),
Kamitz (
Kamienica),
Batzdorf (
Komorowice Śląskie) and
Kurzwald in the west as well as
Kunzendorf (
Lipnik),
Alzen (
Hałcnów) and
Wilmesau (
Wilamowice) in the east. Nearby settlements in the mountains were
Lobnitz (
Wapienica) and
Bistrai (
Bystra). Those settlements did not undergo Slavonicisation in the following centuries, which led to the creation of
a German language island (
Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel) that survived until the 20th century. After the partition of the Duchy of Opole in 1281, Bielsko passed to the
Dukes of Cieszyn within fragmented
Poland. The town was first documented in 1312 when Duke
Mieszko I of Cieszyn granted a
town charter. The Biała again became a border river, when in 1315 the eastern
Duchy of Oświęcim split off from Cieszyn as a separate under Mieszko's son
Władysław. After the Dukes of Cieszyn had become vassals of the
Bohemian kings in 1327 and the Duchy of Oświęcim was sold to the
Polish Crown in 1457, returning to Lesser Poland after three centuries, the Biała River for next centuries marked the border between the
Bohemian crown land of Silesia within the
Holy Roman Empire and the
Lesser Poland Province of the
Kingdom of Poland and the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. With Bohemia and the Upper Silesian Duchy of Cieszyn, Bielsko in 1526 was inherited by the Austrian
House of Habsburg and incorporated into the
Habsburg monarchy. From 1560 Bielsko was held by
Frederick Casimir of Cieszyn, son of Duke
Wenceslaus III Adam, who due to the enormous debts his son left upon his death in 1571, had to sell it to the Promnitz noble family at
Pless. With the consent of Emperor
Maximilian II, the Promnitz dynasty and their
Schaffgotsch successors ruled the
Duchy of Bielsko as a Bohemian
state country; acquired by the Austrian chancellor
Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz in 1743, and afterwards by Polish aristocrat
Aleksander Józef Sułkowski in 1752, the ducal status was finally confirmed by Empress
Maria Theresa in 1754. It remained in possession of the Polish
Sułkowski family until the dissolution of the duchy in 1849, while the castle was still owned by the Sułkowskis until World War II. Bielsko was the first town in the Duchy of Cieszyn where the teachings of
Martin Luther spread in the late 1530s, even before Duke
Wenceslaus III Adam adopted
Lutheranism in 1545. Also later, Bielsko was home to the strongest Protestant community in the whole of Cieszyn Silesia, which in 1587 obtained a privilege guaranteeing that only Lutheran services would be held in the town.
Jiří Třanovský was active in the Bielsko castle. Bielsko retained its Protestant character also after the
Thirty Years' War. The recatholisation campaign, which started in the second half of the 17th century, was not very successful. Throughout the
Counter-Reformation period, Lutheran services were held—at first in the Holy Trinity Church with the permission of the authorities, later in homes or in the surrounding
Beskid forests (the so-called forest churches)—and immediately after the issuing of the
Patent of Toleration by
Emperor Joseph II in 1781, an Evangelical district was established north of the historical centre, with the
Church of the Saviour, the present seat of the
Lutheran bishop and schools, known as the
Bielsko Zion (
Bielski Syjon). To this day, it remains a Protestant cultural centre of supra-regional significance. In 1900, a monument to Martin Luther was unveiled there. It was one of only two in the whole of Austria-Hungary (the other was erected in the Bohemian town of
Aš), and now is the only one within the borders of Poland. In the second half of the 19th century, Lutherans ceased to constitute the majority of the population due to the influx of new inhabitants, mostly Catholic or Jewish. After the
Prussian king
Frederick the Great had invaded Silesia, Bielsko remained with the Habsburg monarchy as part of
Austrian Silesia according to the 1742
Treaty of Breslau. In late 1849 Bielsko became a seat of
political district. In 1870 it became a
statutory city. The town's development in the 19th century was primarily linked to the
textile industry, and to a lesser extent the engineering industry. The Bielsko-Biała area was described as the third largest centre of the textile industry in the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, after
Brno and
Liberec. In the second half of the 19th century, new tenements, villas of wealthy industrialists and public buildings in
Revival and
Art Nouveau styles began to spring up in the landscape of the city. These were often inspired by the architecture of Vienna, to which the slogan "Little Vienna", which is still popular today, refers. After 1918, when
Austria-Hungary collapsed, Bielsko found itself within a
disputed territory between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Attempts to incorporate the city into the
Republic of German-Austria failed. In July 1920, the
Conference of Ambassadors decided to divide
Cieszyn Silesia in such a way that Bielsko became part of the autonomous
Silesian Voivodeship in the
Second Polish Republic. Political life during the interwar period was marked by ethnic and national tensions. The influx of Polish officials and teachers increased the proportion of the Polish population, although the city retained a significant German-speaking community. In the 1930s, some
ethnic German residents, under the leadership of
Rudolf Wiesner, organized the
Jungdeutsche Partei, an
anti-Polish and
antisemitic political movement that functioned as a de facto branch of the
NSDAP. A considerable number of young Germans joined the party during the mid-1930s. The interwar period also brought significant urban development. A new residential district in
Modernist style was built beginning in 1934 on the site of the former castle gardens, and the first Polish high school (today the
Nicolaus Copernicus High School) was opened in 1927. In 1938, the nearby municipality of
Aleksandrowice was incorporated into the city, where an airport and a pilot school were established.
Biała The history of Biała dates back to the second half of the 16th century. The first written mention comes from 1564 and describes a small craftsmen settlement of thirteen houses. It was located near the mouth of Niwka to the
Biała River, in the area of today's Łukowa Street. Administratively, it belonged to the
Silesian County of the
Kraków Voivodeship within the
Kingdom of Poland. The first residents most likely came from the suburbs of neighboring Bielsko. They crossed to the other side of the river tempted by the opportunity to build new houses in the face of restrictions imposed by the Bielsko town council and disputes between the suburban population and the privileged
burghers of the Old Town. The settlement was established on the land of the village of
Lipnik, from which it became independent in 1613. Further development of the village was associated with the influx of refugees from neighboring Silesia during the
Thirty Years' War and the
Counter-Reformation. Though already named a town in the 17th century, Biała officially was granted
borough rights by the Polish king
Augustus II the Strong in 1723. At that time it counted only 40 inhabited houses and about 300 residents, mostly German-speaking and
Lutheran. There has been a new urban layout made, in the center of which was a rectangular market square - today's
Wojska Polskiego Square. In the course of the
First Partition of Poland in 1772, Biała was annexed by the
Habsburg Empire and incorporated into the crownland of
Galicia. After that the town underwent major urban transformations in the 1780s in connection with the construction of the Central Galician Road, part of which is today's
11 Listopada Street. At that time, the New Market was also delineated - the present
Wolności Square. The town's boundaries were artificially limited as a result of disputes with the
Lipnik municipality, which refused to give up part of its territory, even though the western part of Lipnik formed an urban and functional unity with Biała. West Lipnik also formed the de facto
Jewish quarter of Biała, due to the official ban on Jewish settlement in the town, which was in effect from 1757 to 1848. Joachim Adler's cloth factory, considered the first mechanized factory in the Bielsko-Biala area, was also established within Lipnik's borders in 1810. Lipnik was finally incorporated into Biała in 1925. The town thus expanded its territory more than sixteen times (before 1925 it had only , while Lipnik had ), and the population increased two and a half times. In the 19th century, Biała formed a single industrial region with Bielsko, also with a predominance of
textile industry. From 1867 it was the capital of
Biała County. At the turn of the 20th century, a number of "Vienna-like" buildings were constructed in Biała, too, including a pompous
Neo-Renaissance town hall in 1895–1897. According to the 1910 census, Biała had a population of 8,668. 69.3% used
German in their domestic interactions, 29.3% used
Polish, and 1.4% used another language (mainly
Czech or
Ukrainian). 72.1% were
Roman Catholic, 17.7%
Jewish and 12.3%
Lutheran. Of the remaining 0.9%, there were small groups of
Greek Catholics,
Orthodox Christians,
Calvinists and five people with no religion. With the dissolution of
Austria-Hungary in 1918, Biała became part of the
Second Polish Republic. Throughout the interwar period it belonged to the
Kraków Voivodeship. From 1925, the official name of the town was
Biała Krakowska.
Bielsko-Biała Although the two towns effectively functioned as one urban area for a long time, they were administratively combined for the first time by the Nazi authorities after the
invasion of Poland in September 1939. Biała became a district of Bielsko under the name
Bielitz-Ost. During the
World War II, the city was occupied by the
Nazi Germany, within the
province of Upper Silesia. Germans committed various crimes against the Polish and Jewish population. Several Polish teachers and principals were deported to
Nazi concentration camps and murdered there. Many
Jewish residents were murdered at the nearby
Auschwitz extermination camp. Only less than 1000 people of the city's Jewish community of nearly 8000 survived the war. Several widely known
Holocaust survivors from Bielsko-Biała were
Roman Frister,
Gerda Weissmann Klein and
Kitty Hart-Moxon, all of whom wrote accounts of their experiences during the war. However, when it comes to material losses, the city survived the war almost intact. It was not bombed, and fighting during the
Soviet offensive in the winter of 1945 was limited to today's peripheral districts, such as
Hałcnów and the eastern part of
Lipnik. After World War II, the ethnic structure of the place changed. Most of the German population
was expelled and those who remained assimilated with the Poles. In the 21st century, there is only a small
German minority circle in the town.
Poles transferred from the
eastern areas that had been annexed to the USSR, as well as new settlers from central Poland, especially
Lesser Poland, came to Bielsko-Biała. The new Polish authorities initially restored the pre-war borders, including the division into Bielsko and Biała in two different voivodeships. But soon the decision to re-unify the two towns was made. The new municipality under the name
Bielsko-Biała was created on 1 January 1951. Until 1975, it was part of the
Katowice Voivodeship. In post-war Poland, the city has remained an important centre of
textile industry (second only to
Łódź), alongside which new branches have developed: in 1946 the
Gliding Institute was established and in 1948 the car engine plant WSM, on the basis of which the
FSM Automobile Factory was founded in 1972. The factory was born from an agreement between the
FSO and
Fiat for the construction of a new model, the
Polski Fiat 126p, Polish version of
Fiat 126 commonly known as
Maluch. A huge industrial complex has been built in the northern part of the city. Thousands of people came from all over Poland to work then; in the 1970s Bielsko-Biała observed the biggest population boom in its history. The influx of new residents was associated with the construction of new housing estates with
large panel system-buildings, like Złote Łany (1970–1975), Wojska Polskiego (1976–1980), Beskidzkie (1976–1982) or Karpackie (1979–1982). The population has also increased due to the incorporation of surrounding communes:
Kamienica and
Mikuszowice (together with ) in 1969,
Straconka in 1973,
Stare Bielsko,
Komorowice,
Hałcnów and
Wapienica in 1977. Bielsko-Biała was made famous on a large scale by the
Studio Filmów Rysunkowych (Animated Film Studio), founded in 1947. It was one of five animation studios in post-war Poland. Among the children's TV series produced here were
Reksio,
Bolek i Lolek,
Margo the Mouse and
Porwanie Baltazara Gąbki.
The general strike launched by the workers of the Bewelana textile factory in January 1981 is considered the most effective strike of the
first wave of Solidarity. The strikers forced the mayor of the city, the provincial governor, the commander of
Milicja Obywatelska and the municipal and voivodeship secretaries of the
Communist party to resign. From 1975 to 1998, Bielsko-Biała was the capital of the
Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship, covering most of Polish
Cieszyn Silesia and south-western
Lesser Poland (counties of
Żywiec,
Oświęcim,
Wadowice and
Sucha Beskidzka). To describe its territory, the name
Podbeskidzie was adopted, which is still popular among Bielsko-Biała residents ("Bielsko-Biała - the capital of Podbeskidzie"), but elsewhere it is criticized as an artificial term that is trying to replace traditional historical and geographical lands. The subject of a lively public debate is the long-term effects of the loss of the status of a provincial capital as a result of the
administrative reform in 1998, when the area of the former Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship was divided and Bielsko-Biała was incorporated into the
Silesian Voivodeship. The
economic transformation after 1989 affected the industrial city with a serious socio-economic crisis. The textile industry, which almost disappeared from Bielsko-Biała, was the most affected. The car factory bought directly by
Fiat limited its production only to components. The bad condition of the historic Old Town was the clearest sign of the city's decline in the 1990s, while its gradual
revitalization started in 2002 became an important symbol of changes for the better. During the first and second decades of the 21st century, Bielsko-Biała managed to return to the path of economic prosperity. Between 2001 and 2009, on the site of the demolished Lenko and Finex textile factories, a large shopping mall,
Galeria Sfera, was built. It is a characteristic post-modernist architectural structure on the banks of the Biała river, however criticised for its negative influence on the traditional commercial zone located around the nearby 11 Listopada Street pedestrian zone. Like other contemporary cities, Bielsko-Biała is strongly affected by
suburbanization, which results in a decrease in the number of inhabitants while the population of the neighboring communes is increasing. ==Demographics==