Medieval period , the historic capital of Chełmno Land The first historical account of Chełmno and Chełmno Land dates back to 1065 when
Bolesław II of Poland granted a tax privilege to an abbey in a nearby
Mogilno. The document lists Chełmno ("Culmine") along with other towns which then belonged to the Duchy of Masovia. The area, being closest to the
Polans, came to be populated by the
Lechitic Kuyavians and tribes from Greater Poland. The
Masovians were led by Masos, who left the Polish duke Boleslaw I and sought refuge with the
Prussians. When this area was subdued by the rulers of the
Polans Chełmno became a local centre of
castellany (kasztelania). Chełmno Land was
Christianised in the 11th century. According to the will of Duke
Bolesław III Wrymouth, Chełmno Land, after his death in 1138 became a part of the
Duchy of Masovia governed by his son
Bolesław IV the Curly and his descendants during the feudal
fragmentation of Poland. By the 13th century the territory was subject to raids by pagan
Old Prussians, who sacked
Chełmno, the province's main town, in 1216. In 1220
Conrad I of Masovia, with the participation of the other dukes of Poland, led a partial reconquest of the province, but the project of establishing a Polish defense of the province failed due to conflicts between the dukes. He brought the crusading
Knights of Dobrzyń to Masovia, where they built a castle at
Dobrzyń in 1224 as a base for attacks against the Prussians. As a result, the territory was again sacked and devastated by Prussian raids, which led to depopulation of the province. Being involved in dynastic struggles elsewhere and too weak to deal with the Prussians alone, Conrad needed to safeguard and establish borders against the heathen
Old Prussians, because his territory of Masovia was also in danger after the Prussians besieged
Płock. Conrad awarded the already devastated Chełmno Land to the
Teutonic Knights, giving them
Nieszawa at first. He also brought in
German settlers to
Płock. In 1226 Duke
Conrad I of Masovia enlisted the aid of the
Teutonic Order to protect
Masovia and help convert the Prussians to Christianity. In return, the knights were to keep Chełmno Land as a
fief. The land constituted the base of the
Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, and its later conquest of
Prussia. In 1397, the
Lizard Union, a secret anti-Teutonic organization of local nobility, was formed in the region. The region witnessed strong opposition to Teutonic wars of
1414 and
1431–1435 against Poland, with the nobility refusing to serve in the Teutonic army, some Polish nobles fighting on the side of Poland, and the city of
Toruń refusing to pay taxes to the Teutonic Knights, not wanting to finance their war. In 1440 the anti-Teutonic
Prussian Confederation was founded, and among its founders were cities of the Chełmno Land, including
Toruń,
Chełmno,
Grudziądz and
Brodnica. The city councils of Chełmno and Toruń, and the knights of Chełmno Land were the official representatives of the confederation. In 1454 the confederation started an uprising against the Teutonic Order and turned to Polish King
Casimir IV Jagiellon with a request to reunite the region with Poland. The king agreed and signed the incorporation act, after which the
Thirteen Years' War broke out. The representatives from the region, incl. nobility, knights, mayors and local officials, solemnly swore allegiance to the Polish King and the
Kingdom of Poland in an official ceremony held in
Toruń in 1454. The war ended in a Polish victory and by the
Second Peace of Toruń in 1466, the return of Chełmno Land to the Polish Crown was confirmed. It administratively formed the
Chełmno Voivodeship, located in the
Royal Prussia province, later also in the larger
Greater Poland Province. Its capital was Chełmno, while the largest city was Toruń, which as a
royal city became one of the largest and wealthiest cities of Poland, and was the site of numerous significant events in the
history of Poland.
Modern period has remained the largest city in the Chełmno Land. Toruń was the birthplace of the renowned astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus in 1473, and place of death of Polish King
John I Albert in 1501.
Lubawa was the place where the decision was made to publish Copernicus' groundbreaking work
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. In 1528, the royal mint started operating in Toruń. Toruń was the location of the
Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (parliament) in 1576 and 1626, and the
Colloquium Charitativum, a three-month congress of European Catholics,
Lutherans, and
Calvinists, considered an important event in the history of interreligious dialogue, held in 1645 on the initiative of King
Władysław IV Vasa at a time when religious conflicts occurred in many other European countries and the disastrous
Thirty Years' War was fought west of Poland. The most prominent educational institutions of the Chełmno Land were the Academic Gymnasium in Toruń, founded in 1594 from a former municipal school, and the
Chełmno Academy in Chełmno, transformed from a local gymnasium in 1692, which in 1756 became a branch of the
Jagiellonian University in
Kraków, the oldest and leading Polish university.
Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, one of the greatest Polish
Baroque composers, was a lecturer at the Chełmno Academy in the 1690s. In 1772 as a result of the
First Partition of Poland, Chełmno Land (with the exception of
Toruń, annexed in 1793) was seized by the
Kingdom of Prussia. Between 1807 and 1815 Chełmno Land was a part of the Polish
Duchy of Warsaw and Toruń was even the duchy's temporary capital in April and May 1809. In 1815 it was annexed by Prussia again, first it became part of the
Grand Duchy of Posen, but in 1817 was incorporated into the province of
West Prussia. The local Polish population organized
resistance against the
Germanisation policies of Prussia. Also as part of
anti-Polish policies, the Prussians expelled the Kraków professors from Chełmno in 1928 Following the
Treaty of Versailles, Chełmno Land was returned to Poland in January 1920, after the Poles regained independence in 1918. In August 1920, Poland repulsed a
Soviet invasion at . In the
interwar period it formed the southern part of the
Pomeranian Voivodeship with the capital in
Toruń.
World War II Following the
invasion of Poland, which started
World War II in September 1939, it was occupied by
Nazi Germany and unilaterally annexed in October, however, lacking any international recognition. During the
occupation, the
Polish population was subjected to
various crimes, incl. mass arrests, imprisonment,
slave labor,
kidnapping of children, deportations to
Nazi concentration camps and extermination. The Germans carried out the
Intelligenzaktion, a planned mass murder of the local Polish elites. Major sites of massacres of Poles in the region included
Klamry,
Łopatki,
Barbarka,
Brzezinki,
Małe Czyste,
Płutowo and
Nawra. Already in autumn of 1939, about 23,000
Poles of the pre-war Pomeranian Voivodeship were murdered. In 1940–1943, Toruń was the location of a transit camp for Poles
expelled from the region, which became infamous for inhuman sanitary conditions. Nevertheless, the
Polish resistance movement was still organized in the region, with Toruń being the seat of one of the six main commands of the
Union of Armed Struggle in all of occupied Poland. In January 1945 it was captured by the
Red Army and the
German occupation of this part of Poland ended. ==Cities and towns==