, one of the oldest wooden Gothic churches in Europe, 14th century,
UNESCO World Heritage Site In the 14th century a German settlement called Hanshof existed in the area. The Church of the Assumption of Holy Mary and St. Michael's Archangel in
Haczów (Poland), the oldest wooden Gothic temple in Europe, was erected in the 14th century and was added to the
UNESCO list of
World Heritage Sites in 2003. Germans settled in the territory of the
Kingdom of Poland (territory of present-day
Subcarpathian Voivodeship and eastern part of
Lesser Poland) from the 14th to 16th centuries (see ), mostly after the region returned to Polish sphere of influence in 1340, when
Casimir III of Poland took the
Czerwień towns.
Marcin Bielski states that
Bolesław I Chrobry (967–1025) settled some Germans in the region to defend the borders against Hungary and Kievan Rus' but the arrivals were ill-suited to their task and turned to farming.
Maciej Stryjkowski mentions German peasants near
Przeworsk,
Przemyśl,
Sanok, and
Jarosław, describing them as good farmers. Some Germans were attracted by kings seeking specialists in various trades, such as craftsmen and miners. They usually settled in newer market and mining settlements. The main settlement areas were in the vicinity of
Krosno and some language islands in the
Pits and the
Rzeszów regions. The settlers in the Pits region were known as
Uplander Saxons. Until approximately the 15th century, the ruling classes of most cities in present-day Beskidian Piedmont consisted almost exclusively of Germans. . The typical – houses, about 150–200 km southeast of
Kraków, around 18/19th century, built in the style of ancient mountain atmosphere. and
Krosno (black) in the 16th century relative to the Holy Roman Empire (yellow) The
Polonization of the Beskidian Germans was complete by the late 17th or early 18th century. According to
Wacław Maciejowski, writing in 1858, the people did not understand German but called themselves .
Wincenty Pol wrote in 1869 that their attire was similar to that of the Hungarian and Transylvanian Germans and that their main occupations were farming and weaving. He stated that in some areas the people were of
Swedish origin; however, they all spoke flawlessly in a
Lesser Poland dialect of Polish. In 1885,
Józef Szujski wrote that the spoke only Polish, but there were traces of a variety of original languages which showed that, when they arrived, the term was applied to "everyone". In the modern Polish language, refers to Germans, but in earlier centuries it was sometimes also used in reference to Hungarians, possibly due to similarity with the word or plural for "mute" or "dumb". ==Settlement==