In the fourth century BC from the south, through the
Kłodzko Valley, the
Celts entered Silesia, and settled around
Mount Ślęża near modern
Wrocław,
Oława and
Strzelin.
Germanic Lugii tribes were first recorded within Silesia in the 1st century BC.
West Slavs and
Lechites arrived in the region around the 7th century, and by the early ninth century, their settlements had stabilized. Local West Slavs started to erect boundary structures like the
Silesian Przesieka and the
Silesia Walls. The eastern border of
Silesian settlement was situated to the west of the
Bytom, and east from
Racibórz and
Cieszyn. East of this line dwelt a closely related Lechitic tribe, the
Vistulans. Their northern border was in the valley of the
Barycz River, north of which lived the
Western Polans tribe who gave
Poland its name. The first known states in Silesia were
Greater Moravia and
Bohemia. In the 10th century, the Polish ruler
Mieszko I of the
Piast dynasty incorporated Silesia into the newly established
Polish state. In 1000, the
Diocese of Wrocław was established as the oldest
Catholic diocese in the region, and one of the oldest dioceses in Poland, subjugated to the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Gniezno. Poland repulsed German invasions of Silesia in 1017 at
Niemcza and in 1109 at
Głogów. During the
Fragmentation of Poland, Silesia and the rest of the country were divided into
many smaller duchies ruled by various
Silesian dukes. In 1178, parts of the
Duchy of Kraków around Bytom,
Oświęcim,
Chrzanów, and
Siewierz were transferred to the Silesian Piasts, although their population was primarily Vistulan and not of Silesian descent. Since the 13th century,
German cultural and ethnic influence increased as a result of
immigration from German-speaking states of the
Holy Roman Empire. The first granting of
municipal privileges in Poland took place in the region, in the town of
Złotoryja by Henry the Bearded. Medieval municipal rights modeled after
Lwówek Śląski and
Środa Śląska, both established by Henry the Bearded, became the basis of municipal form of government for several cities and towns in Poland, and two of five local Polish variants of medieval town rights. The
Book of Henryków, which contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language, as well as a document which contains the oldest printed text in Polish, were created in
Henryków and Wrocław in Silesia, respectively. In 1241, the
Mongols conducted their
first invasion of Poland, causing widespread panic and mass flight. They looted much of the region and defeated the combined Polish, Moravian and German forces led by Duke
Henry II the Pious at the
Battle of Legnica, which took place at
Legnickie Pole near the city of
Legnica. Upon the death of
Orda Khan, the Mongols chose not to press forward further into Europe, but returned east to participate in the election of a new Grand Khan (leader). Between 1289 and 1292, Bohemian king
Wenceslaus II became
suzerain of some of the
Upper Silesian duchies. Polish monarchs had not renounced their hereditary rights to Silesia until 1335. The province became part of the
Bohemian Crown which was part of the Holy Roman Empire; however, a number of duchies remained under the rule of the Polish dukes from the houses of Piast,
Jagiellon and
Sobieski as formal Bohemian
fiefdoms, some until the 17th–18th centuries. Between 1469 and 1490, the region was under the rule of
Matthias Corvinus, who claimed the Bohemian throne. In 1526 Silesia passed with the Bohemian Crown to the
Habsburg monarchy. In the 15th century, several changes were made to Silesia's borders. Parts of the territories that had been transferred to the Silesian Piasts in 1178 were bought by the
Polish kings in the second half of the 15th century (the
Duchy of Oświęcim in 1457; the
Duchy of Zator in 1494). The Bytom area remained in the possession of the Silesian Piasts, though it was a part of the
Diocese of Kraków. Following the third
Silesian uprising (1921), however, the easternmost portion of Upper Silesia (including Katowice), with a majority ethnic Polish population, was awarded to Poland, becoming the
Silesian Voivodeship. The Prussian Province of Silesia within Germany was then divided into the provinces of
Lower Silesia and
Upper Silesia. Meanwhile,
Austrian Silesia, the small portion of Silesia retained by Austria after the
Silesian Wars, was mostly awarded to the new Czechoslovakia (becoming known as Czech Silesia and
Trans-Olza), although most of
Cieszyn and territory to the east of it went to Poland. Polish Silesia was among the first regions invaded during Germany's 1939
attack on Poland, which started
World War II. One of the claimed goals of
Nazi German occupation, particularly in Upper Silesia, was the extermination of those whom Nazis viewed as "
subhuman", namely Jews and ethnic Poles. The Polish and Jewish population of the then Polish part of Silesia was subjected to genocide involving
expulsions, mass murder and deportation to
Nazi concentration camps and
forced labour camps, while Germans were settled in pursuit of . Two thousand Polish intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen were murdered in the in 1940 as part of a
Poland-wide Germanization program. Silesia also housed one of the two main wartime centers where medical experiments were conducted on
kidnapped Polish children by Nazis. Czech Silesia was
occupied by Germany as part of
Sudetenland. In Silesia,
Nazi Germany operated the
Gross-Rosen concentration camp, several
prisoner-of-war camps for
Allied POWs (including the major
Stalag VIII-A,
Stalag VIII-B,
Stalag VIII-C camps), numerous Nazi prisons and thousands of
forced labour camps, including a network of forced labour camps solely for Poles (),
subcamps of prisons, POW camps and of the Gross-Rosen and
Auschwitz concentration camps. The
Potsdam Conference of 1945 defined the
Oder-Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland, pending a final peace conference with Germany which never took place. At the end of WWII, Germans in Silesia fled from the battle ground, assuming they would be able to return when the war was over. However, they could not return, and those who had stayed were expelled and a new Polish population, including people displaced from
former Eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and from Central Poland, joined the surviving native Polish inhabitants of the region. After 1945 and in 1946, nearly all of the 4.5 million Silesians of German descent fled, or were interned in camps and expelled, including some thousand German Jews who survived the Holocaust and had returned to Silesia. The newly formed
Polish United Workers' Party created a
Ministry of the Recovered Territories that claimed half of the available arable land for state-run collectivized farms. Many of the new Polish Silesians who resented the Germans for their invasion in 1939 and brutality in occupation now resented the newly formed Polish communist government for their population shifting and interference in agricultural and industrial affairs. The administrative division of Silesia within Poland has changed several times since 1945. Since 1999, it has been divided between
Lubusz Voivodeship,
Lower Silesian Voivodeship,
Opole Voivodeship, and
Silesian Voivodeship. Czech Silesia is now part of the Czech Republic, forming part of the
Moravian-Silesian Region and the northern part of the
Olomouc Region. Germany retains the Silesia-Lusatia region ( or ) west of the
Neisse, which is part of the federal state of
Saxony. The region was affected by the
1997,
2010 and
2024 Central European floods.
Ethnic history Modern Silesia is inhabited by
Poles,
Silesians,
Germans, and
Czechs. Germans first came to Silesia during the
Late Medieval Ostsiedlung. The last Polish census of 2011 showed that the Silesians are the largest ethnic or national minority in Poland, Germans being the second; both groups are located mostly in Upper Silesia. The Czech part of Silesia is inhabited by Czechs,
Moravians, Silesians, and
Poles. In the early 19th century the population of the
Prussian part of Silesia was between 2/3 and 3/4 German-speaking, between 1/5 and 1/3 Polish-speaking, with
Sorbs,
Czechs,
Moravians and Jews forming other smaller minorities (see Table 1. below). Before the Second World War, Silesia was inhabited mostly by Germans, with Poles a large minority, forming a majority in
Upper Silesia. Silesia was also the home of Czech and Jewish minorities. The German population tended to be based in the urban centres and in the rural areas to the north and west, whilst the Polish population was mostly rural and could be found in the east and in the south. Ethnic structure of Prussian
Upper Silesia (
Opole regency) during the 19th century and the early 20th century can be found in Table 2.: The
Austrian part of Silesia had a mixed German, Polish and Czech population, with Polish-speakers forming a majority in
Cieszyn Silesia.
Religion ) and Upper Silesia were mostly Catholic. Historically, Silesia was about equally split between
Catholics and
Protestants (overwhelmingly
Lutherans). In an 1890 census taken in the German part, Catholics made up a slight majority of 53%, while the remaining 47% were almost entirely Lutheran. Geographically speaking, Upper Silesia was mostly Catholic except for some of its northwestern parts, which were predominantly Lutheran. Lower Silesia was mostly Lutheran except for the
Glatzer Land (now
Kłodzko County). Generally speaking, the population was mostly Protestant in the western parts, and it tended to be more Catholic the further east one went. In Upper Silesia, Protestants were concentrated in larger cities and often identified as German. After World War II, the religious demographics changed drastically as Germans, who constituted the bulk of the Protestant population,
were forcibly expelled. Poles, who were mostly Catholic, were resettled in their place. Today, Silesia remains predominantly Catholic. Existing since the 12th century, Silesia's Jewish community was concentrated around Wrocław and Upper Silesia, and numbered 48,003 (1.1% of the population) in 1890, decreasing to 44,985 persons (0.9%) by 1910. In Polish East Upper Silesia, the number of Jews was around 90,000–100,000. Historically, the community had suffered a number of localised expulsions such as their 1453 expulsion from
Wrocław. From 1712 to 1820 a succession of men held the title Chief Rabbi of Silesia ("Landesrabbiner"): Naphtali ha-Kohen (1712–16); Samuel ben Naphtali (1716–22); Ḥayyim Jonah Te'omim (1722–1727); Baruch b. Reuben Gomperz (1733–54); Joseph Jonas Fränkel (1754–93); Jeremiah Löw Berliner (1793–99); Lewin Saul Fränkel (1800–7);
Aaron Karfunkel (1807–16); and Abraham ben Gedaliah Tiktin (1816–20).
Consequences of World War II After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, following
Nazi racial policy, the Jewish population of Silesia was subjected to genocide with executions performed by Einsatzgruppe z. B.V. led by
Udo von Woyrsch and Einsatzgruppe I led by
Bruno Streckenbach, imprisonment in ghettos, and ethnic cleansing of the
General Government. In their efforts to exterminate the Jews through murder and ethnic cleansing, the Germans established the Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen camps in the province of Silesia. Expulsions were carried out openly and reported in the local press. Those sent to ghettos would from 1942 be expelled to concentration and work camps. Between 5 May and 17 June, 20,000 Silesian Jews were sent to Birkenau to gas chambers and during August 1942, 10,000 to 13,000 Silesian Jews were murdered by gassing at Auschwitz. Most Jews in Silesia were exterminated by the Nazis. After the war Silesia became a major centre for repatriation of the Jewish population in Poland which survived Nazi German extermination and in autumn 1945, 15,000 Jews were in Lower Silesia, mostly Polish Jews returned from territories now belonging to the Soviet Union, rising in 1946 to seventy thousand as Jewish survivors from other regions in Poland were relocated. The majority of Germans fled or were expelled from the present-day Polish and Czech parts of Silesia during and after World War II. From June 1945 to January 1947, 1.77 million Germans were expelled from Lower Silesia, and 310,000 from Upper Silesia. Today, most German Silesians and their descendants live in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, many of them in the
Ruhr area working as miners, like their ancestors in Silesia. One of its most notable but controversial spokesmen was the
Christian Democratic Union politician
Herbert Hupka. The expulsion of Germans led to widespread underpopulation. The population of the town of
Głogów fell from 33,500 to 5,000, and from 1939 to 1966 the population of Wrocław fell by 25%. Attempts to repopulate Silesia proved unsuccessful in the 1940s and 1950s, and Silesia's population did not reach pre-war levels until the late 1970s. The Polish settlers who repopulated Silesia were partly from the former Polish
Eastern Borderlands, which was annexed by the
Soviet Union in 1939. Wrocław was partly repopulated with refugees from the formerly Polish city of
Lwów. ==Geography==