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The Province of Silesia (German: Provinz Schlesien; Polish: Prowincja Śląsk; Silesian: Prowincyjo Ślůnsko) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1815 to 1919.
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The territory comprised the bulk of the former Bohemian crown land of Silesia and the County of Kladsko, which King Frederick the Great had conquered from the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th century Silesian Wars, and furthermore the northeastern part of Upper Lusatia, ceded by Saxony according to the Final Act of the Vienna Congress in 1816.
The provincial capital was Breslau (present-day Wrocław, Poland). During the Weimar Republic, in 1919, Silesia was divided into the separate provinces of Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia. The two provinces were briefly re-united into a single province from 1938-41.
In December 1740, King Frederick the Great of Prussia had invaded Silesia, thereby starting the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). By war's end, the Kingdom of Prussia had conquered almost all of the Habsburg crown land, while according to the 1742 peace treaties of Breslau and Berlin, only some smaller parts in the extreme southeast, like the Duchy of Teschen as well as the southern parts of the duchies of Troppau and Nysa, remained possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy as Austrian Silesia.
The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) confirmed Prussian control over most of Silesia, and due to its predominantly Protestant population, it became one of the most loyal territories of Prussia. When the Prussian territories were reorganized in 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, the Province of Silesia was created out of the territories acquired by Prussia in the Silesian Wars, as well as those Upper Lusatian lands around Görlitz and Lauban, which were formerly part of the Kingdom of Saxony.
As a Prussian province, Silesia became part of the German Empire during the Prussian-led unification of Germany in 1871. There was considerable industrialization in Upper Silesia (Upper Silesian Industrial Region), and many people moved there at that time. According to the census of 1905, three-quarters of the inhabitants were Germans, while the bulk of the population to the east of the Oder River were Poles.
Following World War I, the parts remaining in Weimar Germany were re-organized into the two provinces of Lower Silesia (Niederschlesien) and Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien, the former Regierungsbezirk Oppeln) in 1919. After three Silesian Uprisings and the 1921 Upper Silesia plebiscite, the East Upper Silesian part of the province around the industrial town of Kattowitz was transferred to the Second Polish Republic and incorporated into the Silesian Voivodeship in 1922. Further, in 1920 the Hultschiner Ländchen was ceded to the state of Czechoslovakia according to the Treaty of Versailles.
Between 1938 and 1941, Upper and Lower Silesia were again merged to a single province under governor Josef Wagner. After the Nazi Germany conquest of Poland in late 1939, the Province of Silesia was extended when a part of former Poland was merged into that province. In 1941, the Province was divided again, to the provinces of Upper and Lower Silesia.
Upon the implementation of the Oder-Neisse line according to the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, most of the Prussian Silesia Province is now within Poland, incorporated into the Lubusz, Lower Silesian, Opole and Silesian Voivodeships. The German-speaking population was expelled following World War II. A smaller western part of the former Silesia Province lies within modern German states of Saxony and Brandenburg.
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Regierungsbezirk Liegnitz
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Regierungsbezirk Oppeln
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