Kłodzko Land
Kłodzko Land (Czech: Kladsko; German: Glatzer Land; Polish: ziemia kłodzka) is a historical region (ziemia) in southwestern Poland. Geographically speaking Kłodzko Land consists of the Kłodzko Valley and the surrounding Sudetes mountains. It is named after its capital city, Kłodzko.
History
Historically, the area may have been part of Great Moravia under King Svatopluk I by the late 9th century, though the extension of his realm is disputed. According to the 1191 Chronica Boëmorum by Cosmas of Prague, the castle of Kłodzko at the road from Prague to Wrocław in 981 was a possession of the Bohemian nobleman Slavník.
During the rivalry between the Přemyslid dukes Boleslaus III and Jaromir in 1003, the Polish king Bolesław I Chrobry invaded Bohemia, but had to pull back the next year, facing the forces of King Henry II of Germany. In turn the Bohemian duke Bretislaus I campaigned the adjacent northern territory of Silesia after Bolesław's death in 1025. An armistice mediated by Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor since 1014, demarcated the spheres of influence, leaving Kłodzko with Bohemia.
When about 1080 the Polish Piast duke Władysław I Herman married Judith Přemyslovna, daughter of Duke Vratislaus II of Bohemia, he received Kłodzko as a Bohemian fief, which upon his death in 1102 was claimed by his son Duke Bolesław III Wrymouth of Poland. However as Bolesław became entangled in a fierce inheritance conflict with Duke Svatopluk of Bohemia and his cousin Borivoj II and campaigned in the Bohemian lands several times, he finally had to renounce Kłodzko in favour of Duke Soběslav I of Bohemia in a peace treaty signed in 1137 under pressure from Emperor Lothair III.
Under Bohemian rule Kłodzko, in 1458, became a county. In 1742 it was conquered by Prussia. In 1816 the county was abolished, and the territory was reformed into the Landkreis Glatz of Prussian Silesia, which fell to Poland in 1945. The area today forms the Kłodzko County of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship.
Czech claims
From the traditional Czech perspective, Kladsko was culturally and traditionally a part of Bohemia, although the region has now been a part of Lower Silesia since its conquest by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1763. Referred to as "Little Prague" (German: Klein-Prag), the Kłodzko Valley region on the Nysa Kłodzka river was the focus of several attempts to reincorporate the area into Czechoslovakia, one of several Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts.[1] The last attempt occurred in May 1945 when Czechoslovakia tried to annex the area on behalf of the Czech minority present in the western part of the Kłodzko Valley and known as the "Czech Corner". Pressure brought on by the Soviet Union led to a ceasing of military operations, with the Czech minority being expelled to Germany and Czechoslovakia. According to canon law of the Roman Catholic Church however, the area remained part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Prague until 1972.
- Proposals by the Czechoslovak Delegation on incorporating Kłodzko Land into Czechoslovakia during the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
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The maximalist variant
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The intermediate variant
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The minimalist variant