Skwierzyna


Skwierzyna is a town of 9,671 inhabitants in Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland, the administrative seat of the Gmina Skwierzyna. It is located at the confluence of the Obra and Warta rivers, about north of Międzyrzecz and south-east of the regional capital Gorzów Wielkopolski. The town is situated in a particularly green part of Poland. Extensive forests and numerous lakes can be found in the vicinity.

History

Skwierzyna was originally a Slavic fishing settlement, located on an important trade route connecting Szczecin and Kraków. It became part of the emerging Polish state in the 10th century. During the fragmentation period in Polish history, from 1138 it belonged to the Duchy of Greater Poland and from 1296 to 1329 to the Duchy of Głogów. Afterwards it was located in the Poznań Voivodeship within the larger Greater Poland Province. It already held town privileges upon the death of the Piast King Przemysł II of Poland in 1296, renewed by King Władysław II Jagiełło in 1406. The population was predominantly Polish, Jewish and German. The colonization of the area was largely implemented by the Cistercian monks of nearby Paradyż Abbey, a filial monastery of Lehnin Abbey in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. In 1530 Skwierzyna was granted a coat of arms and in 1543 became a royal town of the Polish Crown.
In the course of the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Skwierzyna was annexed together with the whole region of Greater Poland by the Kingdom of Prussia. It was part of the Polish Grand Duchy of Warsaw between 1807 and 1815. It was incorporated into the Kreis Birnbaum of the Grand Duchy of Posen in 1815. From 1887 it was the administrative seat of Kreis Schwerin within the Prussian Province of Posen. Many Polish inhabitants took part in the Greater Poland uprising, aiming at reuniting the town with Poland after regaining independence in 1918. Despite being part of historic Greater Poland, i.e. the cradle of the Polish state, in 1919, according to the Treaty of Versailles, this district was left in the small province of Posen-West Prussia which remained part of Weimar Germany. Posen-West Prussia was dissolved in 1938 and Schwerin/Skwierzyna became part of the Province of Brandenburg. It was part of Germany until occupation by the Red Army on 31 January 1945. During World War II, in 1939 and 1940, a German concentration camp for Poles operated in the town. At the end of World War II the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line fell to the Republic of Poland.
The first group of 800 Poles displaced from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union arrived in Skwierzyna on June 6, 1945 from Klewań in Volhynia. In 1970 a monument of King Władysław II Jagiełło was unveiled.

Notable people

See twin towns of Gmina Skwierzyna.