Namslau/Namysłów
Namslau/Namysłów
Political and administrative affiliation
Poland. Namslau is a district town in the Opole Voivodeship and the administrative centre of the urban and rural municipality of the same name.
Common symbolism
The town’s coat of arms features, on a yellow background, a bust of the black Silesian eagle with a crescent moon, beneath which is a red six-pointed star symbolising the Virgin Mary (Stella Maris), the town’s patron saint. The coat of arms in this form was already in use as a seal in the 13th century.
Middle Ages
A settlement called ‘Namizlow’ is mentioned in sources from 1233 in connection with the settlement of the area by the German Order. There is evidence of a ducal farmstead in Namslau dating from 1239. In 1249, Bolesław II of Silesia (c. 1217–1278) granted Namslau town privileges. Until the end of the 13th century, the town belonged to the Duchy of Wrocław; from 1312 to 1323, it was the capital of the short-lived Duchy of Namslau. In 1348, the town passed to the Bohemian Crown. During the Hussite Wars, it was unsuccessfully besieged in 1418 and 1428.
Early modern period
In 1526, Namslau, like the rest of Silesia, came under Habsburg rule. During the Thirty Years’ War, the town was captured by the Swedes after a prolonged siege and suffered severe damage. In 1703, Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705) sold Namslau Castle to the German Order, which established a commandery there (until its secularisation in 1810). In 1742, the town passed to Prussia and became the administrative centre of the district of the same name.
19th century
In 1806/07, Namslau was occupied several times by Napoleonic troops. In 1810, it became a garrison town and the headquarters of the 2nd Silesian Uhlan Regiment. In the same year, the castle was secularised and sold.
20th century
When the borders were drawn following the First World War, the eastern part of the Namslau district (Reichthal/Rychtal, including the so-called ‘Reichthaler Ländchen’) became part of Poland.
Namslau was the only district in Lower Silesia to take part in the 1921 referendum. During the Second World War, Namslau was home to a sub-camp of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp. On 21 January 1945, the Red Army captured the town; the town centre was severely damaged during the fighting. On 30 April 1945, the town came under Polish administration; the German inhabitants were largely expelled, and Polish displaced persons from the former eastern territories of Poland settled in their place.
Economy
Namslau established itself as a centre for linen production and trade as early as the Middle Ages. As early as the end of the 14th century, two annual fairs were held there. The relocation of the trade route from Breslau to Kraków via Namslau in the mid-15th century contributed to the town’s economic boom.
Following the town’s destruction during the Thirty Years’ War and the great fire of 1688, an economic decline set in, from which Namslau only slowly recovered in the 19th century. The construction of the railway line to Breslau (1868) and Opole (1889) played a part in this recovery. The town’s mills, sawmills and brickworks primarily processed regional agricultural and forestry products. Namslau became particularly well known for the Haselbach brewery, which built on the local tradition of beer brewing dating back to the early 14th century. The brewery, which was nationalised after 1945, still exists today (Browar Namysłów).
Population trends
In 1787, Namslau had a population of 2,561. Over the course of the 19th century, the figure rose to 6,183 (1905) and to 8,184 in 1939.[1] In the 1921 referendum, 97.5 per cent of the population voted in favour of remaining part of Germany.[2] After the Second World War, the German population was largely expelled, and Polish displaced persons from the former Polish eastern territories settled in their place. In 1961, the population stood at 8,553; in 1971, it was 11,200[3] and 16,097 in 2012[4] people.
History of Religion and the Church
In 1525/26, the Reformation was introduced in Namslau, resulting in the takeover of the town’s parish church of St Peter and St Paul and the Franciscan monastery (which was only recatholicised following the implementation of the Counter-Reformation in 1654). It was not until the Prussian period (1752–1754) that the Protestants built a house of prayer. Until 1945, the majority of Namslau’s inhabitants were Protestant (53.5 per cent).[5]
The earliest documentary references to Jewish inhabitants date from the 14th century. Following the imperial edict of 1582, Jews were forced to leave Namslau; it was not until after the Thirty Years’ War that individual families began to settle in the town once more. In 1787, 40 Jews lived in Namslau (1.6 per cent of the population)[6]; in 1794, a Jewish cemetery was established here, traces of which remain to this day. In 1856, the synagogue on Bahnhofstraße (now ul. Dubois) was built, and there was also a Jewish school. It was during this period that the Jewish community in Namslau reached its peak size (239 people, 5.7 per cent). It declined steadily in the decades that followed. By 1939, only 16 people of the Jewish faith were recorded.
Art History/Architecture
The medieval town centre is shaped like an elongated triangle, with the castle at its western tip and a grid-patterned street layout centred on the Ring (market square). From 1350 onwards, the first city walls were built, with the Breslau Gate to the west and the Kraków Gate to the east. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the walls were extended to form bastion fortifications. The historic buildings of the Old Town have survived in fragments; among the oldest are several houses on the Ring dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The L-shaped town hall with its striking tower was built between 1374 and 1389 by the master builder Peter; parts of the Gothic structure have survived despite numerous alterations since the 15th century.
A previous building on the site of today’s Catholic parish church of St Peter and St Paul, a Gothic hall church (1370–1410), was first mentioned in 1321. Between 1525 and 1655, the church was Protestant. In the centuries that followed, renovation work was carried out on several occasions, most recently between 1887 and 1893, when the church was restored to its Gothic style.
The former Franciscan monastery is mentioned in 1285 and 1321 as a convent dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The Gothic brick church was built in several stages between 1321 and the first quarter of the 16th century. Around 1675, it was given a Baroque makeover and, following secularisation, was used as a warehouse by the military and later by the town. Since its renovation in 1957–1959, it has once again served as a Catholic parish church. The monastery building was erected around 1675 on the site of a previous Gothic structure.
Namslau Castle is first mentioned in 1312. From 1360, on the instructions of Emperor Charles IV (1316–1378), work began on the construction of a stone complex, which was extended in the second quarter of the 16th century to include a west wing and a gatehouse. The south wing was built in the 18th century; between 1703 and 1810, the castle served as the seat of the Namslau Commandery of the German Order. Following the secularisation of the Order, it passed into private ownership and was rebuilt and restored on several occasions. In 1895, it was acquired by the brewery owner Anton Haselbach. As an art lover, he amassed a collection of over 4,000 prints depicting topographical views of Silesia. Today, the castle belongs to the brewery.
Bibliography
- Mateusz Goliński, Elżbieta Kościk, Jan Kęsik: Namysłów – from the history of the town and its surroundings. Namysłów 2006.
- Kazimierz Kuliński: Pieczęcie i herby miasta Namysłowa [Seals and Coats of Arms of the Town of Namslau]. Namysłów 2006.
- Beata Lejman: Namysłów/Namslau. In: Ernst Badstübner, Dietmar Popp, Andrzej Tomaszewski, Dethard von Winterfeld (eds.), Sławomir Brezicki, Christine Nielsen (eds.): Dehio Handbook of Art Monuments in Poland. Silesia. Munich, Berlin 2005, pp. 639–643.
- Mateusz M. Magda: Tajemnice Ziemi Namysłowskiej [Secrets of the Namysłów Region]. Namislavia, Namysłów 2011.
- Dietmar Popp, Ulrike Lorenz, Jerzy Ilkosz, Markus Bauer (eds.): Journeys Through Time. Historical Views of Silesia from the Haselbach Print Collection. Exhibition catalogue. Marburg, Wrocław 2008.
- Hugo Weczerka: Namslau. In: Ibid. (ed.): Handbook of Historical Sites. Silesia. Stuttgart 1977 (Kröners Taschenausgabe 316), pp. 326–328.
Web links
- www.namyslow.eu/ (Official website of the town in Polish)
- www.herder-institut.de/bildkatalog/wikidata/Q717774 (Images relating to Namslau/Namysłów from the image archive of the Herder Institute, Marburg)
Notes
[1] Population figures according to Weczerka: Namslau, p. 328.
[2] See www.herder-institut.de/digitale-angebote/dokumente-und-materialien/themenmodule/quelle/40/details.html (accessed 16 August 2021).
[3] Population figures according to Weczerka: Namslau, p. 328.
[4] CIS. URL: www.stat.gov.pl (as at 30 July 2012).
[5] Michael Rademacher: A History of German Administration from the Unification of the German Empire in 1871 to Reunification in 1990. URL: treemagic.org/rademacher/www.verwaltungsgeschichte.de/index.html (accessed 20 December 2021).
[6] Population figures according to the online portal on the history of the Jews in Poland: sztetl.org.pl/pl/miejscowosci/n/64-namyslow (accessed 20 December 2021).
Citation
Beata Lejman, Tomasz Torbus: Namslau/Namysłów. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2013. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32272 (as at 20 December 2021).
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