Ostrowo

Ostrów Wielkopolski (from 1920); in the Middle Ages, the town was known as Ostrow (1433), and later went by the names Ostrów Poznański and Ostrów Sieradzki.

The Old Polish word ‘Ostrów’ refers to an island situated in a river, a lake or amidst marshes. This was a common name for settlements, and is attested for numerous localities in Greater Poland and beyond.

The town of Ostrowo is situated at 51° 38’ north latitude, 17° 49’ east longitude, approximately 116 km south-east of Poznań, about 25 km south-west of Kalisz, near the historic border with Silesia.

Ostrowo is situated in south-eastern Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), on the central ridge of the Central Polish Lowlands, at an altitude of approximately 135 metres above sea level. The town covers an area of approximately 42.39 km².

Poland. Ostrowo is the capital of the district of the same name (Powiat ostrowski) in the Greater Poland Voivodeship (Województwo wielkopolskie).

In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, Ostrowo was part of the Kingdom of Poland. In 1793, as part of the Second Partition of Poland–Lithuania, it became part of the Kingdom of Prussia; from 1807 to 1815, it was part of the Duchy of Warsaw; and in 1815 it returned to the Kingdom of Prussia, before becoming part of the German Empire in 1871. Between 1815 and 1848, Ostrowo was situated within the partially autonomous Grand Duchy of Poznań, and thereafter within the Province of Poznań. From 1919 to 1939, the town belonged to the Second Polish Republic, in the Poznań Voivodeship (Województwo poznańskie). During the German occupation from 1939 to 1945, Greater Poland was incorporated into the German Reich asthe ‘Reichsgau Wartheland’.Ostrowo has been part of Poland again since 1945.

Archaeological finds confirm that, since the Neolithic period – around 3000 BC – settlements belonging to the so-called Ball Amphora Culture existed in the area of what is now the town of Ostrowo. Further traces in the area were left by the Lusatian culture between the Middle Bronze Age (13th century BC) and the Iron Age (5th century BC). Between the 5th and 2nd centuries BC, the Pomeranian culture (Kultura pomorska) developed in the area of what is now the town of Ostrowo. Thereafter, from the end of the 3rd century BC to the end of the 5th century AD, the Germanic Przeworsk culture (Kultura przeworska) characterised the area. It is thought that Slavs had already settled the area by the 6th century, although archaeological finds relating to this, such as pottery shards, date only from the 8th or 9th century.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, there was a castle and a settlement in the area around the town of Ostrowo. Two further settlements are attested by archaeological evidence from the 11th and 12th centuries. The first town emerged from these two settlements, which were situated approximately 350 metres apart. Thereafter, Ostrowo was regarded as the private property of feudal lords. Two castles, believed to have been the residences of the owners of Ostrowo, also date from the 13th and 14th centuries.

The present-day town emerged at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. Ostrowo was granted town privileges as early as 1404, although it is not certain whether the settlement had not already possessed such privileges before then. From 1434 at the latest, historical sources mention Jerzy of Krępy and Ociąża, of the Korab family, as the first lord of Ostrowo; he was also a canon in the neighbouring town of Kalisz.

Until the 17th century, Ostrowo remained a very small town and was referred to in historical sources as either a village or a town. In 1579, the town was almost completely destroyed by fire. At that time, between 150 and 180 people lived in Ostrowo; it was not until the end of the 17th century that this number had tripled. The town’s inhabitants at that time lived mainly from livestock farming and agriculture. From the end of the 15th century until 1505, Ostrowo belonged to the Sławski family of the Szeliga lineage. Thereafter, the town was divided amongst the noble families of Karski of the Korab line, Kiełczewski of the Pomian line and Modlibowski of the Drya line. During the 16th and early 17th centuries, several individuals served as lords of the various parts of Ostrowo. From the mid-17th century until 1685, the Kiełczewski family, of the Pomian lineage, were regarded as the town’s sole owners. In 1685, Abbot Bogusław Andrzej Leszczyński (1645–1691) of the high-ranking Wieniawa family purchased the town for 14,000 złoty. He bequeathed it, together with the estates in the neighbouring village of Przygodzice, to his younger brother Rafał Leszczyński (1650–1703). The latter sold the estates in Przygodzice – and with them the town of Ostrowo, which had since become part of them – to the Grand Treasurer Jan Jerzy Przebendowski (1639–1729) in 1699. On 26 May 1714, Przebendowski re-established the town of Ostrowo by legal decree under the Magdeburg City Charter, a measure which included tax exemptions for six years for new settlers and residents of the town. Thanks to his shrewd economic and financial policies, the town experienced a period of prosperity. In 1729, his daughter Dorota Henryka Przebendowska (1682–1755) inherited Ostrowo together with her second husband, Franciszek Bieliński (1683–1766). With the promulgation of the ‘Fire Regulations of the Town of Ostrowo’ (Porządek ogniowy miasta Ostrowa) on 5 February 1752, Bieliński is regarded as the founder of the first professional fire brigade in Poland. He administered the town and the estates in Przygodzice between 1729 and 1755.

As the son Bieliński and Przebendowska had together died at a young age, the estates, including the town, were bequeathed in 1755 to Przebendowska’s son from her first marriage to Jan Mikołaj Radziwiłł (1681–1729), Marcin Mikołaj Karol Radziwiłł (1705–1782). As Marcin Mikołaj Karol Radziwiłł was unable to rule alone due to his mental state, the estates were administered by other individuals throughout this period. It was only after his death that his son, Józef Mikołaj Radziwiłł (1736–1813), officially took over the estates and remained lord of the town and lands in Przygodzice until 1780. In the same year, he transferred the estates, including Ostrowo, to his half-brother, Michał Hieronim Radziwiłł (1744–1831). The last owner of the town until 1833 was Prince Antoni Henryk Radziwiłł (1775–1833), governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen and a talented composer who, amongst other works, set Goethe’s *Faust* to music. He endeavoured, with varying degrees of success, to bring about reconciliation between Poland and Prussia following the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania. Following the Prussian edict of 13 May 1833, all privileges enjoyed by the noble owners of mediat towns such as Ostrowo were abolished in return for compensation. Since then, the town of Ostrowo has been administered by the Prussian state administration.

On 10 November 1918, just over a month before the Greater Poland Uprising, the ‘Republic of Ostrowo’ (Republika Ostrowska) was proclaimed in Ostrowo in protest against Prussian rule. It existed until 25 November of the same year. As early as 12 November, the first Polish infantry regiment was formed in Prussia, even though the rest of Greater Poland was still under Prussian rule. The People’s Committee was merged with the Citizens’ Committee to form a District People’s Council under the chairmanship of Michał Lange. On the same day, key buildings in the town, such as the barracks, the railway station and the post office, were occupied by Polish citizens. On 31 December 1918, Poland took control of the town without a fight. Under the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the majority of the Prussian province of Posen, including Ostrowo, was annexed to the re-established Polish state.

On 3 September 1939, Ostrowo was occupied by the Wehrmacht. On 23 January 1945, German troops were driven out of the town by Polish underground fighters from the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). Two days later, a Soviet commander was assigned to the town, which can be regarded as the beginning of the People’s Republic of Poland in Ostrowo. The People’s Republic lasted until Poland’s liberation from communist rule in 1989.

The first Germans settled in the town at the beginning of the 18th century, but it was not until the mid-18th century that 100 clothmakers from the Lower Silesian town of Glogau/Głogów were settled there by the then Lord of Ostrowo, Franciszek Bieliński. Further German migrants also came from Silesia; they, too, were mostly Protestant. By the end of the 18th century, around 50 per cent of the town’s 2,500 inhabitants were German-speaking, with the result that as early as 1764, a German, Lorenz Schlachter, was elected mayor for the first time. At that time, Poles made up 35 per cent of the population and Jews 15 per cent. The first Jews arrived in Ostrowo in 1717, when Jan Jerzy Przebendowski invited them to settle in his town. The Jewish settlement in Ostrowo reached its peak in 1861, when 1,919 people – around a third of the inhabitants – were of the Jewish faith.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, 66 Jews were living in Ostrowo. The town’s Jewish inhabitants were deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto (the Łódź ghetto) in the spring of 1940 and were eventually murdered at the Kulmhof extermination camp on the Ner River/Chełmno nad Nerem. Of them, only one Jewish girl, named Betti Bober, survived the Second World War.

By the mid-19th century, the numbers of Polish and German residents in Ostrowo had become roughly equal, due to the growing Polish population. At the start of the First World War, the town’s population consisted of 61 per cent Poles, 36 per cent Germans and 3 per cent Jews. After the First World War, most of the Germans left the town. By 1939, only 227 Germans remained there, accounting for 2 per cent of the town’s population. During the Second World War, 8,000 Poles were driven from their homes; in their place, 10,000 Baltic Germans moved into the town, almost all of whom, together with the remaining German residents, left the town again in early 1945.

Ostrowo’s economy was dominated by agriculture. For a long period, the development of the small town was hampered by the existence of other towns and, later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, by the Second Northern War (1655–1660) and the Great Northern War (1700–1721). In the 18th century, the linen and cloth-making industries began to flourish. This situation came to an end with the introduction of customs duties on Prussian goods in the neighbouring Kingdom of Poland, which blocked access to markets in the east.

The town’s dynamic development did not begin until the 19th century, with the construction of roads linking Ostrowo to neighbouring villages and major towns such as Breslau/Wrocław and Kalisch/Kalisz. The town’s rapid growth was accelerated by industrialisation. Over time, agriculture lost its importance; the most significant economic sectors at that time included the food industry (sugar, spirits, flour and meat production), manufacturing and trade. The town also saw a flourishing trade in the smuggling of poultry and pigs into neighbouring‘Congress Poland’.

The oldest Catholic parish in Ostrowo dates back to 1434. An Evangelical Lutheran congregation was established in the 18th century. There was also a Jewish community in the town from the first half of the 18th century onwards. The town of Ostrowo was characterised by religious tolerance. In particular, during the reign of Jan Jerzy Przebendowski, a large Jewish community settled in the town. The rights of the Jewish inhabitants were protected by a charter granted by Przebendowski on 26 September 1724.

There is also a Moorish-style synagogue in Ostrowo, which was completed in 1860. It was formerly known, and is still known today, as the New Synagogue (Nowa Synagoga). During the Second World War and in the years that followed, the synagogue was used as a warehouse. It was not until 2006 that the town purchased the property, and renovation work began in 2009, being completed in 2011. 70 per cent of the costs were covered by EU funding.

• umostrow.pl/ (Official website of the town of Ostrowo, containing information on the town’s history).
• www.przygodzice.pl/asp/pl_start.asp?typ=14&sub=9&subsub=11&menu=116&strona=1&sc=2 (Official website of the municipality of Przygodzice, containing information on the history of the municipality and the neighbouring town of Ostrowo).
• poznan.jewish.org.pl/index.php/Synagogi-pozn.wielkop./Ostrowska-synagoga-odremontowana.html (Website of the Jewish communities in the Poznań area)
• synagoga.ockostrow.pl/ (Official website of the Ostrowo Synagogue)
• www.herder-institut.de/bildkatalog/wikidata/Q52895 (Images of Ostrowo/Ostrów Wielkopolski in the image archive of the Herder Institute, Marburg)

[1] According to Leszek C. Belzyt: Prussian Language Statistics (1825–1911) a Poles in the Prussian Partition, Masuria and Silesia [Prussian Language Statistics (1825–1911) and the Poles in the Prussian Partition, in Masuria and Silesia]. Zielona Góra 2013, pp. 210 and 212.

[2] Cf. Stanisław Nawrocki (ed.): Pod zaborem pruskim [Under Prussian Partition]. In: Ibid. (ed.): Ostrów Wielkopolski, pp. 153–235, here p. 167.

[3] See Leszek C. Belzyt: Pruska statystyka językowa (1825–1911) and Poles in the Prussian Partition, Masuria and Silesia [Prussian Language Statistics (1825–1911) and Poles in the Prussian Partition, in Masuria and Silesia]. Zielona Góra 2013, p. 209.

[4] According to Nawrocki: *Pod zaborem pruskim* (note 2), pp. 173 and 202, and Witold Banach: *Ostrów w XVIII wieku* [Ostrowo in the 18th century]. In: Ibid., Suszycki, Podskarbi, Leraczyk (eds.): Ostrów Wielkopolski, pp. 49–65, here pp. 58ff.

Robert Kędzierski: Ostrowo/Ostrów Wielkopolski. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2016. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p47797 (as at 15 February 2022).