Tarnow or Tarnau (obsolete)

Polish: Tarnów

Czech: Tarnov or Trnov; Latin: Tarnovia

The name Tarnów is derived from the Polish word for blackthorn (Polish: tarnina), which once grew thickly on the surrounding hills (according to the Polish historian Jan Długosz [1415–1480]). A legend tells of the knight Tarn, who founded a settlement here and, as its owner, became the progenitor of the Leliwita family.

Tarnów is situated at 50° 00′ 45′′ north latitude, 20° 59′ 18′′ east longitude, 84 kilometres east of the provincial capital, Kraków.

The town is situated on the Tarnów Plateau (Płaskowyż Tarnowski) on the River Biała, with its tributary the Wątok, and on the Dunajetz (also known as the Dunajez or, less commonly, the Dohnst; Polish: Dunajec).

Lesser Poland, Galicia.

Poland. Tarnów is a city with county status in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship (województwo małopolskie) and has been the seat of the Diocese of Tarnów since 1783.

The town’s coat of arms depicts a crescent moon open at the top, surmounted by a six-pointed golden star, both set against a blue background.

In 1124, the papal envoy Cardinal Aegidius of Tusculum (1080–1140) mentioned the name Tarnów in writing for the first time. On 7 March 1330, Tarnów was granted town privileges under Magdeburg law.^[1] The city’s Golden Age began at the end of the 15th century. The Grand Hetman of the Polish Crown, Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488–1561), brought Renaissance artists and architects to the city.

In 1547, the Tarnow estates became a county. Prince Konstanty Ostrogski (1526–1608) became lord of the estates in 1570. Soon afterwards, however, they were divided up and came into the possession of the Zamojski and Lubomirski magnate families. The division of the estates, conflicts of interest amongst the various lords of the town, fires (e.g. in 1617), epidemics (e.g. in 1652) and plundering by the Swedes (in 1655 and 1656) gradually contributed to the town’s decline. By 1662, Tarnów had a population of just 768. The Jewish community, however, grew increasingly important. It possessed a synagogue and its own cemetery.

Following the death of Aleksander Dominik Lubomirski (1693–1720), Tarnów and the surrounding estates passed into the possession of Paweł Karol Sanguszko (1680–1750) in 1723, a prince and future Grand Marshal of Lithuania. The Sanguszkos lived in Tarnów until 1945.

In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, Tarnów was incorporated into the Habsburg Monarchy (the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria). In the same year, the town became a garrison town, and in 1782 it was designated a district (cyrkuł). The Austrian authorities made significant alterations to the town’s urban structure (including the dismantling of the defensive fortifications and the redesign of the road network). In 1838, the Theological Seminary was founded. In 1846, a peasant uprising broke out under the leadership of Jakub Szela (1787–1860) (‘rzeź galicyjska’ = ‘Galician massacre’), which was triggered by hunger and hardship in the countryside as well as by propaganda from the Austrian administration, and was directed against serfdom.

The 19th century was also characterised by industrial and economic development: with a population of 21,779 (1870), the town soon became the third-largest in Galicia. In 1910, the construction of a modern water supply and sewerage system was completed; the power stations and the new railway station building were also completed. In 1911, a tram line was opened. Monumental religious buildings and modern public buildings (libraries, theatres, banks, schools) were erected, and community life flourished.

On 5 May 1915, following the offensive by Austrian troops, the Russian garrison was driven out of the town. On 14 October 1918, the town council proclaimed the ‘de facto establishment of anindependent Poland’, and Tarnów came under the authority of the Warsaw government.

The town’s gradual economic recovery during the interwar period was severely disrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. On 7 September 1939, Wehrmacht troops arrived in Tarnów. The first deportations of the Polish and Jewish populations began. Of the 25,000 Jewish inhabitants, a quarter were killed in the ghetto; the survivors were taken to extermination camps, including Auschwitz and Bełżec, where most of them were murdered.

On 18 January 1945, Tarnów was liberated by the Red Army. Between 1975 and 1997, Tarnów – now a county town – was the capital of a voivodeship.

In the 14th century, Tarnów had a population of around 800; a fifth of whom were German. In the 15th century, most of the Germans left the Polish town; some of those who remained became Polonised. By the end of the 16th century, the town’s population included, amongst others, Protestant Scots, Italians and Hungarians. A significant increase in population was not recorded until the 1740s. Following the town’s incorporation into the Habsburg Monarchy in 1772, Austrian military troops were stationed in Tarnów. With the new municipal administration came a number of German settlers to Tarnów, primarily clergymen, engineers, officers and civil servants of Austrian, German and Czech origin.^[2] In 1777, the population reached 3,013 (including around 900 Jews); eight years later, it had already risen to 5,785. In the early years of the 20th century, Tarnów had a population of 36,571.^[3] Today, the county town has a population of around 120,000.

In the Middle Ages, Tarnów was an important centre of trade and craftsmanship, with several guilds (including those of masons and goldsmiths). By the end of the 16th century, more than 100 craftspeople were working in the town.

With the founding of Franciszek Eliasiewicz’s (1815–1871) machinery and tool factory in 1852, Tarnów played a part in the industrialisation processes of the 19th century. In 1856, the town gained a railway link to Kraków and, in 1862, to Lemberg/L’viv/Lwów.

During the interwar period, the construction of the nitrogen works (Zakłady Azotowe) in Tarnów-Mościce between 1927 and 1928 in particular brought about an economic boom. After the war, in 1949, an electric motor factory was established, and in 1951 the former rail vehicle repair works were converted into a mechanical engineering plant producing weapons, refrigeration equipment and machine tools. Numerous businesses sprang up (including ready-to-wear clothing, fruit and vegetable processing, and the ‘Pralfa’ washing machine factory).

Since 2001, the establishment of a special economic zone has attracted foreign investors to the town: the paint and varnish manufacturer Becker has its branch in Tarnów, and the car tyre manufacturer American Goodyear has its logistics centre there. However, the nitrogen works remain the largest company; other major employers in the area include the Tamel electric motor factory and the mechanical engineering works.

Tarnów regularly hosts film, theatre and music festivals, including the‘Tarnowska Nagroda Filmowa’– Poland’s second-oldest film festival, which has been held since 1987 (Tarnów Film Award); the biennial summer chamber music festival‘Bravo Maestro’; and the‘Międzynarodowy Festiwal Muzyki Odnalezionej’(International Festival of Rediscovered Music),^[5] which was established under the patronage of the President of Poland and the Brussels Committee for Culture and Education. The festival aims to showcase European musical works that were considered lost for decades and sometimes even centuries. Other notable regular events include the‘Festiwal Komedii Teatralnej Talia’(Thalia Theatre Comedy Festival) and the“Dni Pamięci Żydów Galicyjskich Galicjaner Sztetl”(Days of Remembrance for the Jews of Galicia – Galicjaner Sztetl).

The first parish school in Tarnów was founded in the second half of the 14th century. In 1756, an academic branch of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków was opened, where teaching was initially carried out by Polish teachers and, in the 1830s and 1840s, almost exclusively by German teachers.^[6] Intensive Germanisation processes continued well into the 1860s. In elementary and primary schools, pupils were taught to be loyal to the occupying power. After the First World War, the eight-year grammar schools were generally humanistically oriented. With the introduction of a school reform in 1932, based on proposals by Janusz Jędrzejewicz (1885–1951), these schools were reorganised into four-year grammar schools and two-year lyceums. In 1933, a private grammar school and a lyceum for girls were founded. In the 1930s, teacher training colleges were also operating in the town. After the Second World War, the number of primary and secondary schools in particular increased. The development of higher education began in the 1990s. In the 2007/08 academic year, there were 44 state schools and 47 independent schools, as well as five higher education institutions in Tarnów, including the State University of Applied Sciences (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa) and the Małopolska University of Economics (Małopolska Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomiczna).

The writer Elżbieta Drużbacka, often referred to as the ‘Polish Sappho’, was probably born in Greater Poland around 1695 and died in Tarnów in 1765. Tarnów was also the home of Mieczysław Jastrun (Mojsze Agatsztajn, 1903–1983), a Polish poet and translator of German, French and Russian poetry, and Roman Brandstaetter (1906–1987), a short-story writer, poet, playwright and translator, also had links to Tarnów.

• Kazimierz Bańburski: A Guide to Tarnów: Tourist Guide [Tarnów. A City Guide] Tarnów 2000.
• Kazimierz Bańburski: Tarnów. The Birth of the City. Published to mark the 670th anniversary of Tarnów being granted town privileges [Tarnów. The Birth of the City. Published on the 670th anniversary of the granting of town privileges]. Tarnów 2000.
• Leszek Kałkowski (ed.): Determinants of Quality of Life in Tarnów [Determinants of Quality of Life in Tarnów]. Tarnów 2011.
• Ewa Łączyńska-Widz, Dawid Radziszewski: Tarnów. 1000 Years of Modernity. Warsaw, Tarnów 2012.
• Bartosz Marciniak, Aleksander Strojny: Tarnów: Pearl of the Renaissance. Kraków 2007.
• Andrzej Niedojadło (ed.): Encyklopedia Tarnowa [Encyclopaedia of Tarnów]. Tarnów 2010.
• Andrzej Niedojadło: The County of Tarnów in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Tarnów 2011.
• Wiesław Ziobro: Tarnów and its surroundings. Guidebook. Rzeszów 2011.

• www.tarnow.pl/ (Official town portal)
• www.mmtarnow.com/p/historia.html (Website on the town’s history)
• www.it.tarnow.pl (Tourist information)
• www.herder-institut.de/bildkatalog/index/index?searchfield_parameter=Tarn%C3%B3w&newperspective=thumbnails (Images of Tarnów in the Herder Institute’s image archive, Marburg)

[1] Bańburski: Tarnów. Narodziny miasta [Tarnów. The Birth of the Town], p. 13.

[2] Niedojadło (ed.): Encyklopedia Tarnowa [Encyclopaedia of Tarnów], p. 244.

[3] Niedojadło (ed.): Encyklopedia Tarnowa [Encyclopaedia of Tarnów], pp. 243–245.

[4] Niedojadło (ed.): Encyklopedia Tarnowa [Encyclopaedia of Tarnów], p. 243.

[5] Marciniak, Strojny: Tarnów, pp. 25–27.

[6] Academic colonies were secondary schools established under the patronage of, amongst others, the University of Kraków, which employed graduates of the Kraków School as teachers.

Tomasz Jabłecki: Tarnów. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32465 (accessed 25 August 2020).