History of Lauban, Silesia, Prussia, Germany

NOTE: IF YOU LIVE IN OR NEAR LUBAN (LAUBAN), PLEASE CONTACT US (SEE LINK ABOVE). WE ARE TRYING TO LEARN ABOUT OUR FAMILY. THEY CAME TO THE UNITED STATES FROM LAUBAN.

LAUBAN, a town of Germany in the Prussian province of Silesia (Schlesien in German), is situated in a picturesque valley, at the junction of the lines of railway from Gorlitz and Sorau, 16 m. E. of the former. Pop. (1905) 14,624. Lauban has a Roman Catholic and two Evangelical churches, a town hall, dating from 1541, a conventual house of the order of St Magdalene, dating from the 14th century, a municipal, library and museum, two hospitals, an orphanage and several schools. Its industrial establishments comprise tobacco, yarn, thread, linen and woollen cloth manufactories, bleaching and dyeing works, breweries and oil and flour mills.

Lauban was founded in the 10th and fortified in the 13th century; in 1427 and 1431 it was devastated by the Hussites, and in 1640 by the Swedes. In 1761 it was the headquarters of Frederick the Great, and in 1815 it was the last Saxon town that made its submission to Prussia.

See Berkel, Geschichte der Stadt Lauban (Lauban, 1896).

Title The Encyclopædia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information, Volume 16
The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Hugh Chisholm
Editor Hugh Chisholm
Edition 11
Publisher At the University press, 1911
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Jul 23, 2010
Page 276


History of Lauban and Marklissa - MAJOR thanks to Robert Theiss for this EXCELLENT history lesson!

Until 1945, Prussia was by far the largest state in Germany. The capital city was Berlin. Because Prussia was so large, it was divided into provinces. The cities of Lauban and Marklissa were "located in the District (in German: Kreis) of Lauban in the northwestern part of what was until 1945 the Prussian province of Silesia, the capital of which was the city of Breslau.

In 1939, Marklissa was a city of about 2200 people, and Lauban, the seat of the Kreis, a city of about 16,000 people. (A Kreis, abbreviated Kr., is roughy equivalent to a county in a U.S. state.)

Until the mid 18th century, Silesia (in German: Schlesien) was a province of Austria. Following Austria's defeat by Prussia in the two Silesian Wars of the 1740s and confirmed following Austria's defeat in the Seven Years War (1756-1763), Silesia became a province of the state of Prussia (in German: Preussen; capital: Berlin) and then remained a Prussian province for 200 years, until 1945. Prussia's King at the time, Frederick the Great, allowed Austria to keep one very small portion of Silesia, which became known as Austrian Silesia (capital: Troppau; now known by the Czech name Opava) and which is part of today's Czech Republic.

What I have just told you holds true for Silesia as a whole. It does not hold true, however, for Kreis Lauban, where the cities of Lauban and Marklissa were located! That area has a completely different history! What in 1815 became Silesia's Kreis Lauban is located in the region known as Upper Lusatia (in German: Oberlausitz). A large portion of Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) lies in the eastern part of the German state of Saxony (in German: Sachsen), the capital of which is the city of Dresden, and the largest city in which is Leipzig. The major city in Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) is Bautzen in Saxony. Until 1815, all of Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) was part of Saxony. In other words, cities such as Lauban and Marklissa had nothing whatsoever to do with Silesia up to that point. Up until 1815, Lauban and Marklissa were located in Saxony. The King of Saxony had supported Napoleon, so following Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the Congress of Vienna awarded about three-fifths of Saxony's territory to Prussia. This was a way of "punishing", one might say, the King of Saxony for his having supported Napoleon.

Included in the Saxon territory awarded to Prussia in 1815 was the larger northeastern portion of Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz). This portion of Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) included the cities of Görlitz...Hoyerswerda, Lauban, and Marklissa, as well as many other cities, towns, and villages.

I should mention here that Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) is home not only to Germans, but also to a Slavic people known as the Wends or the Sorbs.

Following World War II, almost all of Germany lying east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers was given to Poland (with the exception of the northern half of the Prussian province of East Prussia, which was taken by the Soviet Union). The 12 million inhabitants of eastern Germany were thereupon expelled from their homes under horrific conditions! They had to leave everything behind. More than 2 million of those people did not survive the ordeal. It was hell on earth! The Polish authorities then moved Poles in from various parts of interior Poland to repopulate eastern Germany. So you would of course find no...relatives in Lauban or Marklissa today. (Although themselves a Slavic people, as are the Poles, the Wends or Sorbs have come to identify very strongly with the Germans, so most of the Wends or Sorbs living in that portion of Upper Lusatia lying east of the Neisse River were expelled along with the Germans after World War II.)

You also have to bear in mind that there was fierce fighting in Silesia during the last months of the war, so the people living there got a double dose of hell, you might say. Woe to any Germans who fell into the hands of the Red Army! The atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers against the civilian German population wherever they went were unspeakable. Knowing what would await them once the Russians arrived, many eastern Germans fled west during the bitter winter of 1944/ 45. By that stage of the war, there was no gasoline available, so the only means of transport for all those refugees was horse and cart. Many eastern German refugees perished during the long and arduous trek west that winter. (Many who lived nearer to coastal areas were evacuated by ship. The sinking in the Baltic of the refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff by Soviet torpedoes on January 30, 1945, resulted in about 9,000 deaths and thus ranks as the worst disaster in maritime history!) Then when the war ended, those people who had made it west were all told that they would not be allowed to return home. Those eastern Germans who did remain behind were then, as mentioned, expelled from their homes in a most cruel and inhumane manner. It was horrible! The expulsion of the eastern Germans from their homes after World War II was one of the most horrendous events in history, but for whatever reason, it has always been swept under the rug in the U.S. The millions of eastern German expellees, who arrived in western Germany with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, were referred to after the war as "displaced persons", or "DPs" for short.

Only one tiny piece of Silesia lying west of the Neisse River remains part of Germany -- the Upper Lusatian cities of Görlitz and Hoyerswerda and environs, which, after 130 years, once again became part of the state of Saxony. But during the 130 years as part of Prussian Silesia, the people here developed a very strong Silesian identity which they still retain.

Following the expulsion of the original German inhabitants in 1945/ 46 and the repopulating of eastern Germany with Poles, all the cities, towns and villages were of course given new Polish names:

Breslau, Silesia's capital, is now known by the Polish name Wroclaw. Lauban is now known by the Polish name Luban. Marklissa is now known by the Polish name Lesna...