12 Facts About Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located today mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic.

Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526.

In 1742 the greater part of Upper Silesia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, and in 1871 it became part of the German Empire.

Upper Silesia is situated on the upper Oder River, north of the Eastern Sudetes mountain range and the Moravian Gate, which form the southern border with the historic Moravia region.

At the time of Prince Svatopluk I, all Upper Silesia was a part of his Great Moravian realm.

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The plans to re-unify Upper Silesia shattered upon the Mongol invasion of Poland and the death of Duke Henry II the Pious at the 1241 Battle of Legnica.

Upper Silesia was hit by the Hussite Wars and in 1469 was conquered by King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, while the Duchies of Oswiecim and Zator fell back to the Polish Crown.

Lower Silesia and most of Upper Silesia were occupied by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1742 during the First Silesian War and annexed by the terms of the Treaty of Breslau.

In 1919, after World War I, the eastern part of Prussian Upper Silesia came under Polish rule as the Silesian Voivodeship, while the mostly German-speaking western part remained part of the Weimar Republic as the newly established Upper Silesia Province.

The exact border, the maintenance of cross-border railway traffic and other necessary co-operations, as well as equal rights for all inhabitants in both parts of Upper Silesia, were all fixed by the German-Polish Accord on East Silesia, signed in Geneva on May 15,1922.

In contrast to the situation in Lower Silesia, where almost the totality of the pre-war population that was expelled was exclusively German-speaking, the pre-war population of Upper Silesia was in considerable number Roman Catholic mixed bilingual that spoke both German and Polish dialects, and their Polish linguistic skills were considered solid enough for them to be kept in the area.

The inhabitants of Upper Silesia started to adapt their outfits to the urban fashion, which changed the appearance of the outfit even more.