Lauenburg and Bütow Land
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lauenburg and Bütow Land[1][2][3] (German: Länder or Lande Lauenburg und Bütow, Polish: ziemia lęborsko-bytowska) formed a historical region in Eastern Pomerania.
Composed of two smaller regions centered around the towns of Bütow (now Bytów) and Lauenburg in Pommern (now Lębork), it was on the western periphery of Pomerelia. Part of the Pomerelian duchies in the High Middle Ages it turned into a terra (land, ziemia) region of the Polish Crown until 1772, which was administered mostly by the Teutonic Knights, the Pomeranian dukes and Brandenburg-Prussia. Until 1846 it was an administrative division of West Prussia and the Province of Pomerania as Lauenburg-Bütowscher Kreis before it was partitioned into Kreis Lauenburg and Kreis Bütow.
In the 12th and 13th centuries the area was part of the Pomerelian duchies. After the ruling Samborides dynasty became extinct in 1294, a quarrel about Pomerelia inheritance broke out between the Margraviate of Brandenburg and Poland that was ended by the 1308 Teutonic takeover of Danzig (Gdansk). The Teutonic knights integrated most of Pomerelia including the Lauenburg and Bütow areas into their monastic state after paying off the Brandenburg margraves. In 1317 the Bütow area was attached to the Pomeranian duchy ruled by the Griffin dynasty and yet again sold to the knights in 1329.
The knights invited settlers (see Ostsiedlung) and founded the towns of Lauenburg and Bütow which were granted Kulm Law in 1341 and 1346 respectively. Both towns joined the Prussian Confederation in 1440. In 1455 Poland gave the area to the Griffin duke Eric II in return for his help in the Polish-Teutonic War, yet the towns were held by the knights' troops. When the 1466 Second Peace of Thorn ended the war those troops were paid off and King Casimir IV of Poland again granted the towns to the Griffins, though it was disputed whether it was granted to them as his trustees or in pawn. The dispute was ended in 1526 when King Sigismund of Poland gave the area as a nearly unconditional fief ("libere a servitio et a iuramento") to Duke Georg I of Pomerania.[4] The only condition was that the dukes had to sent an official to the coronations of Sigismund's successors, who would reassure the dukes of the fief.
After the childless death of the last Griffin duke, Bogislaw XIV in 1637, the area was incorporated into Poland and in 1641 became part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Whereas the Reformation had been enforced by the Pomeranian dukes, the Poles took action to regain the area for the Roman Catholic Church. After the 1657 Treaty of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) that amended the previous Treaty of Wehlau it was granted as a fief to Brandenburg-Prussia in return for her help against Sweden in the Swedish-Polish War under the same favourable conditions the Griffins had enjoyed before.
Lauenburg-Bütow was officially a Polish fiefdom until the first partition of Poland in 1772. The subsequent Treaty of Warsaw in 1773 made the conditions of the Treaty of Bydgoszcz obsolete. From 1772 to 1777 the area was a part of West Prussia before it was integrated in the Brandenburg-Prussian Farther Pomerania. In 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars Farther Pomerania including Lauenburg and Bütow was integrated in the newly constituted Prussian Province of Pomerania.
According to the Potsdam Agreement after World War II the region was made part of Poland in 1945. The region is now part of the modern Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship.
[edit] Sources
- ^ Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569-1772, p. 150, 2006 [1]
Frederick William gained the East Pomeranian districts of Lauenburg and Bütow (Lebork and Bytow), which had returned to Polish rule as fiefs after the ... - ^ J. H. W. Verzijl, W. P. Heere, J. P. S. Offerhaus, International law in historical perspective[page needed]
- ^ Beth Lettow Brusius, John Milton Liittschwager, The Lettows, B.L. Brusius, 1984, p.14
however, this excluded the lands of Lauenburg and Butow which reverted to Poland - ^ Dietmar Willoweit, Hans Lemberg, Reiche und Territorien in Ostmitteleuropa: Historische Beziehungen und politische Herrschaftslegitimation, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2006, p.97, ISBN 3486578391
- Cramer R, Geschichte der Lande Lauenburg und Bütow
- Willoweit D, Lemberg H, Reiche und Territorien in Ostmitteleuropa
- Ellinor von Puttkamer: Die Lande Lauenburg und Bütow – internationales Grenzgebiet. In: Baltische Studien. Band 62 N.F., 1976, ISSN 0067-3099, S. 7-22.
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
