Francais | English | Espanõl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Silesia (Schlesien in German) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1740 to 1918. Its capital was Breslau. During the Weimar Republic, in 1919, Silesia was divided into the separate provinces of Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia.

[edit] History of the Province of Silesia

In 1740, Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia annexed Silesia as part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). By war's end, the Kingdom of Prussia had conquered almost all of Silesia, while some parts of Silesia in the extreme southeast, like the Duchy of Cieszyn and Duchy of Opava, remained possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy.

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) confirmed Prussian control over most of Silesia, and it became one of the most loyal provinces of Prussia. In 1815 the area around Görlitz, formerly part of Saxony, was incorporated into the province after the Napoleonic Wars.

As a Prussian province, Silesia became part of the German Empire during the unification of Germany in 1871. There was considerable industrialization in Silesia, and many people moved there at that time. According to the census of 1905, three-quarters of the inhabitants were German, while the bulk of the population to the east of the Oder River was Polish.

In 1919, Silesia was reorganised into the two provinces of Lower Silesia (Niederschlesien) and Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien). Between 1938 and 1941 Upper and Lower Silesia was again briefly united as a single province.

[edit] See also

• Silesia, the historical region in central Europe
• Czech Silesia, formely Austrian Silesia
• The Silesian and the Lower Silesian Voivodships, in Poland
• Niederschlesischer Oberlausitzkreis, in Germany
• Moravian-Silesian Region, in the Czech Republic