Görlitz, Germany

Görlitz, as Goreliz, was first mentioned in a document from the King of Germany, and later Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in 1071. This document granted Görlitz to the religious Diocese of Meissen, then under Bishop Benno of Meissen. This document can now be found in the Saxony State Archives in Dresden. In 1075 the village was assigned to the Duchy of Bohemia. In 1126–1131 Bohemian Duke Soběslav I erected a castle, one of several new castles on the Bohemian-Polish border. It may have been on the site of the present St Peter and Paul church. The date the town was founded is unknown but in the 13th century the village gradually became a town. Owing to its location on the Via Regia, an ancient and medieval trade route, the settlement prospered. In 1319 it became part of the Piast-ruled Duchy of Jawor, and Duke Henry I of Jawor confirmed the town's privileges. In 1329, the town fell back to Bohemia.

From 1346, Görlitz was a wealthy member of the Lusatian League, which consisted of Bautzen, Görlitz, Kamenz, Lubań, Löbau and Zittau. Around 1348 a Jewish woman, Adasse, was made a citizen of the town. In 1352 during the reign of Polish King Casimir III the Great, Lusatian German colonists from Görlitz founded the town of Gorlice in southern Poland near Kraków. From 1377 to 1396 it was the capital of an eponymous duchy. In the conflict over the Bohemian throne between George of Poděbrady and Matthias Corvinus, Görlitz, along with the Lusatian League, recognized Corvinus as ruler between 1469 and 1490.

The Protestant Reformation came to Görlitz in the early 1520s and, by the last half of the 16th century, the town and its surrounding area became almost completely Lutheran. In 1547, the town was subjected to the Upper Lusatian Pönfall, a punitive measure imposed by Ferdinand I in his capacity as King of Bohemia after political disobedience during the Schmalkaldic War. As a result, the city lost important privileges, including customs and toll rights, which weakened its economic position.

In 1623, during the Thirty Years' War, the town was captured and occupied alternately by Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1635, the region of Upper Lusatia (including Görlitz) was ceded to the Electorate of Saxony. From 1639, the town was occupied by Sweden again; it was besieged by Imperial and Saxon forces in 1641. After the war, it was part of the Electorate of Saxony, from 1697 within the Polish–Saxon personal union. One of two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through the town in the 18th century and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland often travelled that route. Napoleon visited the town several times in 1807, 1812 and 1813.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the 1815 Congress of Vienna transferred the town from the Kingdom of Saxony to the Kingdom of Prussia. Görlitz was subsequently administered within the Province of Silesia and, after World War I, the Province of Lower Silesia, until 1945. During World War I an internment camp for Greek soldiers was located in present-day Zgorzelec, whilst 500 Greek officers lived in private quarters throughout the town. A burial ground for Greek soldiers was located in the local cemetery.

Shortly after the Nazi Party's rise to power, in March 1933, the SA established the Leschwitz concentration camp in the present-day district of Weinhübel. Political prisoners were held and tortured in the camp before it was dissolved in August 1933 and the prisoners were deported to other Nazi concentration camps. In 1936, during a nationwide Nazi campaign of changing of placenames, two present-day districts of Görlitz were renamed to erase traces of Slavic origin—Leschwitz to Weinhübel and Nikrisch to Hagenwerder. On Kristallnacht, in November 1938, an arson attack was carried out on the Görlitz Synagogue. The building survived the attack without major damage because firefighters resisted the order not to extinguish the fire. It is the only synagogue in present-day Saxony that survived Nazi rule. In the interwar period most of the Jews had left the city and their number dropped from 567 in 1925 to 134 in 1939. Many remaining Jews were then killed in the Holocaust.