The town is situated within the historic Lubusz Land (Ziemia Lubuska) region at the confluence of the Oder and Warta rivers, on the western rim of the extended Warta mires. The town centre is located about 90 kilometres (56 mi) south of Szczecin.
Until the end of World War II and the implementation of the Oder–Neisse line in 1945, the municipal area also comprised the Küstrin-Kietz suburb on the west bank of the Oder river, which today is part of the German Küstriner Vorland municipality. The former town centre, the Kostrzyn fortress located on the headland between the Oder and Warta rivers, was destroyed by the Red Army as an act of revenge weeks before the end of WW2 and not rebuilt. Today Kostrzyn's central area is located around Kostrzyn railway station east of the Warta's mouth.
History
Middle Ages
Castle ruins
Settled since the Bronze Age, the area was held by the Piast dukes and kings of Poland from about 960 until 1261, who had a gord laid out in the borderlands with the Pomeranian tribes in the north. Duke Mieszko I used Kostrzyn's strategic location as a staging area during his expedition to the Battle of Cedynia in 972. Likewise, beginning in 1002, his successor Bolesław I the Brave used the area to prepare for conquests and battles in the German–Polish War against King Henry II.[2]
In 1223 Duke Władysław Odonic of Greater Poland granted the fortress to the Knights Templar. The name of the town was first mentioned in 1232 in a Polish letter by the Lubusz bishop Wawrzyniec to the Knights Templar, in which the old Slavic name Cozsterine (hence the later German name Küstrin) was mentioned. In the 12th century it developed into a fortified castellany and a Polish taxation post, however, together with Lubusz Land it was seized by the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg in 1261 and incorporated into their Neumark territory east of the Oder river. By 1300 the town had received Magdeburg town rights from Margrave Albert III of Brandenburg and started to grow rapidly, owing largely to trade on the rivers. From 1319 there was a dispute over the town between the Piasts, the Griffins and the Ascanians, and there were heavy fights between the Duchy of Pomerania and the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg in the area in 1322–1323.[3] A peace treaty between Pomerania and Saxe-Wittenberg was signed in the town on 5 December 1323.[3]
In 1373 the town became part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (or Czech Lands), ruled by the Luxembourg dynasty. In 1402, the Luxembourgs reached an agreement with Poland in Kraków, under which Poland was to buy and reincorporate Kostrzyn and the surrounding region,[4] but eventually the Luxembourgs sold the town to the Teutonic Order. After the Thirteen Years’ War broke out in 1454, the Teutonic Knights sold the town to Brandenburg in order to raise funds for war against Poland.
Modern era
The town in around 1700
In 1535–1571 the town was the seat of John of Brandenburg-Küstrin, who made it the capital of the Neumark region and built a castle. With time this castle was expanded into a fortress, one of the largest such facilities in the region. While still crown prince, Frederick the Great was imprisoned in the fortress, from which he witnessed the execution of his friend Hans Hermann von Katte on 6 November 1730. The town was besieged by the Russians during the Seven Years' War. Captured by the French in 1806, Küstrin was occupied by a French military garrison for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars. During the French retreat from the east in 1814, the town was set on fire and burnt to the ground.
The town recovered and became one of the most important railway hubs in the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire. One of the main escape routes for surviving insurgents of the Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the town.[5] In 1857 it was linked to Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder) and in 1875 with Stettin (Szczecin) on the Pomeranian coast. In 1900 its population reached 16,473, including the garrison of the fortress.
20th century
Fort Sarbinowo, which housed the German prisoner-of-war camp for Allied officers during World War I
At the outbreak of World War II Küstrin had 24,000 inhabitants. During the war, the Germans used Polish prisoners of war as forced labourers to build the Stalag III-CPOW camp in the present-day district of Drzewice.[9] It housed Polish, French, Serbian, Soviet, Italian, British, American and Belgian POWs.[9] In 1943–45 the town also housed a sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, whose prisoners were Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, French, Belgians and Dutch, with Poles and Russians treated particularly bad either by guards or ethnic German camp elders,[10] and a number of German forced labour camps. Due to Allied air raids on the railway hub and local factories and its position as a German bridgehead on the east bank of the Oder during the Battle of the Oder-Neisse and the Battle of the Seelow Heights, almost 95% of its buildings were destroyed (including all 32 of the city's factories) and the town was generally deserted. The town was captured by the Red Army on 11 March 1945. Soviet troops killed some American POWs mistaking them for enemy troops.[9]
The remnants of the old town within the fortress walls, including the castle in which the young Frederick the Great had been imprisoned, were razed after the war and the bricks were used to rebuild Polish cities elsewhere. More recently, plans to rebuild some of the old town in a historical style were considered, but this project appears to be on hold. The section of the town on the west bank of the Oder remained in Germany and is now called Küstrin-Kietz.
Between 2004 and 2019 Kostrzyn hosted the annual Pol'and'Rock Festival (formerly Przystanek Woodstock) in the summer, the largest open-air music festival in Europe and one of the largest in the world.
Kostrzyn nad Odrą Fortress
Population in selected years
Historical population
Year
Pop.
±%
1880
14,069
—
1890
16,672
+18.5%
1900
16,473
−1.2%
1910
17,600
+6.8%
1925
19,383
+10.1%
Year
Pop.
±%
1939
23,771
+22.6%
1960
6,843
−71.2%
1971 (est.)
11,000
+60.7%
2010
17,704
+60.9%
Note that the above numbers are based on primary, possibly inaccurate or biased sources.[11][12][13][14][15]
^ abRymar, Edward (1979). "Rywalizacja o ziemię lubuską i kasztelanię międzyrzecką w latach 1319–1326, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem stosunków pomorsko-śląskich". Śląski Kwartalnik Historyczny Sobótka (in Polish). XXXIV (4). Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk: 489.
^Rogalski, Leon (1846). Dzieje Krzyżaków oraz ich stosunki z Polską, Litwą i Prussami, poprzedzone rysem dziejów wojen krzyżowych. Tom II (in Polish). Warszawa. pp. 59–60.
^Umiński, Janusz (1998). "Losy internowanych na Pomorzu żołnierzy powstania listopadowego". Jantarowe Szlaki (in Polish). No. 4 (250). p. 16.
^Orłow, Aleksander (2011). "Oficerski obóz jeniecki twierdzy Kostrzyn nad Odrą 1914−1918". In Mykietów, Bogusław; Bryll, Wolfgang Damian; Tureczek, Marceli (eds.). Forty. Jeńcy. Monety. Pasjonaci o Twierdzy Kostrzyn (in Polish). Zielona Góra: Księgarnia Akademicka. pp. 18, 21.
^Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2009). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945. Volume I. Indiana University Press, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 1321–1322. ISBN978-0-253-35328-3.
^Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (in German). Vol. 11 (6th ed.). Leipzig and Vienna. 1908. p. 890.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Der Große Brockhaus (in German). Vol. 12 (15th ed.). Leipzig. 1931. p. 788.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Dokumentacja Geograficzna (in Polish). Vol. 3/4. Warszawa: Instytut Geografii Polskiej Akademii Nauk. 1967. p. 22.
^Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon (in German). Vol. 14 (9th ed.). Mannheim/Vienna/Zürich. 1975. p. 511.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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