Schirgiswalde in der Oberlausitz
is situated in the eastern part of Germany near where the borders of Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland meet.
The area around Schirgiswalde was most likely colonised in the 13th century by the Franks. The first written record of the village of Schirgiswalde was made in the year 1346. At first, the settlement developed along a stream that led into the River Spree. A knight’s seat on the Spree later became the “Niederhof” - the lower farm estate.
Since Bohemian nobles were granted immediate rights here, the area may have been settled from Bohemia. Albrecht Berka traded his dominion in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, Wildenstein, against half of Schluckenau, then a Saxon dominion, in 1451. Schirgiswalde was added when he united this new dominion with the Tollenstein dominion, and thus became a Bohemian enclave, which it remained for a long time to come.
While Upper Lusatia became Saxon according to the provisions of the Treaty of Prague in 1635, Schirgiswalde remained Bohemian for another two centuries. Like the rest of Bohemia, Schirgiswalde was recatholicised after the thirty-year war (1618-1648) during the counterreformation, and many Lutherans moved from Schirgiswalde to the Lusatian region.
The town and its population were mostly destroyed during the thirty-year war. Then the landlord, Otto von Ottenfeld, founded the “Neudörfel”, or new little village (currently Neuschirgiswalde) in order to spur on the revival and economic recovery of the village, encouraging Bohemian weaver families to settle. In 1665, he had the status of Schirgiswalde raised to that of a town by King Leopold I in Vienna.
In 1703, the small town was purchased by the Bautzen Cathedral Chapter, which assumed estate and court jurisdiction over Schirgiswalde until the middle of the 19th century.
Despite the efforts of both Austria and Saxony to clear the border question, this Bohemian town surrounded by Saxon territory kept its insular status. In the aftermath of the war against Napoleon - which Austria lost - Schirgiswalde found itself under military occupation by Saxony, which was allied with France, at the end of 1810. The Treaty of Schönbrunn forced Austria to surrender its Bohemian enclaves in Saxony. The city’s national status remained open for a further 36 years as lengthy diplomatic negotiations on an exchange of territory between Saxony and Austria failed to reach their immediate goal.
Austria practically no longer exercised any rights of jurisdiction over the small town, but still regarded it as the property of the Bohemian Crown to which the inhabitants had sworn an oath of allegiance. The outbreak of another war in 1813 (Saxony and France against Austria and its allies) prevented the formal transfer of Schirgiswalde to Saxony. This marked the beginning of the town’s actual period of statelessness. The town paid no taxes to any state, and its inhabitants were not subjected to military service.
The decades of the “Republic of Schirgiswalde” were hugely beneficial to the town, and its citizens knew how to take full advantage of the situation. As a visitor had already reported in 1709, the inhabitants of Schirgiswalde “mostly live from weaving flannel and covert sales of wine and sugar to neighbouring Lusatia - and smuggling became even more intensive after the Treaty of Schönbrunn. Goods wagons brought merchandise from Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen up to the town, which could be imported free of tariffs and duties in this stateless region, to be taken back across the border by professional smugglers. Bohemian Lotto - forbidden in German territories - also proved highly profitable. Robbers (Bohemian Wenzel), political refugees, and various other characters of dubious repute found a safe haven in Schirgiswalde in full awareness of the statelessness of the town, and how they could turn it to their advantage.
Austria was prepared to enter negotiations on exchanging territories due to the problems that had arisen in the years that this issue had remained unsolved. Finally, the 1843 uprising against the hated court administrator, Knüpfer, forced Austria to acquiesce. The personal intervention of Chancellor Metternich, who placed much value on the restoration of “law and order”, particularly forced the issue.
After the Chancellor had presented his case before the King, the immediate transfer of Schirgiswalde was approved and the date for the transfer was set for July 4 at negotiations in Rumburg on July 1, 1845. On July 4, the transfer was completed in a ceremony in the Cathedral Chapter Castle by the district captain, Josef Klezansky, and the Budissin district director of Könneritz before representatives of the town and the ecclesiastical estate owners.
The peculiar circumstances had led to a very conservative attitude in the small town, which often proved to be a hindrance to rapid development in the following decades. For example, industrialisation on any scale made a very late arrival in Schirgiswalde. The town tried to earn its keep as a well-behaved small handicrafts and trading town with weaving as a major source of income. In 1849, 32.6% of the inhabitants were still sitting at home at a clattering loom.
Even so, the Saxon State immediately put a lot of work into its new territory. 1846/47 saw the construction of a major trunk road from Kirschau to Sohland via Schirgiswalde. In 1846, the patrimonial court jurisdiction that had previously been afforded to the deacon of the Bautzen Cathedral Chapter as the landlord was abolished, with the state arranging court jurisdiction for Schirgiswalde. A Royal Court was formed in 1853, which was then to become the town court of Schirgiswalde.
The town of Schirgiswalde declared its first “local statute” in 1848, and elected Josef Sieber as its mayor. The town had around 1,500 inhabitants at the time. The bourgeois revolution of 1848/49 did not have much impact on Schirgiswalde. The town guard, founded in 1848, was abolished again in 1850.
The small town slowly developed. Some new touches were added to its outward appearance. A new school was built in 1860, which fulfilled its requirements up until 1904. In 1867/68, the parish church was given its two towers that dominated the townscape, albeit in questionable style. A brickwork Lutheran church was not built until 1896. Previously, a wooden roofed footway served pedestrians crossing the river Spree from the small quarter and towards Crostau; horse-drawn carriages had to cross a ford. In 1874, a solid, wide bridge was finally built over the river. The same year saw a fascinating new innovation on the main streets of this little town - the first streetlamps. Business life in the town was supported by a Sparkasse savings bank from 1871 onwards, while the cultural attraction of the town was enriched by the introduction of a public library. An event that was extremely important for the town’s economic situation was the construction of a railway from Wilthen to Sohland in the year 1877. This created a very convenient connection for Schirgiswalde to Bautzen via Grosspostwitz, and Dresden via Neukirch.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the population of the small town was growing with ever-increasing rapidity, and reached 2,654 inhabitants in the year 1880. However, many people were living under difficult economic circumstances. House weaving and stocking making, which had previously been the main source of income, had become unprofitable due to the lack of orders and low wages. Making artificial flowers - an idea that came from the nearby village of Sebnitz - did not earn much, either. Only a limited number of people could be employed by the Cathedral Chapter’s brewery, or in the quarries or the forests around the town. The many craftsmen, tradesmen and farmers were still the most prosperous of the townspeople, while other citizens had to look for work in the factories of the neighbouring towns.
The year 1883 brought a turnaround in the town’s fortunes, when a major industrialist from Ebersbach, Hermann Wünsche, set up a mechanical weaving mill on the vicarage estate in Schirgiswalde. The weaving mill was immediately designed as a large-scale production factory employing more than 700 workers after a few years. The flannels, bedding, aprons, clothing and window-blind textiles produced by the factory sold well. Other industrial companies founded at that time did not develop to any great degree. A mechanical scrubbing-cloth and hand-towel weaving mill was founded in the southern part of the city in 1924. In general, textile-producing companies played a major role in the town over the years and into GDR times.
Due to the geographical situation of the town, tourism has also always played, and still plays a major role. The town is a state-registered health resort with a large variety of hotels and guesthouses as well as holiday lets. Schirgiswalde is worth a visit at any time of year.
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