Chełmno


Chełmno is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 20,000 inhabitants and the historical capital of Chełmno Land. Situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999, Chełmno was previously in Toruń Voivodeship.

Name

The city's name Chełmno comes from chelm, the old Polish word for hill. After the arrival of the Teutonic Knights in 1232 the Latin name Colmen was used. During the Middle Ages, the Germanized name Culm was used in official documents regarding the town, as the city was a member of the Hanseatic League and part of the State of the Teutonic Order. Chełmno came under Prussian jurisdiction in 1772 and, as part of a larger Germanization effort, the city was officially renamed Kulm. During the Nazi occupation in World War II, the town was again renamed from Chełmno to Kulm.

History

The first written mention of Chełmno is known from a document allegedly issued in 1065 by Duke Boleslaus of Poland for the Benedictine monastery in Mogilno. In 1226 Duke Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to Chełmno Land. In 1233 Kulm was granted city rights known as "Kulm law", the model system for over 200 Polish towns. The town grew prosperous as a member of the mercantile Hanseatic League. Kulm and Chełmno Land were part of the Teutonic Knights' state until 1454. In 1440, the town was one of the founding members of the Prussian Confederation, which opposed Teutonic rule, and upon the request of which King Casimir IV Jagiellon reincorporated the territory to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. In May 1454 the town pledged allegiance to the Polish King in Toruń. After the end of the Thirteen Years' War, the Teutonic Knights renounced claims to the town, and recognized it as part of Poland. It was made the capital of Chełmno Voivodeship.
In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the city was taken over by the Kingdom of Prussia. Between 1807 and 1815 Chełmno was part of the Polish Duchy of Warsaw, being reannexed by Prussia at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
As Kulm, it had been a garrison town. In 1776 Frederick the Great founded here a cadet school which was to serve in Germanising Polish areas and nobility In 1890 the garrison included 561 military staff. On 1 October 1890 the cadet school was moved to Koszalin in Farther Pomerania. Also as part of Anti-Polish policies, the Prussians abolished the local Polish academy, and closed down Catholic monasteries. Poles were subjected to various repressions, local Polish newspapers were confiscated.
Renown Polish surgeon Ludwik Rydygier opened his private clinic in the town in 1878, where he conducted pioneering surgical operations, including the first in Poland and second in the world surgical removal of the pylorus in a patient suffering from stomach cancer in 1880 and the first in the world peptic ulcer resection in 1881. Rydygier sold the clinic to one of his employees, Leon Polewski, in 1887, due to harassment from the Prussian authorities.
On January 22, 1920 Polish troops were greeted by a large crowd of residents and Chełmno was reintegrated with Poland, which regained independence after World War I.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Nazi German authorities murdered 5,000 Polish civilians upon taking control of the territory. The atrocities took place in Klamry, Małe Czyste, Podwiesk, Plutowo, Dąbrowa Chełmińska, and Wielkie Łunawy, while many other Poles were executed in forests. The rest of the Polish population was expelled to the General Government in line with the German policy of Lebensraum. Polish Secret State resistance groups such as Polska Żyje, Rota, Grunwald, and Szare Szeregi were also active in the area. The area was administered as part of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and served as the seat of the district/county of Kulm.
On 25 January 1945 German forces set fire to several buildings in the city, including a hospital, a railway terminal, and a brewery, while retreating.

Demographics

Since its founding, the city had a mixed population of Poles and Germans, with the former making ⅔ of its population in the second half of the 19th century.
YearInhabitantsNotes
18435,000
18909,762incl. 3,450 Protestants and 470 Jews.
190011,079together with the garrison, incl. 3,530 Protestants and 339 Jews.
192111,700incl. 1,060 Germans.
196918,000
200620,388

Main sights

Chełmno has a well-preserved medieval center, with five Gothic churches and a beautiful Renaissance town hall in the middle of the market square.
The Old Town is one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments, as designated 20 April 2005, and tracked by the National Heritage Board of Poland.
Chełmno gives its name to the protected area called Chełmno Landscape Park, which stretches along the right bank of the Vistula.

Notable residents