page_title: History of Wrocław
section_title: Poland and Bohemia
hierarchical_section_title: History of Wrocław / Poland and Bohemia
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Kościół Św. Idziego we Wrocławiu
context_page_description: Wrocław has long been the largest and culturally dominant city in Silesia, and is today the capital of Poland's Lower Silesian Voivodeship.
  The history of Wrocław starts at a crossroads in Lower Silesia. It was one of the centres of the Duchy and then Kingdom of Poland, and briefly, in the first half of the 13th century, the centre of half of the divided Kingdom of Poland. German settlers arrived in increasing numbers after the first Mongol invasion of Poland in 1241, and Wrocław eventually became part of the Kingdom of Bohemia after the extinction of local Polish dukes in 1335. After the War of Austrian Succession, the city and region were annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, and later became part of the German Empire. After World War II, Wrocław and most of Silesia were transferred to Poland and its population, almost totally German-speaking, was expelled.
context_section_description: In 990 Duke Mieszko I of Poland of the Piast dynasty conquered Silesia and Wrocław. In 1000 Mieszko's son, Duke and future King Boleslaw I of Poland, in the then capital of Poland, Gniezno, established the Bishopric of Wrocław, along with the bishoprics of Kraków and Kołobrzeg and the Archbishopric of Gniezno, as one of the oldest bishoprics of Poland and the first bishopric of Silesia. It was a suffragan of the Archbishopric of Gniezno, the See independent of the German Archbishopric of Magdeburg, which had tried to lay claim to jurisdiction over the Polish church. The city quickly became a commercial centre and expanded rapidly to the neighbouring Wyspa Piaskowa (Sand Island), and then to the left bank of the Odra river. Hugo Weczerka writes that around 1000 the town had approximately 1000 inhabitants. and after an uprising in 1037/38 against the church and probably also against the new rulers the bishop and the representative of the Polish king were expelled. In 1038 Bohemia captured the city and owned her until 1054, when Poland regained control. Weczerka writes that between 1079 and 1102 Silesia and Wrocław became temporarily independent. and in 1163 it became the capital of the duchy of Silesia, which – according to Hugo Weczerka – slowly detached from Poland. By 1139 two more settlements were built. One belonged to Governor Piotr Włostowic (a.k.a. Piotr Włast Dunin, Piotr Włost or Peter Wlast; ca. 1080–1153) and was situated near his residence on the Olbina by the St. Vincent's Benedictine Abbey. The other settlement was founded on the left bank of the Oder River, near the present seat of the university. It was located on the Via Regia that lead from Leipzig and Legnica) and followed through Opole, and Kraków to Kievan Rus'.
  Polish, Bohemian, Jewish, Walloons and German communities existed in the city.
  In the first half of the 13th century duke Henry I the Bearded of the Silesian line of the Piast dynasty, managed to reunite much of the divided Polish kingdom. He became the duke of Kraków (Polonia Minor) in 1232, which gave him the title of the senior duke of Poland (see Testament of Bolesław III Krzywousty). Henry tried to achieve the Polish crown but he didn't manage to succeed. His activity in this field was continued by his son and successor Henry II the Pious whose work towards this goal was halted by his sudden death in the 1241 (Battle of Legnica). Polish territories acquired by the Silesian dukes in this period are called "The monarchy of the Silesian Henries". Wrocław was the centre of the divided Kingdom of Poland.
  The city was devastated in 1241 during the first Mongol invasion of Poland. The inhabitants burned down their own city in order to force the Mongols to a quick withdrawal. The invasion, according to Norman Davies, led German historiography to portray the Mongol attack as an event which eradicated the Polish community. However, in light of historical research this is doubtful, as many Polish settlements remained, even in the 14th century, especially at the right bank of the Oder and Polish names such as Baran or Cebula appear including among Wrocław's ruling elite.
  Georg Thum, Maciej Lagiewski, Halina Okolska and Piotr Oszczanowski write that the decimated population was replenished by many Germans. A different thesis is presented by Norman Davies who writes that it is wrong to portray people of that time as "Germans" as their identities were those of Saxons and Bavarians, while historian Norbert Conrads argues that a Polish identity didn't exist either, a view shared by Czech author František R. Kraus. While Germanisation started, Norman Davies writes that "Vretslav was a multi-ethnic city in the Middle Ages. Its ethnic composition moved in an endless state of flux, changing with each political and cultural ebb and flow to which it was exposed". German author Georg Thum states that Breslau, the German name of the city, appeared for the first time in written records, and the city council from the beginning used only the Latin and German.
  In 1245, in Wrocław, Franciscan friar Benedict of Poland,
caption: Romanesque St. Giles Church, the oldest unchanged building in Wrocław, built in the early 13th century in the Ostrów Tumski district
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