page_title: Lower Silesia
section_title: Bohemian Crown, Hungary, Austria and Prussia
hierarchical_section_title: Lower Silesia / History / Bohemian Crown, Hungary, Austria and Prussia
context_page_description: Lower Silesia is the northwestern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia; Upper Silesia is to the southeast.
  In the Middle Ages Lower Silesia was part of Piast-ruled Poland. It was one of the leading regions of Poland, and its capital Wrocław was one of the main cities of the Polish Kingdom. Lower Silesia emerged as a distinctive region during the fragmentation of Poland, in 1172, when the Duchies of Opole and Racibórz, considered Upper Silesia since, were formed of the eastern part of the Duchy of Silesia, and the remaining, western part was since considered Lower Silesia. During the Ostsiedlung, German settlers came to Lower Silesia and the region was largely Germanized.
  In the late Middle Ages the region fell under the overlordship of the Kingdom of Bohemia, however large parts remained under the rule of local Polish dukes of the Piast dynasty, some up to the 16th and 17th century. Briefly under the suzerainty of Kingdom of Hungary, it fell to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in 1526.
  In 1742, Austria ceded nearly all of Lower Silesia to the Kingdom of Prussia in the Treaty of Berlin, except for the southern part of the Duchy of Nysa.
context_section_description: With the 1335 Treaty of Trentschin (Trenčín) and the 1348 Treaty of Namysłów, most of the Silesian duchies were ruled by the Silesian Piast dukes under the feudal overlordship of the Bohemian kings, and thus became part of the Crown of Bohemia within the Holy Roman Empire. Many duchies remained rule of the houses of Piast, Jagiellon and Sobieski, some up to the 17th and 18th century. In 1469, Lower Silesia passed to Hungary, and in 1490 it fell back to Bohemia, then ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty. In 1476, the Crossen district became part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, when the widow of the Piast ruler, Barbara von Brandenburg, daughter of Elector Albert Achilles, inherited Crossen. It remained an important center of Polish culture. In 1475 Głogów-born Polish printer Kasper Elyan founded the Drukarnia Świętokrzyska (Holy Cross Printing House) in Wrocław, which published the Statuta synodalia episcoporum Wratislaviensium, the first incunable in Lower Silesia, which also contains the first ever text printed in the Polish language.
  In 1526 Silesia was acquired by Austria's Habsburg Monarchy after the death of King Louis II of Bohemia. Brandenburg contested the inheritance, citing a treaty made with Frederick II of Legnica, but Silesia largely remained under Habsburg control until 1742.
  Most of Lower Silesia, except for the southern part of the Duchy of Nysa, became part of the Kingdom of Prussia after the First Silesian War by the 1742 Treaty of Breslau. In 1815, it became part of the Prussian Silesia Province, which was divided into the two Lower Silesian administrative regions (Regierungsbezirke) of Liegnitz and Breslau (sometimes also referred to as Middle Silesia), and Upper Silesian Oppeln (including the Lower Silesian districts of Neisse and Grottkau). The western Liegnitz region had been enlarged by the incorporation of the Upper Lusatian districts of Lauban, Görlitz, Rothenburg and Hoyerswerda, all seized from the Kingdom of Saxony after the Napoleonic Wars. From 1871, Lower Silesia was part of the German Empire.
  By the beginning of the 20th century Lower Silesia had a majority German-speaking population, with the exception of a small Polish-speaking area in the northeastern part of the districts of Namslau, Groß Wartenberg and Militsch and a Czech-speaking minority in the rural area around Strehlen. There were also Polish communities in large cities such as Breslau and Grünberg. After the First World War, Upper Silesia was divided between the German Weimar Republic, the Second Polish Republic, and the state of Czechoslovakia, while the Prussian Lower Silesia remained in Germany and was re-organized into the Province of Lower Silesia of the Free State of Prussia consisting of the Breslau and Liegnitz regions.
caption: Map of the Prussian Province of Silesia, with Lower Silesian administrative regions (Regencies) of Liegnitz and Breslau ("Middle Silesia")
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