page_title: Legnica
section_title: The 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Legnica / History / The 20th century
caption_attribution_description: Castle in Legnica
context_page_description: Legnica is a city in southwestern Poland, in the central part of Lower Silesia, on the Kaczawa River and the Czarna Woda. Between 1 June 1975 and 31 December 1998 Legnica was the capital of the Legnica Voivodeship. It is currently the seat of the county and since 1992 the city has been the seat of a Diocese. As of 2019, Legnica had a population of 99,350 inhabitants.
  The city was first referenced in chronicles dating from the year 1004, although previous settlements could be traced back to the 7th century. The name "Legnica" was mentioned in 1149 under High Duke of Poland Bolesław IV the Curly. Legnica was most likely the seat of Bolesław and it became the residence of the High Dukes that ruled the Duchy of Legnica from 1248 until 1675. Legnica is a city over which the Piast dynasty reigned the longest, for about 700 years, from the time of ruler Mieszko I of Poland after the creation of the Polish state in the 10th century, until 1675 and the death of the last Piast duke George William. Legnica is one of the historical burial sites of Polish monarchs and consorts.
context_section_description: The census of 1910 gave Liegnitz's population as 95.86% German, 0.15% German and Polish, 1.27% Polish, 2.26% Wendish, and 0.19% Czech. On 1 April 1937 parts of the Landkreis of Liegnitz communities of Alt Beckern, Groß Beckern, Hummel, Liegnitzer Vorwerke, Pfaffendorf und Prinkendorf were incorporated into the city of Liegnitz. After the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, Liegnitz was part of the newly created Province of Lower Silesia from 1919 to 1938, then of the Province of Silesia from 1938 to 1941, and again of the Province of Lower Silesia from 1941 to 1945. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, as early as 1933, a boycott of local Jewish premises was ordered, and in 1938 the synagogue was burned down. During World War II, the Germans established two forced labour camps in the city, as well as two prisoner of war labor subcamps of the prisoner of war camp located in Żagań (then Sagan).
  After the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II, Liegnitz and all of Silesia east of the Neisse was transferred to Poland following the Potsdam Conference in 1945. The German population was expelled from the city between 1945 and 1947 and it was repopulated with Poles, many of whom were expelled from pre-war eastern Poland after its annexation by the Soviet Union. Also Greeks, refugees of the Greek Civil War, settled in Legnica in 1950. As the medieval Polish name Lignica was considered archaic, the town was renamed Legnica. The transfer to Poland decided at Potsdam in 1945 was officially recognized by East Germany in 1950, by West Germany under Chancellor Willy Brandt in the Treaty of Warsaw signed in 1970, and finally by the reunited Germany by the Two Plus Four Agreement in 1990. By 1990 only a handful of Polonized Germans, prewar citizens of Liegnitz, remained of the pre-1945 German population. In 2010 the city celebrated the 65th anniversary of the "return of Legnica to Poland" and its liberation from the Nazis.
  The city was only partly damaged in World War II. In June 1945 Legnica was briefly the capital of the Lower Silesian (Wrocław) Voivodship, after the administration was moved there from Trzebnica and before it was finally moved to Wrocław. In 1947, the Municipal Library was opened, in 1948 a piano factory was founded, and in the years 1951-1959 Poland's first copper smelter was built in Legnica. After 1965 most parts of the preserved old town with its town houses were demolished, the historical layout was abolished, and the city was rebuilt in modern form.
  From 1945 to 1990, during the Cold War, the headquarters of the Soviet forces in Poland, the so-called Northern Group of Forces, was located in the city. This fact had a strong influence on the life of the city. For much of the period, the city was divided into Polish and Soviet areas, with the latter closed to the public. These were first established in July 1945, when the Soviets forcibly ejected newly arrived Polish inhabitants from the parts of the city they wanted for their own use. The ejection was perceived by some as a particularly brutal action, and rumours circulated exaggerating its severity, though no evidence of anyone being killed in the course of it has come to light. In April 1946 city officials estimated that there were 16,700 Poles, 12,800 Germans, and 60,000 Soviets in Legnica. In October 1956, the largest anti-Soviet demonstrations in Lower Silesia took place in Legnica. The last Soviet units left the city in 1993.
  In 1992 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Legnica was established, Tadeusz Rybak became the first bishop of Legnica. New local newspapers and a radio station were founded in the 1990s. In 1997, Legnica was visited by Pope John Paul II. The city suffered in the 1997 Central European flood.
caption: Post-war view of the Piast Castle (on the left) and the Głogów Gate (on the right)
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