Lubsko

Lubsko
Lubsko castle Lubsko castle
Flag of Lubsko Flag Coat of arms of Lubsko Coat of arms
Lubsko
Coordinates:
Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Lubusz
County	Żary
Gmina	Lubsko
Established	before 1258
Town rights	1283
Government
• Mayor	Lech Jan Jurkowski
Area
• Total	12.56 km2 (4.85 sq mi)
Highest elevation	122 m (400 ft)
Lowest elevation	65 m (213 ft)
Population (2006)
• Total	14,767
• Density	1,200/km2 (3,000/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code	68-300
Area code(s)	+48 68
Car plates	FZA
Website	http://www.lubsko.pl

Lubsko [ˈlupskɔ] (German: Sommerfeld, Lower Sorbian: Žemŕ) is a town in Żary County in the Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland. It is the administrative seat of the Gmina Lubsko and has a population of 15,370 as of February 1, 2005.

History

The town in the historic Lower Lusatia region was first documented in 1258 and received town privileges by the Lusatian margrave Henry III of Wettin in 1283. The name Sommerfeld, German for "summer field", already appeared in an 1106 deed allegedly issued by margrave Henry I of Wettin, who nevertheless had died three years before. The Wettin margraves sold the town to Brandenburg in 1304. Given in pawn several times, Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg finally granted Lubsko with Lower Lusatia to the Silesian Piast duke Bolko II the Small. After Bolko's death in 1368 it was seized as a reverted fief by the Bohemian Crown.

When the Brandenburg Elector Albert III Achilles of Hohenzollern acquired the nearby Silesian towns of Krossen (Krosno Odrzańskie) and Züllichau (Sulechów) in 1482, the adjacent Lubsko area too came into the possession of Brandenburg and was incorporated into of the Neumark district. From 1816 on the town belonged to the Prussian Province of Brandenburg. In 1846 Sommerfeld received a station on the railway line connecting Berlin with Breslau (Wrocław). At the Potsdam Conference in 1945 after the end of World War II, the town became part of Poland and officially received the Polish name Lubsko and was ethnically cleansed according to the post-war Potsdam Agreement. The native German populace was expelled and replaced with Poles.

Notable people

• Carl Friedrich Warnstorf (1837–1921), German educator and bryologist

The last German Empress Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein was born in Dolzig Palace (Dłużek, part of modern Lubsko) in 1858. The neurologist Alfred Goldscheider was born in Sommerfeld in the same year. Gerhard Domagk attended school in Sommerfeld until he was 14; the scientist would later win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939. The actress Joanna Brodzik attended elementary school in Lubsko in the 1980s. Ewelina Flinta the Polish singer was born here.

International relations

See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Poland

Twin towns — Sister cities

Lubsko is twinned with:

• Brody, Poland
• Forst (Lausitz), Germany
• Vlotho, Germany
• Helsinge, Denmark
• Pavlohrad, Ukraine

External links

• Municipal website
• Jewish Community in Lubsko on Virtual Shtetl