Śmigiel (german: Schmiegel) is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Kościan County __NOTOC__ Kościan County ( pl, powiat kościański) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Greater Poland Voivodeship, west-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local go ...

Greater Poland Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo wielkopolskie; ), also known as Wielkopolska Voivodeship, Wielkopolska Province, or Greater Poland Province, is a voivodeship, or province, in west-central Poland. It was created on 1 January 1999 ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, with 5,420 inhabitants (2004).

History

Śmigiel was granted

town rights Town privileges or borough rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium. The city law customary in Central Europe probably dates back to Italian models, which in turn were oriented towards the tradition ...

in 1415 or perhaps earlier. It was a

private town A private town is a town owned by a private person or a family. History of Private Towns in Poland In the history of Poland, private towns (''miasta prywatne'') were towns within the lands owned by magnates, bishops, knights, princes, etc. ...

of Polish nobility, administratively located in the Kościan County in the

Poznań Voivodeship Poznań Voivodeship was the name of several former administrative regions (''województwo'', rendered as ''voivodeship'' and usually translated as "province") in Poland, centered on the city of Poznań, although the exact boundaries changed over t ...

in the

Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown , subdivision = Province , nation = Poland , year_start = , event_end = Third Partition of Poland , year_end = , image_map = Prowincje I RP.svg , image_map_capt ...

. It was annexed by

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

in the

Second Partition of Poland The 1793 Second Partition of Poland was the second of three partitions (or partial annexations) that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The second partition occurred in the aftermath of the Polish–Russian W ...

in 1793, then regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Polish

Duchy of Warsaw The Duchy of Warsaw ( pl, Księstwo Warszawskie, french: Duché de Varsovie, german: Herzogtum Warschau), also known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleonic Poland, was a French client state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during ...

in 1807, re-annexed by Prussia in 1815, and included within Germany in 1871. While part of Prussia and Germany, the town was administered within Kreis Schmiegel in the

Grand Duchy of Posen The Grand Duchy of Posen (german: Großherzogtum Posen; pl, Wielkie Księstwo Poznańskie) was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, created from territories annexed by Prussia after the Partitions of Poland, and formally established following the ...

/ Province of Posen. As Poland regained independence following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in 1918, the town was reintegrated with Poland, and local

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in C ...

joined the

Greater Poland Uprising (1918–19) Greater Poland Uprising (also Wielkopolska Uprising or Great Poland Uprising) may refer to a number of armed rebellions in the region of Greater Poland: * Greater Poland Uprising (1794) * Greater Poland Uprising (1806) * Greater Poland Uprising (1 ...

, which aim was to reintegrate the entire region of Greater Poland with the reborn state. Among the insurgents were future mayors Władysław Pioch and Maksymilian Stachowiak. Władysław Pioch co-organized the local Polish administration. During the joint German-Soviet

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

, which started

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

in September 1939, the town was captured by Germany after a Polish defense, co-organized by the local mayor Władysław Pioch. In the following weeks, on September 30 and October 23, 1939, the German '' Einsatzgruppe VI'' carried out two public executions of Poles, killing 8 and 15 people respectively. Among the victims were pre-way mayors Władysław Pioch and Maksymilian Stachowiak, local Polish activists, intelligentsia and former insurgents of the Greater Poland Uprising. Polish craftsmen and merchants from Śmigiel were also among 45 Poles murdered by the Germans on November 7, 1939 in the forest near

Kościan Kościan (german: Kosten) is a town on the Obra canal in west-central Poland, with a population of 23 952 inhabitants as of June 2014. Situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship (since 1999), previously in Leszno Voivodeship (1975–1998), it i ...

. In 1940, Germany expelled 500 Poles to the General Government (German-occupied central Poland), and their houses were handed over to

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

colonists as part of the ''

Lebensraum (, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Imper ...

'' policy. Also a transit camp for Poles expelled from nearby villages was operated in the town. The

German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...

ended in 1945.

Sports

The local football club is Pogoń Śmigiel. It competes in the lower leagues.

People associated with the town

* Wilhelm Salomon Freund (1831–1915), politician * (1931–2010), world-famous Polish gynecologist, professor * Hans Jüttner (1894–1965), SS general *

Georg John Georg John (born Georg Jacobsohn; 23 July 1879 – 18 November 1941) was a German stage and film actor. Early life Georg Jacobsohn was born into a Jewish household in Schmiegel, Province of Posen, Imperial Germany. Career John began his c ...

(1879–1941), actor *

Carl August Lebschée Carl August Lebschée (1800–1877) was a German a painter, etcher, and lithographer, born at Schmiegel (modern Śmigiel), Poland. He studied at Munich, where his parents settled in 1807. He painted landscapes and architecture in oil and waterco ...

(1800–1877), artist

Gallery

20150908 baa smigiel ul farna kosciol-mk-a.jpg, Church of the Assumption of Mary SM Śmigiel Wiatraki 2019 (4).jpg, Old windmills 20150908 ag321 smigiel urzad miejski-mk-b.jpg, Town hall 20150908 cr smigiel wiatrak shot-square-mk-a.jpg, ''Plac Rozstrzelanych''

History

Sports

People associated with the town

Gallery

References

See also