Kcynia (german: Exin) is a town in

Nakło County __NOTOC__ Nakło County ( pl, powiat nakielski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, north-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local g ...

Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, also known as Cuiavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship or simply Kujawsko-Pomorskie, or Kujawy-Pomerania Province ( pl, województwo kujawsko-pomorskie ) is one of the 16 voivodeships (provinces) into which Poland is divide ...

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 populous ...

, with 4,712 inhabitants (2004). It is located in the

Pałuki Pałuki is a historic and ethnographic region lying in central Poland, part of Greater Poland neighbouring Pomerania and Kuyavia. In terms of administrative division the region lies in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodship and Greater Poland Voivodship ...

ethnographic region in the northern part of historic

Greater Poland Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska (; german: Großpolen, sv, Storpolen, la, Polonia Maior), is a Polish historical regions, historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed ...

History

Kcynia started in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, with the rule of the founding

Piast dynasty The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I (c. 930–992). The Piasts' royal rule in Poland ended in 1370 with the death of king Casimir III the Great. Branch ...

in Poland. In the 11th century, Polish ruler Władysław Herman built a church of St. Giles at the site.Tadeusz Pietrykowski, ''Z przeszłości Kcyni z okazji 666 rocznicy założenia miasta'', Kcynia, 1928, p. 16 (in Polish) In 1255 Kcynia was owned by Duke of Greater Poland Przemysł I. His brother, Duke

Bolesław the Pious Bolesław the Pious (1224/27 – 14 April 1279) was a Duke of Greater Poland during 1239–1247 (according to some historians during 1239–1241 sole Duke of Ujście), Duke of Kalisz during 1247–1249, Duke of Gniezno during 1249–1250, Duke o ...

, in 1262 granted Kcynia

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 ...

along with privileges similar to those enjoyed by

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...

and

Gniezno Gniezno (; german: Gnesen; la, Gnesna) is a city in central-western Poland, about east of Poznań. Its population in 2021 was 66,769, making it the sixth-largest city in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. One of the Piast dynasty's chief cities, ...

.''Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich'', Tom III, Warszawa, 1882, p. 947 (in Polish) Kcynia was a royal town of the Polish Crown and a county seat in the

Kalisz Voivodeship Kalisz Voivodeship may also refer to: *Kalisz Voivodeship (1314–1793) *Kalisz Voivodeship (1816–1837) The Kalisz Voivodeship was a voivodeship of the Congress Poland, that existed from 1816 to 1837. Its capital was Kalisz. It was established o ...

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 ...

.Pietrykowski, p. 27 The coat of arms of Kcynia depicts the white eagle of Greater Poland. Kcynia suffered a fire in 1441. The town had defensive walls and a castle, which was the seat of local

starost The starosta or starost (Cyrillic: ''старост/а'', Latin: ''capitaneus'', german: link=no, Starost, Hauptmann) is a term of Slavic origin denoting a community elder whose role was to administer the assets of a clan or family estates. Th ...

s (local royal administrators). In 1594 Polish King

Sigismund III Vasa Sigismund III Vasa ( pl, Zygmunt III Waza, lt, Žygimantas Vaza; 20 June 1566 – 30 April 1632 N.S.) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1587 to 1632 and, as Sigismund, King of Sweden and Grand Duke of Finland from 1592 to ...

visited the town, while returning from

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. From 1768 Kcynia was part of the newly established

Gniezno Voivodeship Gniezno Voivodeship (Polish: ''Województwo Gnieźnieńskie'', Latin: ''Palatinatus Gnesnensis'') was a unit of administrative division and local government in Poland for a short time from 1768, when it was cut from the Kalisz Voivodeship, to the ...

in the Greater Poland Province. Kcynia 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 em ...

in the First Partition of Poland in 1772. In 1807 it became part of 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 ...

, and in 1815 it was re-annexed by Prussia. During the Greater Poland uprising (1848), it was the site of the , in which Polish insurgents won against the Prussians. In 1871, the town became part of the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

, as part of the Prussian

Province of Posen The Province of Posen (german: Provinz Posen, pl, Prowincja Poznańska) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1848 to 1920. Posen was established in 1848 following the Greater Poland Uprising as a successor to the Grand Duchy of Posen, w ...

. According to the German census of 1890, the town had a population of 2,814, of which 1,650 (58.6%) were

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 Ce ...

. In 1913, the town had a population of 4,000, including 3,000 Roman Catholics, 800 Protestants, and 200

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. The populace took part in 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 ( ...

, and Kcynia was soon restored to reborn Poland. During

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 opposin ...

, Kcynia was under

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 ...

from 1939 to 1945. The Germans carried out massacres and expulsions of Poles to the

General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...

. In December 1939 and August 1940, Germans expelled Polish

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...

with their families, as well as owners of better houses, workshops and shops, which were then handed over to German 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 Imperi ...

'' policy. Further expulsions were carried out in February 1941.Wardzyńska, p. 301 In 1939, the Jewish synagogue was destroyed by the Germans.

Sights

The main landmarks of Kcynia are the Carmelite monastery with the Baroque Church of the Assumption of Mary, and the

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

Saint Michael Archangel church.

Notable residents

Bernadetta Blechacz Bernadetta Blechacz (born July 30, 1955 in Kcynia, Kuyavian-Pomeranian) is a former javelin thrower from Poland, who set her personal best in 1979, throwing 62.76 metres. She competed for her native country at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, U ...

(1955- ), Polish Olympian javelin thrower * Ismar Isidor Boas (1858-1938), German-Jewish gastroenterologist *

Jan Czochralski Jan Czochralski ( , ; 23 October 1885 – 22 April 1953) was a Polish chemist who invented the Czochralski method, which is used for growing single crystals and in the production of semiconductor wafers. It is still used in over 90 percent of al ...

(1885-1953), Polish chemist * Otto Krümmel (1854-1912), German geographer * Klara Prillowa (1907-1991), Polish sculptor, folklorist and ethnographer *

Mieczysław Rakowski Mieczysław Franciszek Rakowski (; 1 December 1926 – 8 November 2008) was a Polish communist politician, historian and journalist who was Prime Minister of Poland from 1988 to 1989. He served as the seventh and final First Secretary of the Pol ...

(1926-2008), Polish communist politician and Prime Minister

References

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship Nakło County Poznań Voivodeship (1921–1939) Pomeranian Voivodeship (1919–1939)