Kostkowice () is a village in
Gmina Dębowiec,
Cieszyn County
__NOTOC__
Cieszyn County ( pl, powiat cieszyński) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland, on the Czech and Slovak border. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result o ...
,
Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland.
Etymology
The name of the village is
patronymic in origin, derived from the personal name ''Kostka'', ending with a typically Slavic ''-(ow)ice''.
It was generally Germanized as ''Kostkowitz''.
History
The village lies in the historical region of
Cieszyn Silesia. It was first mentioned in a Latin document of
Diocese of Wrocław called ''
Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis
Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis ( pl, Księga uposażeń biskupstwa wrocławskiego, ''Book of endowments of the Bishopric of Wrocław'') is a Latin manuscript catalog of documents compiled in the later 13th or in the early 14th centu ...
'' from around 1305 as ''item in Goschegowitz debent esse XX mansi''. It meant that the village was supposed to pay a
tithe from 20
greater lans. The creation of the village was a part of a larger settlement campaign taking place in the late 13th century on the territory of what would later be known as
Upper Silesia.
Politically the village belonged initially to the
Duchy of Teschen, formed in 1290 in the process of
feudal fragmentation of Poland and was ruled by a local branch of
Silesian Piast dynasty. In 1327 the duchy became a
fee of the
Kingdom of Bohemia, which after 1526 became a part of the
Habsburg monarchy
The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...
.
After the
Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire
The Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire were a set of revolutions that took place in the Austrian Empire from March 1848 to November 1849. Much of the revolutionary activity had a nationalist character: the Empire, ruled from Vienna, incl ...
a modern
municipal division was introduced in the re-established
Austrian Silesia. The village as a municipality was subscribed to the
political district of
Bielsko and the
legal district of
Skoczów. According to the censuses conducted in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910 the population of the municipality grew from 355 in 1880 to 428 in 1910, with the majority of the inhabitants being native Polish-speakers (97.9%-99%) and a few people were German-speaking (most 8 or 1.9% in 1910) and Czech-speaking (most 4 or 1.1% in 1880), in terms of religion the majority were
Roman Catholics
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
(62.2% in 1910), followed by
Protestants
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
(37.8% in 1910). The village was also traditionally inhabited by
Cieszyn Vlachs, speaking
Cieszyn Silesian dialect.
After
World War I, the fall of
Austria-Hungary, the
Polish–Czechoslovak War and the division of
Cieszyn Silesia in 1920, it became a part of
Poland. It was then
annexed
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
by
Nazi Germany at the beginning of
World War II. After the war it was restored to
Poland.
Geography
Kostkowice lies in the southern part of Poland, north-east of the county seat,
Cieszyn, west of
Bielsko-Biała, south-west of the regional capital
Katowice
Katowice ( , , ; szl, Katowicy; german: Kattowitz, yi, קאַטעוויץ, Kattevitz) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area. It is the 11th most popul ...
, and east of the border with
the Czech Republic.
The village is situated in the
Silesian Foothills,
up to approximately
above sea level
Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''.
The comb ...
, north of the
Silesian Beskids. It straddles over the border between watersheds of
Odra Odra may refer to:
Rivers
* Odra (Poland), also known as Oder, a river in Czech Republic, Poland and Germany
* Odra (Kupa), a river in Croatia
* Odra (Spain), a river in Spain
Populated places
* Odra, Silesian Voivodeship, a village in southern ...
(through
Olza to the west) and
Vistula (through
Knajka
Knajka is a stream in the Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland, in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia. It is a left-bank tributary of the Vistula, which it enters just south of Strumień. Its length is variously said to be either ...
to the east); The biggest forest in the village, called ''Kostkowiak'', lies in the north-west part of the village, separating a former village ''Samlowiec'' in the north from the proper Kostkowice in the south, in the Knajka valley.
References
{{Cieszyn Silesia
Villages in Cieszyn County
Cieszyn Silesia