Radków () is a town in

Kłodzko County __NOTOC__ Kłodzko County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, south-western Poland. It came into being on 1 January 1999 as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed ...

Lower Silesian Voivodeship Lower Silesian Voivodeship (, ) in southwestern Poland, is one of the 16 Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeships (provinces) into which Poland is divided. It covers an area of and has a total population of 2,899,986. It is one of the wealthiest ...

, in south-western

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. It is the seat of the administrative district (

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,479 gminy throughout the country, encompassing over 43,000 villages. 940 gminy include cities and tow ...

) called Gmina Radków, close to the Czech border. As at 2019, the town has a population of 2,406.

Geography

It lies in the Kłodzko Valley at the foot of the Table Mountains, approximately north-west of Kłodzko, and south-west of the regional capital

Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...

. It is located within the historic

Kłodzko Land Kłodzko Land (; ; ) is a historical region in southwestern Poland. The subject of Czech–Polish rivalry in the High Middle Ages, it became a Bohemian domain since the 12th century, although with periods of rule of the Polish Piast dynasty in th ...

History

The settlement probably already existed in the 11th century. In the

High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history between and ; it was preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended according to historiographical convention ...

, together with the

, it changed affiliation several times, passing between

and

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

.Jan Rzońca, ''Uzdrowiska ziemi kłodzkiej'', "Ziemia Kłodzka" No. 223, 2013, p. 26 (in Polish) A church at the site was first mentioned in 1290. That same year, after the death of Polish duke Henryk IV Probus Kłodzko Land passed to

. It was granted town rights around 1320-1333. From 1327 to 1341 it was placed under the rule of Polish dukes from the

Piast dynasty The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented List of Polish monarchs, Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I of Poland, Mieszko I (–992). The Poland during the Piast dynasty, Piasts' royal rule in Pol ...

(within the duchies of

and Ziębice) and in 1348 it was incorporated to the Bohemian Crown Lands. By 1373 the town had a mayor and in the early 15th century defensive walls were built.Waldemar Brygier, ''Góry Stołowe. Przewodnik'', Oficyna Wydawnicza Rewasz, Pruszków, 2010, p. 193 (in Polish) Then in 1418 it received new privileges from King Wenceslaus IV, which equated its town rights with those of Kłodzko and granted the title of a royal city. In the following decades, the town was devastated by

Hussite file:Hussitenkriege.tif, upright=1.2, Battle between Hussites (left) and Crusades#Campaigns against heretics and schismatics, Catholic crusaders in the 15th century file:The Bohemian Realm during the Hussite Wars.png, upright=1.2, The Lands of the ...

troops in 1425 as well as by the Hungarian forces of king

Matthias Corvinus Matthias Corvinus (; ; ; ; ; ) was King of Hungary and King of Croatia, Croatia from 1458 to 1490, as Matthias I. He is often given the epithet "the Just". After conducting several military campaigns, he was elected King of Bohemia in 1469 and ...

in 1469. In the 15th century, crafts flourished, local cloths were exported to other countries, while 85 of all 86 houses had the right to brew beer.Brygier, '' Op. cit.'', p. 194 With the County of Kladsko, it turned

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...

by the mid-16th century and was affected by the

Counter-Reformation The Counter-Reformation (), also sometimes called the Catholic Revival, was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to, and as an alternative to or from similar insights as, the Protestant Reformations at the time. It w ...

in the

Habsburg monarchy The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities (composite monarchy) that were ruled by the House of Habsburg. From the 18th century it is ...

as well as the devastations of the

Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine ...

, when it was captured by the Austrians in 1621, the Swedes in 1632, and it was struck by epidemics in 1625 and 1633. In the First Silesian War (1740–42), the town was conquered and annexed by King Frederick II of Prussia. The picturesque setting attracted

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

, who spent a few days here in August 1790. From 1815 onwards, it was incorporated into the Prussian Silesia Province. From the late 19th century onwards, the Wünschelburg

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

pits supplied notable buildings like the Berlin Reichstag via the new Eulengebirgsbahn railway line to Ścinawka Średnia (then ''Mittelsteine''). After the defeat of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the area fell to the Republic of Poland according to the 1945

Potsdam Agreement The Potsdam Agreement () was the agreement among three of the Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union after the war ended in Europe that was signed on 1 August 1945 and published the following day. A ...

, while the German population was expelled. Nowadays the population is overwhelmingly Polish.

Notable people

* Wolfgang Stumph (born 1946), German actor

References

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Lower Silesian Voivodeship Kłodzko County