Liberec - History

History

Liberec was first mentioned in a document from 1348, and from 1622 to 1634 was among the possessions of Albrecht von Wallenstein. After his death it belonged to the Gallas and Clam Gallas families. The cloth-making industry was introduced in 1579. The prosperous local industry was interrupted by the Thirty Years' War and a great plague in the 1680s. The Battle of Reichenberg between Austria and Prussia occurred nearby in 1757 during the Seven Years' War.

At one time the second city of Bohemia, the city developed rapidly at the end of the 19th century and as a result has a spectacular collection of late 19th century buildings; the town hall, the opera house, and the Severočeské Muzeum (North Bohemian Museum) are of significant note. The Opera House has a spectacular main curtain that was designed by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The neighborhoods on the hills above the town center display beautiful homes and streets, laid out in a picturesque Romantic style similar to some central European thermal spas.

After the end of World War I Austria-Hungary fell apart. The Czechs of Bohemia joined newly established Czechoslovakia on the 29th of October 1918, while the Germans joined German Austria on the 12th of November 1918, both citing Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the doctrine of self-determination. Reichenberg became the capital of the Sudeten German province of German-Austria. On the 16th of December 1918 the Czechoslovak Army occupied Reichenberg and the Sudeten German province and both became part of Czechoslovakia.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Liberec became the unofficial capital of Germans in Czechoslovakia. This position was underlined by the foundation of important institutions, like Buecherei der Deutschen, a central German library in Czechoslovakia and by failed efforts to relocate the German (Charles) University from Prague to Liberec.

The Great Depression devastated the economy of the area with its textile, carpet, glass and other light industry. The high number of unemployed people, hunger, fear of the future and dissatisfaction with the Prague government led to the flash rise of the populist Sudeten German Party (SdP) founded by Konrad Henlein, born in the suburbs of Liberec. Whilst he declared fidelity to the Republic, he secretly negotiated with Adolf Hitler. In 1937 he radicalised his views and became Hitler's puppet in order to incorporate the Sudetenland into Germany and destabilise Czechoslovakia, which was an ally of France and was one of the leading arms producers in Europe.

The city became the centre of Pan-German movements and later the Nazis especially after the 1935 election, despite its important democratic mayor, Karl Kostka (German Democratic Freedom Party). The final change came in summer 1938, after the radicalisation of the terror of the SdP, whose death threats forced Kostka and his family to flee to Prague.

In September 1938, after two unsuccessful attempts by the SdP to stage a pro-Nazi coup in Czechoslovakia, which was stopped by police and the army, the Munich Agreement in 1938 awarded the city to Nazi Germany and it became the capital of the Sudetengau region. Most of the city's Jewish and Czech population fled to the rest of Czechoslovakia or was expelled. The important synagogue was burned down.

After World War II, the town again became a part of Czechoslovakia, and nearly all of the city's German population was expelled, following the Beneš decrees. The region was then resettled with Czechs. The city continues to have an important German minority, consisting of anti-Nazi Germans who were active in the struggle against Hitler, as well as Germans from Czech-German families and their descendents. Liberec also has a Jewish minority with a newly-built synagogue and a Greek minority, originating from Communist refugees who settled there after the Greek Civil War in 1949.