Opole Voivodeship - History

History

Up until 1945, the area of the current Polish voivodeship was actually a part of the Prussian province of ‘Upper Silesia’. After the Second World War the area was annexed by Poland, this came about as a direct result of the Allied Powers agreement on the realignment of states in Eastern Europe reached at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. The region was originally merged with the pre-existing Polish Silesian Voivodeship, until in 1950 it regained status as a region thanks to a reform of Polish regions. The towns of Brzeg and Namysłów were later transferred to Opole from the neighbouring Lower Silesian Voivodeship. As the result of a third regional shake-up in 1975 the voivodeship was broken up and Racibórz was transferred to the new Katowice Voivodeship whilst a part of Olesno was given up to the Częstochowa Voivodeship.

Finally, as the result of a 1999 land reform; the objective of which was to restore the historical voivodeships of Poland, the Opole Voivodeship as we know it today came into being. Originally, the government, advised by prominent historians, had wanted to disestablish Opolskie and partition its territory between the more historically ‘Polish’ regions of Lower Silesia and Silesia. The plan was that Brzeg and Namysłów, as the Western part of the region, were to be transferred to Lower Silesia, whilst the rest was to become, along with a part of the Częstochowa Voivodeship, an integral part of the new ‘Silesian’ region. However, the plans resulted in an outcry from the German minority population of Opolskie, who feared that should their region be abolished, they would lose all hope of regional representation (in the proposed Silesian Region, they would have formed a very small minority amongst a great number of ethnic Poles). To the surprise of many of the ethnic Germans in Opole however, the local Polish Silesian population and groups of ethnic Poles also rose to oppose the planned reforms; this came about as a result of an overwhelming feel of attachment to the voivodeships that were planned to be ‘redrawn’ as well as a fear of ‘alienation’ should one find themselves residing in a new, unfamiliar region.

The solution came in late 1999, when Olesno was, after 24 years apart, finally reunited with the Opole Voivodeship to form the new legally defined region. A historic moment came about in 2006 when the town of Radłów changed its local laws to make German, alongside Polish, the district’s second official language; thus becoming the first town in the region to achieve such a feat.