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Lubusz Voivodeship, or Lubuskie Province ( pl, województwo lubuskie ), is a voivodeship ( province) in western Poland. It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former
Gorzów Wielkopolski Gorzów Wielkopolski (; german: Landsberg an der Warthe) often abbreviated to Gorzów Wlkp. or simply Gorzów, is a city in western Poland, on the Warta river. It is the second largest city in the Lubusz Voivodeship with 120,087 inhabitants (Decemb ...
and Zielona Góra Voivodeships, pursuant to the
Polish local government reforms The administrative division of Poland since 1999 has been based on three levels of subdivision. The territory of Poland is divided into ''voivodeships'' (provinces); these are further divided into ''powiats'' (counties or districts), and these i ...
adopted in 1998. The province's name recalls the historic Lubusz Land ('' Lebus'' or ''Lubus''), although parts of the voivodeship belong to the historic regions of Silesia,
Greater Poland Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska (; german: Großpolen, sv, Storpolen, la, Polonia Maior), is a historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed by Kalisz, the oldest city ...
and Lusatia. Until 1945, it mainly formed the Neumark within the
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 ...
n Province of Brandenburg. The functions of regional capital are shared between two cities:
Gorzów Wielkopolski Gorzów Wielkopolski (; german: Landsberg an der Warthe) often abbreviated to Gorzów Wlkp. or simply Gorzów, is a city in western Poland, on the Warta river. It is the second largest city in the Lubusz Voivodeship with 120,087 inhabitants (Decemb ...
and Zielona Góra. Gorzów serves as the seat of the centrally-appointed voivode, or governor, and Zielona Góra is the seat of the elected regional assembly ( sejmik) and the executive elected by that assembly, headed by a marshal (''marszałek''). In addition, the voivodeship includes a third city ( Nowa Sól) and a number of towns. The region is mainly flat, with many lakes and woodlands. In the south, around Zielona Góra, grapes are cultivated. Lubusz Voivodeship borders West Pomeranian Voivodeship to the north,
Greater Poland Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo wielkopolskie; ), also known as Wielkopolska Voivodeship, Wielkopolska Province, or Greater Poland Province, is a voivodeship, or province, in west-central Poland. It was created on 1 January 1999 o ...
to the east,
Lower Silesian Voivodeship Lower Silesian Voivodeship, or Lower Silesia Province, in southwestern Poland, is one of the 16 voivodeships (provinces) into which Poland is divided. The voivodeship was created on 1 January 1999 out of the former Wrocław, Legnica, Wałbr ...
to the south, and Germany (
Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squar ...
and Saxony) to the west.


History

200px, A2 autostrada with view towards west in the Voivodeship By conquest the first leaders of the Polans,
Mieszko I Mieszko I (; – 25 May 992) was the first ruler of Poland and the founder of the first independent Polish state, the Duchy of Poland. His reign stretched from 960 to his death and he was a member of the Piast dynasty, a son of Siemomysł and ...
and especially Bolesław I added a number of surrounding territories to the newly established core Polish state, and Lebus Land or Lubusz in Lusatia came under Polish rule. Part of the historic province was located on the western bank of the
Oder River The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows t ...
, where the main settlement Lubusz, later known as the German town of Lebus, was located. In 1250 Lebus Land it was acquired by the Ascanian
margrave Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or of a kingdom. That position became hereditary in certain feudal families in the Em ...
s of
Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squar ...
. The Lebus Land stayed with Brandenburg throughout (as Electorate within the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, as Prussian Province of Brandenburg since 1815, with Prussia as part of the new Empire of Germany since 1871 and thereafter as a part of the newly created Weimar Republic. In 1945, the conquest of eastern Germany by the Soviet Red Army was followed by the redrawing of Poland's borders. The eastern part of the Lubusz (Lebus) region was transferred to Poland and became part of the " Recovered Territories". The German-speaking population which had not fled west of the Oder was subsequently expelled, and replaced by Poles from central and former eastern Poland. In 1998,
the government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
of Jerzy Buzek decided to introduce an administrative reform, with its principles including the restoration of counties and a steep reduction in the number of voivodeships. A general consensus existed among scholars that the local administration exercised through the 49 existing voivodeships established in 1975 was inefficient, anachronistic, impractical, detrimental to maintaining regional identity, and untenable. However, the reform draft accepted by the government surprised the public and caused widespread outcry, as its authors foresaw creation of only 12 large voivodships, thus going much further than the widely expected reconstitution of the 17 voivodeships existing prior to the 1975 reform. As a consequence, the original draft made no provision for a separate Lubusz voivodeship – Gorzów was to become along with Kostrzyn, Strzelce Krajeńskie and Drezdenko a part of West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Zielona Góra was to be included along with Krosno, Nowa Sól, Żagań, Gubin and Żary in the
Lower Silesian Voivodeship Lower Silesian Voivodeship, or Lower Silesia Province, in southwestern Poland, is one of the 16 voivodeships (provinces) into which Poland is divided. The voivodeship was created on 1 January 1999 out of the former Wrocław, Legnica, Wałbr ...
, while a narrow horizontal strip encompassing Międzyrzecz, Sulęcin,
Świebodzin Świebodzin (; szl, Świybodzin; german: Schwiebus) is a town in western Poland with 21,736 inhabitants (2019). It is the capital of Świebodzin County. Since the Local Government Reorganization Act of 1998, Świebodzin has been part of Lubusz ...
, Słubice and
Sulechów Sulechów (pronounced , german: Züllichau) is a town located within the Zielona Góra County, in Lubusz Voivodeship, western Poland. It is the administrative seat of the Gmina Sulechów. Established in the Middle Ages, the town features many hi ...
was to be assigned to the
Greater Poland Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo wielkopolskie; ), also known as Wielkopolska Voivodeship, Wielkopolska Province, or Greater Poland Province, is a voivodeship, or province, in west-central Poland. It was created on 1 January 1999 o ...
as a bizarre sort-of corridor to the German border. However, mass protests broke out as a result in the cities such as Bydgoszcz, Koszalin, Opole or Kielce. Many of the people opposing the draft reform initially demanded retaining as many as 25 voivodeships (including the 2 ones seated in Gorzów and Zielona Góra), a number nevertheless widely regarded as a demand intentionally excessive to serve as an initial negotiating bargain, actually aiming to restore the 17 voivodeships existing prior to 1975 as an ultimate compromise. As Poland was at the time governed under political cohabitation, the opposition party constituting the political background of the President decided to capitalize on the popular discontent which erupted against the government on an unanticipated scale; the most obvious mean readily available for the opposition was a presidential veto, which in fact ensued. In order to salvage the reform from being killed altogether, the government was, in the face of lacking the supermajority required to overturn the veto at the time, forced to reconsider the original shape of the reform and to reconcile it with the reservations of the President and his political background, with the result of a compromise adjustment increasing the number of voivodeships to 16, with Lubusz Voivodeship included among the four additional ones created according to the agreement. The path leading to such and outcome was far from smooth. The government made an effort to highlight and exploit the decades-long animosity between the approximately same-size two principal cities, spreading scare against its inevitable re-ignition and explosion in any of these two cities after designating the other one as the voivodeship capital, and hoping to use the engineered scare as the main argument in the ongoing discussions against creating the Lubusz voivodeship, The animosity, existing indeed between the cities, has been historically rooted in a widespread perception among Gorzów inhabitants that the 1950 decision to designate Zielona Góra as the voivodeship capital instead of their larger and more populous city, was taken by the anticlerical communist government due to a hidden motivation of punishing Gorzów for becoming the see of the newly established Roman Catholic
apostolic administration An Apostolic administration in the Catholic Church is administrated by a prelate appointed by the pope to serve as the ordinary for a specific area. Either the area is not yet a diocese (a stable 'pre-diocesan', usually missionary apostolic admi ...
governing the majority of the Recovered Territories, with the ensuing discrimination of the city by the voivodeship authorities in the years 1950-1975 in terms of establishing any new public cultural and educational institutions, other public investments or public funds allocations, in vivid contrast to the unjust favoring of their own seat, the city of Zielona Góra; a sentiment reinforced further by the surprise relocation of the see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gorzów to Zielona Góra in 1992, renamed as a result the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów The Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów ( la, Viridimontanensis-Gorzoviensis) is a Latin rite suffragan diocese in the Ecclesiastical province of Archdiocese of Szczecin-Kamień in Lubuskie, Poland. Its cathedral episcopal see i ...
, and finally and perhaps most importantly, by the historical, perpetual and almost sacred rivalry between the
motorcycle speedway Motorcycle speedway, usually referred to simply as speedway, is a motorcycle sport involving four and sometimes up to six riders competing over four anti-clockwise laps of an oval circuit. The motorcycles are specialist machines that use only ...
clubs located in both cities. The objective of the local elites in Zielona Góra was in turn to become a single capital centre, reverting to the situation before 1975, while any prospect of sharing the governing institutions was for a long time treated with their hostility. In spite of that, the looming threat of a "everybody lose" scenario set to materialize in case of a possible implementation of the original reform draft, paved the way for neutralizing this argument through forcing both rival sides into the breakthrough reconciliation accord known as the Paradyż Agreement, brokered by the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów The Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów ( la, Viridimontanensis-Gorzoviensis) is a Latin rite suffragan diocese in the Ecclesiastical province of Archdiocese of Szczecin-Kamień in Lubuskie, Poland. Its cathedral episcopal see i ...
and formalized in a document signed during a highly publicized local summit in the Gościkowo-Paradyż Abbey on 13 March 1998. This compromise agreement, was negotiated and concluded between the delegations of both rival cities, composed of the respectively aligned most powerful local and national scene politicians and business people, with its most important provision being the unusual arrangement to divide and distribute the governing institutions of the voivodeship more or less equally between the two cities. On the basis of this broadly supported agreement, an effective public pressure endorsed jointly by the two centers was successfully exerted on the central government which ultimately acquiesced to the demand of establishing Lubusz Voivodeship. Nevertheless, creating any new type of public institution at voivodeship level in Poland continues to ignite almost automatically a fierce battle in the Lubusz Voivodeship regarding the seat of the institution. There have also been numerous attempts to relocate some of the existing public institutions under various pretexts from one city to another, in some cases successful, as well as of merging a pair of equal institutions of a type existing in both cities, in order to make one of them a branch of the other, with obscure or no justification in most cases for such merger. Nevertheless, a general local majority consensus prevails that the compromise, although unsatisfactory for any of the two cities, spared both of them the fate of a number of cities which lost in 1999 entirely the status of a voivodeship capital and all voivodeship-level institutions, along with the associated attractiveness and prestige of the city as a place to live, crucial for its growth, with the ensuing profoundly detrimental phenomena.


Geography

The Lubusz Voivodeship is a land of forests and lakes; forests cover 48% of the area. The river
Oder The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows th ...
, flowing through the voivodeship, is one of the few large European rivers retaining
broadleaved A broad-leaved, broad-leaf, or broadleaf tree is any tree within the diverse botanical group of angiosperms that has flat leaves and produces seeds inside of fruits. It is one of two general types of trees, the other being a conifer, a tree with ne ...
and riparian forests. Areas with the highest natural values are protected as wildlife reserves, national parks (the Drawieński National Park and the Warta Estuary National Park) and landscape parks. The 19th century Mużakowski Park, located on both sides of the Polish-German border, has entered the UNESCO World Heritage List. The voivodeship abounds in lakes, especially in its central and northern parts; around those lakes numerous bathing resorts, holiday centres and farms offering tourist services have been established.


Cities and towns

The voivodeship contains 3 cities and 40 towns. These are listed below in descending order of population (as of 2021):


Administrative division

Lubusz Voivodeship is divided into 14 counties ( powiats): 2 city counties and 12 land counties. These are further divided into 82 gminas. The counties are listed in the following table (ordering within categories is by decreasing population).


Economy

The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 10.8 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.2% of Polish economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 17,600 euros or 58% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 67% of the EU average.


Protected areas

Protected area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...
s in Lubusz Voivodeship include two National Parks and eight Landscape Parks. These are listed below. *
Drawa National Park Drawa National Park ( pl, Drawieński Park Narodowy) is located in north-western Poland, on the border of Greater Poland, Lubusz and West Pomeranian Voivodeships. The park is a part of the huge Drawsko Forest (Puszcza Drawska), which lies on the ...
(partly in
Greater Poland Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska (; german: Großpolen, sv, Storpolen, la, Polonia Maior), is a historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed by Kalisz, the oldest city ...
and West Pomeranian Voivodeships) * Ujście Warty National Park *
Ujście Warty Landscape Park Warta Mouth Landscape Park ( pl, Park Krajobrazowy Ujście Warty) is a protected area ( a Landscape Park) in western Poland, along the lower stretches of the Warta river as it approaches its confluence with the Oder river. The Park was established ...
(partly in West Pomeranian Voivodeship) * Barlinek-Gorzów Landscape Park (partly in West Pomeranian Voivodeship) * Gryżyna Landscape Park * Krzesin Landscape Park * Łagów Landscape Park * Muskau Bend Landscape Park ( UNESCO World Heritage Site) *
Przemęt Landscape Park Przemęt Landscape Park (''Przemęcki Park Krajobrazowy'') is a protected area ( Landscape Park) in western Poland, established in 1991, covering an area of . The Park is shared between two voivodeships: Lubusz Voivodeship and Greater Poland Voi ...
(partly in Greater Poland Voivodeship) * Pszczew Landscape Park (partly in Greater Poland Voivodeship)


See also

*
Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów The Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów ( la, Viridimontanensis-Gorzoviensis) is a Latin rite suffragan diocese in the Ecclesiastical province of Archdiocese of Szczecin-Kamień in Lubuskie, Poland. Its cathedral episcopal see i ...
* German exonyms (Lubusz Voivodeship)


References


External links


Polish Government Link, Lands conquered by Mieszko I and Boleslaw I Official website of Lubusz Voivodeship- Tourism in Lubuskie
- TURYSTYKA {{Authority control States and territories established in 1999