Śmigiel (german: Schmiegel) is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than city, cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares ...

in Kościan County,

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 A province is almost always an administrative division ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

, with 5,420 inhabitants (2004).

History

Śmigiel was granted town rights in 1415 or perhaps earlier. It was a private town of

Polish nobility The ''szlachta'' (Polish: endonym, Lithuanian: šlėkta) were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth who, as a class, had the dominating position in ...

, administratively located in the Kościan County in the Poznań Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown. It was annexed by

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 ...

in the

Second Partition of Poland The 1793 Second Partition of Poland was the second of three partitions (or partial annexations) that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The second partition occurred in the aftermath of the Polish–Russian ...

in 1793, then regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, re-annexed by Prussia in 1815, and included within Germany in 1871. While part of Prussia and Germany, the town was administered within

Kreis Schmiegel Kreis Schmiegel ( pl, Powiat śmigielski) was a county in the southern administrative district of Posen, in the Prussian province of Posen. It presently lies in the southern part of Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Pol ...

in the

Grand Duchy of Posen The Grand Duchy of Posen (german: Großherzogtum Posen; pl, Wielkie Księstwo Poznańskie) was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, created from territories annexed by Prussia after the Partitions of Poland, and formally established following th ...

/ Province of Posen. As Poland regained independence following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

in 1918, the town was reintegrated with Poland, and local Poles joined the Greater Poland Uprising (1918–19), which aim was to reintegrate the entire region of Greater Poland with the reborn state. Among the insurgents were future mayors Władysław Pioch and Maksymilian Stachowiak. Władysław Pioch co-organized the local Polish administration. During the joint German-Soviet

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

, which started

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

in September 1939, the town was captured by Germany after a Polish defense, co-organized by the local mayor Władysław Pioch. In the following weeks, on September 30 and October 23, 1939, the German '' Einsatzgruppe VI'' carried out two public executions of Poles, killing 8 and 15 people respectively. Among the victims were pre-way mayors Władysław Pioch and Maksymilian Stachowiak, local Polish activists,

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

and former insurgents of the Greater Poland Uprising. Polish craftsmen and merchants from Śmigiel were also among 45 Poles murdered by the Germans on November 7, 1939 in the forest near Kościan. In 1940, Germany expelled 500 Poles to the General Government (German-occupied central Poland), and their houses were handed over to German colonists as part of the ''

Lebensraum (, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Impe ...

'' policy. Also a transit camp for Poles expelled from nearby villages was operated in the town. The

German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 193 ...

ended in 1945.

Sports

The local football club is Pogoń Śmigiel. It competes in the lower leagues.

People associated with the town

Wilhelm Salomon Freund Wilhelm Salomon Freund (January 27, 1831– June 4, 1915) was a Jewish Germany, German lawyer and politician. Freund was born in Śmigiel, Schmiegel (Śmigiel) in the Province of Posen. He received his law degree from the University of Wrocław, U ...

(1831–1915), politician * (1931–2010), world-famous Polish gynecologist, professor *

Hans Jüttner {{Infobox military person , name = Hans Jüttner , birth_date = {{birth-date, 2 March 1894 , death_date = {{death-date and age, 24 May 1965, 2 March 1894 , image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J28010, Hans Jüttner.jpg , image_upright= 0.9 , image_ ...

(1894–1965), SS general * Georg John (1879–1941), actor * Carl August Lebschée (1800–1877), artist

Gallery

20150908 baa smigiel ul farna kosciol-mk-a.jpg, Church of the Assumption of Mary SM Śmigiel Wiatraki 2019 (4).jpg, Old windmills 20150908 ag321 smigiel urzad miejski-mk-b.jpg, Town hall 20150908 cr smigiel wiatrak shot-square-mk-a.jpg, ''Plac Rozstrzelanych''

History

Sports

People associated with the town

Gallery

References

See also