Gietrzwałd

History

Gietrzwałd was founded in 1352 within the Archdiocese of Warmia, then within the dominions of the Teutonic Order, by one Dietrich or Ditter, who named it Dietrichswald. In the 15th century, Gietrzwałd was destroyed during the Thirteen Years' War between Poland and the Teutonic Knights. The village was invaded by the Teutonic army under the command of Georg von Schlieben. In the middle of the 16th century, the settlement was not developing, although there was a school and an inn (Jerzy Kunig had been the owner of the inn since 1645). In 1772 the village was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the First Partition of Poland, and subsequently the local Polish population was subjected to Germanisation. In 1783, there were 57 houses in Gietrzwałd. In 1807, the village was attacked and plundered by the French army in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1878, Polish folk poet and activist Andrzej Samulowski established a Polish Catholic bookstore in the village. In the 1880s, the village had a population of some 1,000, exclusively Poles except for one family. At the same time, in addition to two girls, a dozen women from Warmia and further areas reported claiming to have also had apparitions. Of them were women from Gietrzwałd, such as, 23-year-old Katarzyna Wieczorkówna and 49-year-old widow Elżbieta Bilitewska, whose visions lasted until 1879. Their visions are also usually classified as Gietrzwałd's apparitions, and have received recognition of the parish priest. Since then, pilgrims from Poland and other countries, have been coming to Gietrzwałd to see the picture of the Virgin Mary and a spring with claimed miraculous powers. In 1977, bishop Józef Drzazga declared that the cult of the apparitions was "not contrary to Christian faith and morals" and was "based on credible facts" of a…