Orzysz

History

The location of the town has been inhabited for a long time. In 1895 remains of a settlement dated to 300-1000 AD were discovered near the town on the shores of Lake Orzysz. The present settlement was founded by Wawrzyniec Polak, who in 1443 was allowed to establish the settlement by the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order Konrad von Erlichshausen. In 1454, Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region to the Kingdom of Poland upon the request of the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation, and the Thirteen Years' War broke out. After the Peace of Toruń in 1466, the Teutonic Order regained authority over the town as a fief of the Polish Crown. As of 1539, the population of the settlement was solely Polish. After Reformation until 1702 church services in the only church were conducted in the Masurian dialects of Polish, spoken by the ethnically Polish majority of the town's population. A year earlier, in 1701, the settlement became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. It was subjected to Germanisation policies, and in 1796 a local Prussian official filed a complaint against the local parish pastor for not complying with these policies and continuing schooling in Polish. The town became impoverished as a result of the fire and the collapse of the local economy. On the other hand, only around 100 inhabitants did not speak Polish, according to other sources. On 11 July 1920 the East Prussian plebiscite, mandated by the Versailles Treaty, was held in the District of Allenstein (now Olsztyn), which included Arys. District-wide results were 1,480 votes for Germany and only 1 (one) vote for Poland. Some Poles tried to escape and during such attempts three were killed by the Germans, plus three more died in the camp due to epidemics. Towards the end of World War II Arys…