Pasłęk

History

The oldest record of the name of the Pasłęk territory appears as Pozolucensis provincia in a petition of Polish Dominicans to Pope Gregory IX from 1231. Then it was taken over by Poles without a fight. at the request of which King Casimir IV Jagiellon signed the act of incorporation of the region to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. The town joined Poland and recognized Polish rule. During the subsequent Thirteen Years’ War (1454–1466) it was briefly captured by the Teutonic Knights, but in 1456 it returned to Poland. During the last Polish–Teutonic War, which broke out after the newly chosen Grand Master of the Teutonic Order refused to submit to the Crown of Poland, the town was captured and held by the Poles from 1520 until the dissolution of the Teutonic state in 1525. Between 1758 and 1762 it was under Russian occupation. In 1807 it was captured by Napoleonic troops. In 1831 the town suffered a flood. Part of the Kingdom of Prussia since 1701, it became part of the German Empire in 1871. Following the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the Versailles Treaty the town remained the seat of Landkreis Preußisch Holland within Weimar Germany's exclave East Prussia. With the arrival of the Red Army on 23 January 1945, and the end of the war, the town again became part of Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the 1980s. It was handed over to Polish administration on 1 June 1945 and renamed to the historic Polish name Pasłęk on 7 May 1946. The remaining ethnic Germans were expelled in several transports within the following year, e.g. 149 people on 4 September and 89 on 4 October 1947. A transport of 80 children from an orphanage, many of them survivors of the Grünhagen railway accident or wartime evacuees, left in…