Send Gift Baskets to Leszno, Poland

The unrecorded history of the city dates back to the 13th century. The estate was first mentioned in historical documents in 1393 when a noble named Stefan Karnin-Wieniawa owned it. As was the custom among Polish nobility, the family eventually adopted the name Leszczyski (literally meaning “of Leszno”).

By 1516, King Vladislaus II expelled a community of Protestants known as the Unity of the Brethren (Unitas fratrum) from Bohemian lands and settled in Leszno. The Leszczyński family invited them, imperial counts since 1473 and Calvinist converts. Weavers from nearby Silesia and Bohemian Protestants contributed to the settlement’s growth.

In 1547, Sigismund I of Poland granted it a privilege under the Magdeburg Law, making it a town. Located in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown, Leszno was a remote town in the Wschowa County of the Pozna Voivodeship. Because of the Protestant community, Leszno became one of the largest printing centers in Greater Poland. Their numbers grew with the inflow of refugees from Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia during the Thirty Years War.

With the help of King Sigismund III Vasa, Leszno was granted additional privileges, making it equal to the most important Polish cities such as Kraków, Gdansk, and Warsaw. In the 17th century, the town had an acclaimed Gymnasium (school) headed by Jan Amos Komenský (known in English as Comenius), an educator and the last bishop of the Unity of the Brethren. In 1638, Johann Heermann, a German-speaking poet, moved to Leszno and died in 1647. Fortifications were built, and the town’s area increased between 1636 and 1639.

Leszno’s prosperity and cultural prominence ended during the Second Northern War when Swedish forces burned the town down on April 28, 1656. Following its rebuilding, Russian forces set it ablaze again during the Great Northern War in 1707 and ravaged by the plague in 1709.

After King Stanislaus I Leszczynski abdicated, Alexander Joseph Sulkowski acquired the city from the Leszczyski family in 1738. Leszno was connected to Warsaw and Dresden by one of two main routes in the 18th century, often traveled by Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland.