Send Gift Baskets to Lubin, Poland

The Lubin area lies halfway between the main settlements of two West Slavic tribes, the Dziadoszanie and Trzebowianie, whose lands were subdued by King Mieszko I of Poland in about 990. If either of the two tribes founded the town, it is unclear which tribe did so. According to legend, the city gets its name from Luba, a young man credited with slaying a giant bear that was terrorizing its residents. As one of 13 Silesian castellanies, Lubin is mentioned in a papal bull dated 1155.

There was once a fieldstone church built by the Polish voivode Piotr Wostowic of Dunin (1080–1153) on a hill West of Lubin, where about 1230, a castellany and a village arose, which is still known as the Old City today (Polish: Stary Lubin). It was first mentioned by Pope Clement IV in a 1267 deed as a fiefdom of Trzebnica Abbey under the Old Polish name of Lubin.

The New City of Lubin may have been founded in the 1280s by German settlers, perhaps descended from Lower Lorraine or Franconia, as part of the Ostsiedlung. The city received its city rights around 1295. The Duke of Cinawa paid homage to King John of Bohemia in 1329, who, upon the death of John’s brother Duke Przemko II of Gogów in 1331, incorporated his lands into the Kingdom of Bohemia and shared the political fortunes of Silesian crown lands.

Lubin Castle is a residence for the Piast Duke Louis I the Fair and his descendants, dating back to 1348. After Louis’ quarrel with his elder brother Duke Wenceslaus I of Legnica, in 1359, Emperor Charles IV offered Lubin and other surrounding lands to him. A manuscript on Saint Hedwig of Andechs that he drafted in 1353 is housed at the J Paul Getty Museum, called Schlackenwerth (Ostrov) Codex. Lubin’s Castle Chapel dates back to the 14th century.

In 1951, the high altar of the Lubin parish church was moved to the Wroclaw cathedral from where it was built in the late 15th century. 

Under Duke George I of Brieg’s (died 1521) and his widow Anna of Pomerania’s rule, Caspar Schwenckfeld, born in nearby Osiek, led the Protestant Reformation in Lower Silesia. Lubin fell under the suzerainty of the Habsburg monarchy in 1526, along with Bohemian Silesia. During the Thirty Years’ War, it was devastated several times. Until 1675, Lubin was part of the Piast-ruled Duchy of Legnica before being incorporated into Habsburg-ruled Bohemia.

Prussian King Frederick II conquered the town in the Silesian Wars in the mid-18th century and became part of Germany in 1871. Upon the creation of the German Empire in 1871, Legnica (Liegnitz) and Glogau (Glogau) were connected by rail. Local pastors wrote about native Poles who spoke a local dialect of Polish in their parish reports at the end of the 18th century. Germanization of the native Polish population lasted until the 1930s. Under Nazi Germany, the town was home to a Reich Labour Service labor camp.