Liberec (API: , in German: Reichenberg ) is the Capitale of the Région of Liberec in Tchéquie.

History

The first written reference mentioning Liberec goes back to 1352, Liberec is not whereas a ford on North-South trade route, halt after the passage of the peak of Jested. But at the 16th century, the city knows an expansion thanks to textile industry and obtains the statute of free city under the reign of the emperor Rodolphe II in 1577. Redern, lords of Liberec must exile following their defeat with the Bataille of the White Mountain.

The rise of Liberec dates from the last decades of the 19th century, when the city becomes one of the principal centers of the textile industry of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It then is called “Manchester of Bohemia”. The rich person contractors of the city make build sumptuous residences which make still today the charm of the downtown area, which was saved by the destruction of the two world wars.

Although located on the territories of the crowns of Bohemia, Liberec is a city with the population with 90% allemande. One then knows it under his name of Reichenberg. It belongs to the Sudètes, these territories marrying the line of the mountains coarsely surrounding the quadrilateral of Bohemia, and whose population is mainly of language and German culture.

The question of the integration of the German minority poses problem as of the independence of the Czechoslovakia. This one forms part suitably of the Czech political game and the social life in the first years of the Republic (if one excludes some disorders in the very first years of the young Czechoslovakian State), but with the crisis of 1929 which more particularly strikes the area, whose economy rested on light industry, agriculture and the textile strongly dependant on the exterior markets, the situation changes. Struck by unemployments, the German of Sudètes are an easy prey for the Nazis arrived at the capacity to Germany in 1933 and which openly makes propaganda for the fastening of Sudètes in Reich, via the leader of the Nazi party of Sudètes Konrad Henlein, native of Liberec, and which makes the seat of its party of it. After the Agreements of Munich, Sudètes are annexed in Germany and Liberec becomes the capital of Gau of Sudetenland.

After the war, the German of Sudètes are expelled and the area repopulated gradually by inhabitants come from other Czech areas. Liberec is a relatively prosperous city today.

Education

• technical University of Liberec (in Czech or English)

Characters

• Christoph Demantius (1567 - 1643), type-setter and poet
• Heinrich Herkner (1863 - 1932), economist
• František Xaver Šalda (1867 - 1937), critical arts person
• Ferdinand Porsche (1875 - 1951), originator of cars
• Vlasta Burian (1891 - 1962), actor
• Konrad Henlein (1898 - 1945), politicking Nazi
• Augustin Schramm (1907 - 1948), politician and communist officer
• Barbara Bouchet (1943), American actress of German origin
• Martin Prejudice (1972), tennis player
• Tomáš Enge (1976), racing driver

External bonds

• http://www.infolbc.cz
• http://www.fcslovanliberec.cz
• http://www.BabylonLiberec.cz