Duchy of Żagań

Żagań Palace

After the death of Duke Konrad I of Głogów, his heirs divided his duchy. The castle at Żagań became the residence of his youngest son Przemko, the first Duke of Żagań from 1278, who established a monastery of Augustinian Canons there. In 1284 he swapped his estates for the Duchy of Ścinawa and was succeeded by his elder brother Konrad II the Hunchback. When Konrad II died in 1304 all former Głogów estates were re-unified under his surviving brother Henry III.

In 1309 Henry III of Głogów was followed by his eldest son Henry IV the Faithful, who in 1321 divided the duchy again between him and his younger brothers. He ceded Głogów to Przemko II and retired to Żagań, which again became the capital of a duchy in its own right. In 1329 all sons of Henry III of Głogów became vassals of John of Luxembourg, the King of Bohemia - with the exception of Przemko II who died suddenly two years later. When in 1393 Henry VI the Elder, grandson of Henry IV died without issue, the estates were again re-unified with Głogów until in 1412 Jan I, the eldest son of Duke Henry VIII the Sparrow became the sole ruler of the Żagań duchy. After a fierce battle for the inheritance, in 1472 his son Jan II the Mad finally sold it to the Saxon duke Albert III the Bold with the consent of the Bohemian king Matthias Corvinus, thus ending the centuries-long Piast rule.

Wettin lands with eastern Żagań exclave (orange) in 1485. In 1549, Maurice of Saxony exchanged it with Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor for some minor Bohemian lands.

Duke Albert III, the progenitor of the Albertine line of the Wettin dynasty, ruled jointly with his elder brother Elector Ernest, even after the partition of the Wettin lands in 1485. With the accession of Albert's son Henry IV in 1539, Żagań turned Protestant. The Albertine and Ernestine branches came to a rupture when in the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–47 Duke Maurice of Saxony fought against his cousin John Frederick I, who by the Capitulation of Wittenberg had to renounce his claims to Żagań. In 1549 Maurice, now Elector, swapped Żagań by an agreement with the Bohemian king Ferdinand I of Habsburg.

As a Bohemian fief, Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1627 allotted Żagań to Albrecht von Wallenstein, then Duke of Frýdlant, Imperial generalissimo in the Thirty Years' War, who hosted his astrologer Johannes Kepler here. After Wallenstein's assassination it passed to Václav Eusebius František, Prince of Lobkowicz and so to the illustrious Bohemian family of Lobkowicz, who had the Baroque Żagań Palace erected. King Frederick II of Prussia conquered Żagań in the course of the First Silesian War, after which by the 1742 Treaty of Breslau it fell to Prussia.

Prussian Sagan district 1816-1932

Castle in Janowiec near Szprotawa (Poland), on the border of the former Duchy of Żagań

In 1786 Żagań was purchased by Peter von Biron, Duke of Courland, who bequeathed it to his daughter Wilhelmine, from whom in 1842 it passed to her sister Pauline and finally to her sister Dorothea, the divorced wife of Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord, a nephew of the great French diplomat Talleyrand. Dorothea came to pass her retirement years at Żagań; a patent of King Frederick William IV of Prussia on 6 January 1845 invested her as Duchess of Sagan and Napoleon III recognized the title in France, in favor of her son Napoleon Louis. In France there is a prince and a duc de Sagan. The double title, both Prussian and French, served to render the duc de Sagan a neutral party in World War II: his Château de Valençay provided a safe haven for treasures of the Louvre during the German occupation of France.

The Duchy had a vote on the Silesian County Council, and the holder in the rank of a Duke was a member of the Prussian House of Lords. In 1900 the duchy had an area of 1,211 km² (468 sq mi) and 65,000 inhabitants. After 1815 it was incorporated into the Prussian Province of Silesia, and was part of Landkreis Sprottau from 1932. With the implementation of the Oder-Neisse line in 1945 the Żagań territory fell to Poland, with the exception of the strip of land on the western bank of the Neisse river, which became part of East Germany; today this territory belongs to the German municipality of Krauschwitz.