Kostrzyn nad Odrą

Castle ruins

Settled since the Bronze Age, the area from about 960 to 1261 was held by the Piast dukes and kings of Poland, who had a gord laid out in the borderlands with the Pomeranian tribes in the north. Duke Mieszko I used Kostrzyn's strategic location as a staging area during his expedition to the Battle of Cedynia in 972. Likewise, his successor Bolesław I the Brave from 1002 also prepared here for conquests and battles in the German–Polish War against King Henry II.[2]

In 1223 the Greater Polish prince Władysław Odonic granted the fortress to the Knights Templar. The name of the town was first mentioned in 1232 in a Polish letter by the Lubusz bishop Wawrzyniec to the Knights Templar, in which the old Slavic name Cozsterine (hence the later German name Küstrin) was mentioned. In the 12th century it developed into a fortified castellany and a Polish taxation post, however, together with Lubusz Land it was seized by the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg in 1261 and incorporated into their Neumark territory east of the Oder river. By 1300 the town had received Magdeburg town rights from Margrave Albert III of Brandenburg and started to grow rapidly, owing largely to trade on the rivers.

In 1373 the town became part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (or Czech Lands), ruled by the Luxembourg dynasty. In 1402, the Luxembourgs reached an agreement with Poland in Kraków, under which Poland was to buy and reincorporate Kostrzyn and the surrounding region,[3] but eventually the Luxembourgs sold the town to the Teutonic Order. After the Thirteen Years’ War broke out in 1454, the Teutonic Knights sold the town to Brandenburg in order to raise funds for war against Poland.

The town in the 17th century

The town in around 1728

In 1535–1571 the town was the seat of John of Brandenburg-Küstrin, who made it the capital of the Neumark region and built a castle. With time this castle was expanded into a fortress, one of the largest such facilities in the region. While still crown prince, Frederick the Great was imprisoned in the fortress, from which he witnessed the execution of his friend Hans Hermann von Katte on 6 November 1730. The town was besieged by the Russians during the Seven Years' War. Captured by the French in 1806, Küstrin was occupied by a French military garrison for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars. During the French retreat from the east in 1814, the town was set on fire and burnt to the ground. The town recovered and became one of the most important railway hubs in the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire. One of the main escape routes for surviving insurgents of the Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the town.[4] In 1857 it was linked to Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder) and in 1875 with Stettin (Szczecin) on the Pomeranian coast. In 1900 its population reached 16,473, including the garrison of the fortress.

In September 1923, the Black Reichswehr attempted to occupy Küstrin but it was suppressed. At the outbreak of World War II Küstrin had 24,000 inhabitants. During the war, the Germans used Polish prisoners of war as forced labourers to build the Stalag III-C POW camp in the present-day district of Drzewice.[5] It housed Polish, French, Serbian, Soviet, Italian, British, American and Belgian POWs.[5] In 1943–45 the town also housed a number of German forced labour camps and a sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Due to Allied air raids on the railway hub and local factories and its position as a German bridgehead on the east bank of the Oder during the Battle of the Oder-Neisse and the Battle of the Seelow Heights, almost 95% of its buildings were destroyed (including all 32 of the city's factories) and the town was generally deserted. The town was captured by the Red Army on 11 March 1945.

Train station

After the war the ruined town became again part of Poland by decision of the Potsdam Conference; Germans remaining in the town were expelled westward in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. The town was repopulated by Poles, many of whom were refugees from Soviet-annexed former eastern Poland, from where they had been displaced by Soviet authorities in accordance to new borders decided at Yalta Conference, while most were re-settlers from central Poland.

The remnants of the old town within the fortress walls, including the castle in which the young Frederick the Great had been imprisoned, were razed after the war and the bricks were used to rebuild Polish cities elsewhere. More recently, plans to rebuild some of the old town in a historical style were considered, but this project appears to be on hold. The section of the town on the west bank of the Oder remained in Germany and is now called Küstrin-Kietz. Between 2004 and 2019 Kostrzyn hosted the annual Pol'and'Rock Festival (formerly Przystanek Woodstock) in the summer, the largest open-air music festival in Europe and one of the largest in the world.

Kostrzyn nad Odrą Fortress

Public school

• 1900: 16,473
• 1925: approx. 19,500
• 1939: approx. 24,000
• 1971: approx. 11,000

Note that the above numbers are based on primary, possibly inaccurate or biased sources.[6][7][8]

Amphitheatre in Kostrzyn nad Odrą