Znojmo (German Znaim) is a city with extended powers in the South
Moravian Region on the left bank of the river Dyje, 65 km southwest
of Brno and 83 km northwest of Vienna. The border with Austria runs
eight kilometers from the city. Approximately 34,000 inhabitants
live in the town. More than 40,000 inhabitants live in the Znojmo
settlement agglomeration, including the adjacent independent
municipalities. It is the second largest city in the South Moravian
Region and the historical center of southwestern Moravia.
Until 2002, Znojmo was a district town in the administrative
district of Znojmo. Under Austria-Hungary and during the first
Czechoslovak Republic, it was also a statutory city until 1928.
The neighboring villages of the seat are Kravsko, Citonice,
Strachotice, Podmolí, Dobšice, Chvalovice, Dyje, Havraníky, Nový
Šaldorf-Sedlešovice, Tasovice, Mašovice, Suchohrdly, Únanov,
Vrbovec, Plenkovice, Žerůtky, Hluboké Mašůvky and Kuchařovice.
History up to the Thirty Years' War
The area of the city has
been inhabited since prehistoric times. From the 8th century AD, on
a rocky promontory opposite the present city center and castle,
there was a large Great Moravian fortified settlement (now part of
Hradiště), which guarded the ford across the river Dyje about 900 m,
where the trade route from Bohemia through western Moravia to the
Danube passed. Inside the fortified settlement, which in the 8th to
10th century controlled a large area of today's southwestern
Moravia and the adjacent part of Lower Austria, the church (rotunda)
of St. Hippolyta. The existence of the second church is still being
questioned by most of the academic community. There was also an
extensive burial ground, discovered in 2007 and still being
intensively researched. Old Moravian Znojmo (Hradiště) was destroyed
by the Hungarians sometime in the middle of the 10th century, but
life here was soon restored at the turn of the first and second
millennium. After the conquest of Moravia by the Czech Přemyslids
(1019/1029), the first administrative center was established in
Hradiště. The new Přemyslid castle was built closer to the strategic
river ford on the opposite side of the Gránický valley during the
reign of Prince Conrad I of Brno and his son Litold Znojmo.
The apparent first written mention of Znojmo is found in a document
dated to 1048, which, however, was a forgery with which the Czech
prince Břetislav I. was to establish the provost's office in
Rajhrad; the Znojmo castellan Markvart was mentioned among the
witnesses. After the death of Prince Břetislav, Znojmo fell to his
son Konrád I. At the latest after 1092, an independent Přemyslid
principality called the Znojmo estate was established. Under
Konrád's son Litold, the first coins were minted at Znojmo Castle -
Znojmo denarii. Suburban settlements with the dominants of the
churches of St. Michael and St. Nicholas were established on the
forecourt of the castle.
The most important of the Přemyslids
from Znojmo, Konrád II. Ota, who gradually controlled the whole of
Moravia and eventually became a prince in Bohemia, founded the
Premonstratensian monastery in Louka in 1190, which stands south of
the historic city center. In the years 1222–1226, Znojmo was
promoted by a royal town by Přemysl Otakar I, the first of its kind
in South Moravia, and fortified by strong walls, which have largely
survived to this day. Znojmo flourished in the 13th and 14th
centuries, when Znojmo already had cobbled streets, a water supply
system and two hospitals. In 1240, King Wenceslas I donated the
provostship of St. Hippolyta in Hradiště a community of hospital
brothers and sisters at St. Francis in Prague, founded on the
initiative of St. Agnes of Bohemia, sister of King Wenceslas, from
which the Knights of the Red Star soon became a knightly order.
In the immediate vicinity of the castle, King Wenceslas I
founded a monastery of minorities (1226–1239), later a monastery of
the Poor Clares (1271–1274) was later established here. After the
Battle of the Moravian Field (August 26, 1278), the Czech king and
Moravian margrave Přemysl Otakar II was buried in the Minorite
monastery church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. (1279). In
1296, Wenceslas II transferred. the remains of his father to the
Church of St. Vitus in Prague. In January 1307, the Czech King
Rudolf of Habsburg and his father, King Albrecht I of Rome, met with
the Znojmo minorities to proclaim a new order of succession on the
Czech throne, which, however, never came into force due to Rudolf's
early death and the different will of the Czech nobility. During the
reign of King John of Luxembourg, the city was pledged several times
to the Dukes of Austria. In 1404, as a bastion of the followers of
the Moravian Margrave Prokop of Luxembourg, it was unsuccessfully
besieged for two months by the troops of the Austrian Duke Albrecht
IV. and the Hungarian King Sigismund of Luxembourg. During the
Hussite wars of the first half of the 15th century, the city
remained Catholic and sided with the Czech king and Roman emperor
Sigismund of Luxembourg. With his death in Znojmo on December 9,
1437, the Luxembourg dynasty died out.
History after the
Thirty Years' War
After the Battle of White Mountain, a
provincial assembly was held in the town in 1628, at which a renewed
provincial establishment was proclaimed for Moravia, enacting the
Habsburgs' inheritance on the Czech throne and re-Catholicization.
In 1645, during the Thirty Years' War, impoverished Znojmo was
conquered by the Swedes in three days under the command of General
Lennart Torstenson (1603–1651).
At the end of the 17th century, the city was hit by a major
plague epidemic, which claimed nearly 800 lives. Later, Znojmo was
affected by the Napoleonic Wars, first in 1805, when the Russians
and French passed through it before the Battle of Austerlitz, and
the second time in 1809, when a battle between Austrian and French
troops, known as the Battle of Znojmo, took place near Znojmo. After
the defeat of the Turks near Vienna in 1683, Znojmo Castle lost its
strategic importance and in the desolate state Emperor Joseph I
divided it: the inner castle was granted as a fief of the Czech
Crown to Maximilian Francis of Deblin and his brother, who built a
Baroque castle on the ruins. The outer castle was handed over to the
city of Znojmo, which founded a brewery here. After the extinction
of the Deblin family in 1784, the chateau fell back to the Czech
crown. Emperor Joseph II. here in 1787 he placed a military
hospital. After 1865, there was a military barracks, until in 1910
the building began to be used by the Znojmo City Museum (now the
South Moravian Museum in Znojmo). Of the original castle, only the
Romanesque rotunda of St. Kateřiny, a powerful perimeter wall and
the Gothic cellar of the inner castle. Until 1892, the so-called
Robber's Tower stood at the entrance to the outer castle from the
forecourt.
Further development of the city of Znojmo took
place in the 18th and 19th centuries in connection with the
construction of imperial roads to Brno, Prague and Vienna, the
construction of the connecting Vienna-Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou-Brno
State Railway with the Znojmo branch (1870) –Jihlava – Nymburk –
Prague / Děčín (1871). The construction of the railway prompted the
elaboration of a timeless, high-quality regulatory plan, according
to which the town began to expand very quickly, especially to the
east to Novosady, to the valley of the Leska stream and to the new
railway station. An interesting star-shaped Marian square was
created on the ring road, inspired by the Place de l'Étoile in
Paris. The construction of the railway enabled the development of
Znojmo vegetable growing and horticulture. Znojmo cucumber has
become a household name abroad.
The discovery of kaolin
deposits contributed to the development of the ceramic industry in
the city. Alois Klammerth's ceramic factory (+1878) has been
producing brown glazed ceramics, white sanitary ceramics and faience
since 1851. It reached its peak in collaboration with Viennese
artists from the School of Applied Arts in the 1970s.
Numerous parks were established, new schools were built, Albrecht's
barracks (later Žižkova), the town waterworks, the Jewish synagogue
(1888), the town theater (1900), the Evangelical church and the
regional court with a prison (1913–1919, today the district court is
located here) .
History in the first half of the 20th century
The promising expansion of the city was killed by the First World
War. During the disintegration of Austria-Hungary in the autumn of
1918, Znojmo became the center of the separatist region of German
South Moravia, which resisted annexation to the newly formed
Czechoslovakia and, with reference to Wilson's right to
self-determination, declared affiliation with German Austria. It was
not until a military intervention on December 16, 1918, that Znojmo
and its surroundings were occupied by Czechoslovak troops. This was
followed by a massive influx of Czech officials into the city and
the related departure of some Germans, especially from the ranks of
the intelligentsia. Thus, the current majority of Germans in the
city was balanced to a ratio of 1: 1. In 1920, the first Czech was
elected mayor of the city - Dr. Josef Mareš. Thanks to his prudent
policy of broad consensus, coexistence between the two nationalities
in the city was kept within calm limits. The city was then
officially visited by the President of the Republic Tomáš Garrigue
Masaryk. The development of the city in the interwar period
continued to be dynamic due to the massive construction of
residential houses, yet for the first time in its history, the city
began to struggle with the syndrome of the city on the periphery.
The creation of the customs border between the Czechoslovak Republic
and Austria, the reduction of traffic on the Northwestern Railway
and other centralist measures of the Prague government greatly
limited the export of traditional Znojmo commodities to the vast
catchment area around Vienna and contributed to the impoverishment
of a large part of Znojmo's population. This aspect contributed to
the strong radicalization of the German population, especially after
the establishment of the Sudeten German Party.
By the Munich
Agreement of Autumn 1938, Znojmo was annexed to Hitler's Third
Reich. This caused the exodus of a large part of Bohemia, Jews and
German anti-fascists from Znojmo to the truncated rest of the
republic. The Jewish synagogue was closed and later demolished.
Before the war (1930), 675 people of Jewish origin lived in Znojmo.
On August 4, 2016, the first Znojmo stones of the missing, the
so-called stolpersteine for Holocaust victims were laid in the
city.
With the end of World War II in the spring of 1945, Znojmo was
damaged by several raids by Soviet and American bombers. The
building of the old town hall was directly affected, and the train
station suffered great damage. The German Armed Forces left the city
just before the arrival of the Red Army (May 8, 1945). With the
arrival of the Soviets and the restoration of Czechoslovak state
power, there was a wild phase of the expulsion of the German
population from the city. The first trains brought hundreds of Czech
new settlers from the interior along the renewed line. Later, in the
phase of organized deportation, the German population was interned
in the area of a forced labor camp on Pražská třída (today the
premises of the Police of the Czech Republic). An extraordinary
people's court also sat in the town in 1945–1948. During train
transports in 1946, 15,000 Znojmo Germans were deported to the
American occupation zone in Germany. The new population came mainly
from the area of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and also from
Haná, Wallachia and Slovácko. It was the largest ethnic change in
the history of the city since the 13th century.
In the
parliamentary elections in 1946, the candidate of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia won in Znojmo. After the communist coup in
February 1948, the border with Austria was gradually closed. Znojmo
became a so-called border town, a "dam against imperialism". On
Wednesday, August 21, 1968, Soviet T 54 tanks with white invasion
stripes flooded today's Masaryk Square.