Šiauliai is a large city in northern Lithuania. It is the seat of the surrounding district of Šiauliai and has been the capital of the Šiauliai district since 1994. It has the status of a township, so it has an elected mayor and city council. Šiauliai is an important business location, transport hub, seat of a university and a Catholic diocese.
13th to 19th centuries
In chronicles of the Knight
of Swords, Šiauliai is mentioned as Soule, Saulia and Saulen as
early as the 13th century. The city's founding date is September
22nd, 1236, the day of the so-called Sun Battle or Battle of
Schaulen (Lithuanian Saulės mūšis), on which Lithuanian-Samaitic
associations inflicted a devastating defeat on an army led by the
Livonian Brotherhood of the Sword near today's city. In the two
following centuries, Šiauliai was considered the capital of the "Sun
Country", as the area was called at that time.
The year 1445
has been passed down as the year the first wooden church was built
in the city center, which was replaced by today's brick building in
1625. In 1589, Šiauliai was granted Magdeburg town charter and
served as the administrative center of an area (Lithuanian Didieji
Šiauliai) that included a royal estate with 6000 farms and
neighboring settlements such as Joniškis, Radviliškis and
Meškuičiai.
Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Šiauliai was
devastated several times by major fires. Looting by Swedish troops,
the outbreak of a plague epidemic and another looting by soldiers of
the Napoleonic army during the Russian campaign in 1812 also had a
negative impact on the city's development. Towards the end of the
18th century, the city played an important political role as the
administrative center for thirteen districts in the area.
With the settlement of Silesian weavers in the late 18th century,
Šiauliai became a center of the textile industry. The construction
of a road connection between Saint Petersburg and Königsberg in 1839
and the railway line between Liepāja (Libau) and Kaišiadorys, each
running through the city, promoted the development of further
branches of industry and the rise of Šiauliai to an important
trading town and the economic center of northern Lithuania. The
Choral Synagogue, built in 1871, was destroyed in World War II.
The last major fire disaster in 1872 marked the end of the
wooden architecture that had prevailed in Šiauliai until then. The
rapid reconstruction was followed by the establishment of further
industrial companies in the silk, wool, leather, cigarette and
chocolate industries. Beer breweries also emerged. In 1897, Šiauliai
was the second largest city in Lithuania after Kaunas with more than
16,000 inhabitants.
A Jewish community had existed in the
city since the 17th century. With a Jewish population of 56% in
1909, Šiauliai was considered an important Jewish center.
The
early 20th century
During the First World War, Šiauliai and its
surroundings were the scene of the Battle of Schaulen between April
and June 1915. On April 17th, the historic city center and around
85% of all buildings in the city area were devastated by the war. As
a result, German troops occupied Šiauliai.
The period after
the war and Lithuania's declaration of independence was a period of
reconstruction and economic expansion. In addition to five new
leather and shoe factories, wool processing and weaving businesses,
a furniture factory and the Gubernija brewery were established. In
1938, Šiauliai accounted for 85% of Lithuanian leather production,
60% of shoe production, 75% of linen and 35% of chocolate
production. Šiauliai remained the second largest city in Lithuania
between the two world wars.
The second World War
German
occupation and persecution of the Jews
After the German invasion
of the Soviet Union and thus also of Lithuania, which it occupied,
from June 22, 1941, around 1,000 Jews fled into the interior of the
Soviet Union. On June 26, 1941, the city was occupied by Wehrmacht
troops, the beginning of a reign of terror for the population. In
the following two weeks, Germans and Lithuanians murdered 1,000
Jewish residents in anti-Jewish riots. Then a civil administration
was set up under the Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern
territories. An area commissioner - comparable to a German district
administrator - was appointed to represent Schaulen, in this case
Hans Gewecke. Under his aegis, the establishment of a ghetto in the
districts of Kaukazas and Trakai began on July 25, 1941. While 1,000
Jewish residents were deported to Žagarė, about the same number fled
to the city's ghetto from the surrounding cities and towns, so that
at the end of 1941 around 4,500 to 5,000 people were living in the
ghetto. Until September 1943, the ghetto population had to do forced
labor for the Germans, including building the Zokniai airport. From
September 1943 the ghetto was converted into a concentration camp.
On November 5, 1943, a "cleanup" took place in which 574 children
and old and disabled ghetto residents were deported to an
extermination camp.
On June 22, 1944, the Red Army began Operation Bagration and
completed it victoriously by August 20, 1944. When she approached
Šiauliai in July 1944, the remaining residents of the ghetto were
taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, where most of them were
murdered. About 500 Jewish residents of Šiauliai, less than 10% of
the pre-war Jewish population, survived.
The time after the
Second World War
Eighty percent of Šiauliai was destroyed during
the war. The Soviet POW camp 294 existed in the city for German
POWs.
After 1945 it was rebuilt as a modern city. Today
Šiauliai is an important administrative center.