Görlitz

Template:Short description Template:Redirect-distinguish Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox German location Görlitz (; Template:Langx; Template:Langx ; Template:Langx ;Template:Efn Template:Langx ; East Lusatian: , , ) is a town in the German state of Saxony. It is on the river Lusatian Neisse and is the largest town in Upper Lusatia, the second-largest town in the region of Lusatia after Cottbus, and the largest town in the German part of the region of Silesia. Görlitz is the easternmost townTemplate:Efn in Germany and lies opposite the Polish town of Zgorzelec, which was the eastern part of Görlitz until 1945. The town has approximately 56,000 inhabitants, which make Görlitz the sixth-largest town in Saxony. It is the seat of the district of Görlitz. Together with Zgorzelec it forms the Euro City of Görlitz/Zgorzelec, which has a combined population of around 86,000.

Görlitz, first mentioned in 1071, developed as a key trading town on the Via Regia route linking Western and Eastern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, it prospered through the cloth trade and became a member of the Lusatian League, enjoying considerable autonomy. The town came under Bohemian, Hungarian, Austrian and Saxon rule before becoming part of Prussia in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna. During World War II, Görlitz was spared major destruction, but the new Oder–Neisse line in 1945 divided it from its eastern districts, which became Zgorzelec in Poland. In the GDR era, Görlitz was a border town with limited cross-border contact, but after German reunification and Poland’s EU accession, cooperation with Zgorzelec increased. Today, Görlitz is renowned for its well-preserved historic architecture and frequent use as a film location.

Görlitz is culturally diverse. Immediately to the west of Görlitz lie Sorbian-speaking parts of Lusatia, and Görlitz was founded and first settled by the Sorbs, a Slavic people. This is evidenced by the name of the town and the etymology of some of its surrounding villages and geographical features being of Slavic origin. Görlitz itself speaks the East Lusatian dialect of German (Template:Ill), which is related to Silesian German dialects and differs from the Upper Saxon dialects spoken in most parts of Saxony. It is home to the Template:Ill and Template:Ill, a Silesian Museum (), and the Silesian Christmas Market (Template:Ill).

As of 2025, structural change, internationalisation, and transformation are central themes in the city’s development. At the same time, Görlitz is increasingly developing into a science centre of supra-regional and international importance. In addition to the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences (known as Lusatia), which focuses on social change processes in both the technical and natural sciences as well as the social sciences, the Technical University of Dresden (University of Excellence), the University of Leipzig and HHL are also active in Görlitz with branch offices, study programmes or research institutes. The city is also home to several Frauenhofer Institutes, research groups and labs, the Senkenberg Institute of Natural History, the CASUS Center of Advanced Systems Understanding, which belongs to the Helmholtz Association, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Ecological and Revitalising Urban Transformation (IZS), which is part of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, and the German Centre for Astrophysics (DZA). The investment volume for the DZA alone amounts to 1.25 billion euros. Görlitz is also home to the Oberlausitzische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Upper Lusatian Society of Science), which was founded in 1779 and is one of the oldest German scientific societies. The influx from abroad, which has led to an international population share of almost 17%, is now having a positive effect on population development.

History

Early Middle Ages

File:Goerlitz Landeskrone 22.jpg

Landeskrone (Sedło), a hill that was the site of the main stronghold of the Slavic Bieżuńczanie tribe in the Early Middle Ages

Slavs migrated into the area during the Early Middle Ages. The nearby Landeskrone (Template:Langx) mountain, as Businc, is considered the main stronghold of the Bieżuńczanie tribe and Gorelic is said to mean a small village. Other references state the origin of the name Görlitz is the Slavic word for 'burned land', referring to the technique used to clear land for settlement. Polish Zgorzelec and Czech Zhořelec have the same derivation.

In the Early Middle Ages, the area was inhabited by the Bieżuńczanie tribe, one of the old Polish tribes. In the late 9th or 10th century, the Bieżuńczanie were subjugated by the Sorbian Milceni tribe, who bordered from the west, who in turn were subjugated in 990 by the Margraviate of Meissen, a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire. The area was then conquered by Polish ruler Bolesław I the Brave in 1002 and formed part of Poland until 1031, after which the region fell back to the Margraviate of Meissen.

Earliest record and urban formation

Görlitz, as Goreliz, was first mentioned in a document from the King of Germany, and later Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in 1071. This document granted Görlitz to the religious Diocese of Meissen, then under Bishop Benno of Meissen. This document can now be found in the Saxony State Archives in Dresden. In 1075 the village was assigned to the Duchy of Bohemia. In 1126–1131 Bohemian Duke Soběslav I erected a castle, one of several new castles on the Bohemian-Polish border. It may have been on the site of the present St Peter and Paul church. The date the town was founded is unknown but in the 13th century the village gradually became a town. Owing to its location on the Via Regia, an ancient and medieval trade route, the settlement prospered. In 1319 it became part of the Piast-ruled Duchy of Jawor, and Duke Henry I of Jawor confirmed the town's privileges. In 1329, the town fell back to Bohemia.

From 1346 Görlitz was a wealthy member of the Lusatian League, which consisted of Bautzen, Görlitz, Kamenz, Lubań, Löbau and Zittau. Around 1348 a Jewish woman, Adasse, was made a citizen of the town. In 1352 during the reign of Polish King Casimir III the Great, Lusatian German colonists from Görlitz founded the town of Gorlice in southern Poland near Kraków. From 1377 to 1396 it was the capital of an eponymous duchy. In 1469, along with the Lusatian League, the town recognized the rule of King Matthias Corvinus, thus passing to Hungarian rule, and in 1490 it reverted to Bohemia then ruled by Vladislaus II of Hungary.

Modern period

File:Goerlitz 1575.jpg

Görlitz in the 16th century

The Protestant Reformation came to Görlitz in the early 1520s and by the last half of the 16th century, it and the surrounding vicinity, became almost completely Lutheran.

In 1623, during the Thirty Years' War, the town was captured and occupied alternately by Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1635, the region of Upper Lusatia (including Görlitz) was ceded to the Electorate of Saxony. From 1639, the town was occupied by Sweden again, and then it was besieged by Imperial and Saxon forces in 1641. After the war it was part of the Electorate of Saxony, from 1697 within the Polish–Saxon personal union. One of two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through the town in the 18th century and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland often travelled that route. Napoleon visited the town several times in 1807, 1812 and 1813.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the 1815 Congress of Vienna transferred the town from the Kingdom of Saxony to the Kingdom of Prussia. Görlitz was subsequently administered within the Province of Silesia and, after World War I, the Province of Lower Silesia, until 1945. During World War I an internment camp for Greek soldiers was located in present-day Zgorzelec, whilst 500 Greek officers lived in private quarters throughout the town. A burial ground for Greek soldiers was located in the local cemetery.

Interbellum and World War II

Shortly after the Nazi Party's rise to power, in March 1933, the SA established the Leschwitz concentration camp in Leschwitz (present-day district of Weinhübel). Political prisoners were held and tortured in the camp before it was dissolved in August 1933 and the prisoners were deported to other concentration camps. In 1936, during a nationwide Nazi campaign of changing of placenames, two present-day districts of Görlitz were renamed to erase traces of Slavic origin—Leschwitz to Weinhübel and Nikrisch to Hagenwerder. On Kristallnacht in November 1938 an arson attack was carried out on the city's synagogue. However the building survived the attack without major damage because firefighters resisted the order not to extinguish the fire. It is the only synagogue in the present state of Saxony that survived Nazi rule. In the interwar period most of the Jews had left the city and their number dropped from 567 in 1925 to 134 in 1939. Many remaining Jews were then killed in the Holocaust during World War II.

File:Denkmal Biesnitzer Grund Goerlitz.JPG

Memorial to the victims of the AL Görlitz subcamp of Gross-Rosen in Biesnitz

During World War II, a Nazi prison was operated in the town, with four forced labour subcamps within the town limits and three in nearby villages. The Nazis also established and operated two subcamps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, located in present-day districts of Biesnitz and Kunnerwitz, in which over 1,500 Jewish men and women were used as forced labour, and 470 of whom died. Numerous subcamps of the Stalag VIII-A prisoner-of-war camp were located in the town, in which over 10,000 POWs worked as forced labour in 1942, and one of the largest subcamps was located in nearby Weinhübel (district of Görlitz since 1949). After the Soviet offensive of 1944 and the partial evacuation of the German court staff from the General Government in German-occupied Poland, a special court of the General Government was established at the local courthouse. Several Polish citizens were detained in Görlitz and sentenced to prison or death at this court for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust.

Near the end of World War II German troops destroyed all bridges crossing the Lusatian Neisse. The redrawing of boundaries in 1945—in particular the location of the East German-Polish border to the present Oder-Neisse line—divided the town. The right bank became part of Poland and was initially renamed Zgorzelice, and then Zgorzelec in 1948, with both names being historically used in the Polish language, while the main portion on the left bank became part of East Germany, now within the state of Saxony.

On 12 June 1945 the city issued a set of four of its own postage stamps.

German Democratic Republic and reunited Germany

File:Goerlitz Panorama mit Peterskirche.jpg

St. Peter and Paul in December 2004

When the East German states were dissolved in 1952 Görlitz became part of the Dresden District, but the states were restored on German reunification in 1990. In 1972 the East German-Polish border was opened for visa-free travel, resulting in intense movement between Görlitz and Zgorzelec, which lasted until 1980, when East Germany unilaterally closed the border because of anti-communist protests and the emergence of the Solidarity movement in Poland. On 27 June 1994 the town became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Görlitz, but it remains a Lutheran Protestant stronghold. In 2002 Lake Berzdorf, occupying a former open-cast lignite mine south of Görlitz, began to be filled.

The Altstadtbrücke (literally old town bridge) between Görlitz and sister city Zgorzelec was rebuilt between 2003 and 2004. It was officially opened on 20 October 2004. As soon as Poland signed the Schengen Agreement (20 December 2007), movement between the two banks of the river again became unrestricted, since border controls were eliminated. Indeed, users of the new pedestrian bridge are not informed by any signs that they are leaving one country and entering another. Today Görlitz and Zgorzelec are well connected. A bus line connects the German and Polish parts of the town and there is a common urban management, with annual joint sessions of both town councils.

Since reunification and as of 2013, more than 700 buildings in Görlitz have been renovated. It is a popular place for retirement among the elderly of Germany, being quiet and relatively affordable by German standards. Its tourist potential is rapidly expanding since it is very much an eastern counterpart to towns such as Heidelberg. In the case of Görlitz much of the funding for the renovations of the town's buildings has come from an anonymous donor, who, since 1995, has sent an annual donation of more than €500,000, totalling more than €10,000,000.

In 2021, the surviving old synagogue was reopened.

Arts and culture

File:Goerlitz-Untermarkt 24 23 von Suedosten-20110627.jpg

Lower Market Square

File:Obermarkt (Görlitz) 01(js).jpg

Upper Market Square

Görlitz has a rich architectural heritage (Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and Art Nouveau). One example of this heritage is the Schönhof, one of the oldest civic Renaissance buildings in Germany. Another medieval heritage is a model of the Holy Sepulchre (de) the construction of which began in 1465 under Bürgermeister Georg Emmerich.

In 2006, the twin cities of Görlitz and Zgorzelec applied to be the European City of Culture for 2010. It was hoped that the concept of Polish-German cooperation would be sufficient to convince the jury, but Essen won and Görlitz was placed second. As a result of the campaign Görlitz was renamed the City of Culture in order to further German-Polish relations and to attract tourists from all over the world.

As Görlitz was part of Silesia from 1815 onward, it has a Silesian Museum dedicated to the region (). The exhibition features the 1000-year-old cultural history of Silesia.

Görlitz is also the birthplace of the German version of nonpareils, popularly known in Germany as (German for love pearls). Invented by confectioner Rudolf Hoinkis (1876–1944), the name derives from a conversation Hoinkis had with his wife, proclaiming his love for her was like these 'pearls', the nonpareil. Unsure of what to call the treat he invented, his wife suggested calling them love pearls and the name stuck. The factory where he first manufactured the treat, founded in 1896, is now run by his great-grandson, Mathias.

Film location

Due to the historical parts of the city, many movie-makers have used the various sites as locations. Eli Roth shot the movie-in-a-movie Nation's Pride () for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (which incidentally purports to be France) in the Lower Market Square and Upper Market Square in the oldest parts of the city. Other films shot in Görlitz include the 2013 war drama The Book Thief and the teen years in The Reader. Görlitz was used as the primary shooting location for the Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, with Görlitz standing in for a resort in the fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka. A vacant department store in the city was redecorated to serve as the hotel itself.

Sport

The town is represented by the football club Gelb-Weiss Görlitz.

Geography

Görlitz is situated on the border with Poland, adjacent to the Polish town of Zgorzelec on the opposite bank of the Lusatian Neisse. The municipality measures Template:Cvt from north to south, and Template:Cvt from east to west. Its area is Template:Cvt.

Divisions

Görlitz is divided into 9 Stadtteile (town divisions) and 8 Ortsteile (formerly independent municipalities). These are:

• Stadtteile: Historische Altstadt, Innenstadt, Nikolaivorstadt, Südstadt, Rauschwalde, Biesnitz, Weinhübel, Königshufen and Klingewalde
• Ortsteile: Ober-Neundorf, Ludwigsdorf, Schlauroth, Kunnerwitz, Klein Neundorf, Deutsch-Ossig, Hagenwerder and Tauchritz

Transport

File:Bahnhof Görlitz.jpg

Görlitz Main Railway Station

Görlitz station is on the Berlin – Görlitz and the Dresden–Görlitz lines of Deutsche Bahn. The station also provides an international connection to Wrocław, Poland.

The nearest airports are Dresden Airport which is Template:Convert away and Wrocław Airport which is Template:Convert away.

Local public transport is provided by:

• The Verkehrsgesellschaft Görlitz (VGG) provides public transport service in the city, including the Görlitz tramway and bus services.
• The Przedsiębiorstwo Komunikacji Samochodowej (PKS) provides bus service over the river between Görlitz and its sister city, Zgorzelec.

Climate

The climate is oceanic (Köppen: Cfb) or on the western edge of humid continental (Dfb) at the 0 °C isotherm. The location on the easternmost border of Germany, far from the sea, gives a climate less affected by prevailing westerly winds although these do reach further into the western half of Poland. Summers can be warm, though not as much as in Southern Europe, and the winters are cold; snow is sporadic, not persisting all winter.

The Görlitz weather station has recorded the following extreme values:

• Its highest temperature was Template:Convert on 7 August 2015.
• Its lowest temperature was Template:Convert on 9 February 1956.
• Its greatest annual precipitation was Template:Convert in 1939.
• Its least annual precipitation was Template:Convert in 1943.
• The longest annual sunshine was 2,162.5 hours in 2011.
• The shortest annual sunshine was 1,368.3 hours in 1977.

Governance

Mayor and city council

File:Goerlitz-Neues Rathaus von Osten-20110626.jpg

The New Town Hall

The first freely elected mayor after German reunification was Matthias Lechner of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who served from 1990 to 1998. The mayor was originally chosen by the city council, but since 1994 has been directly elected. Rolf Karbaum served from 1998 until 2005, Joachim Paulick from 2005 to 2012, and Siegfried Deinege from 2012 to 2019; all were independents. In 2019, CDU politician Octavian Ursu was elected mayor. The most recent mayoral election was held on 26 May 2019, with a runoff held on 16 June, and the results were as follows:

Template:Election table/category

Candidate		Party	First round		Second round
			Votes	%	Votes	%
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Sebastian Wippel	Alternative for Germany	9,710	36.4	11,390	44.8
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Octavian Ursu	Christian Democratic Union	8,077	30.3	14,043	55.2
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Franziska Schubert	Green/BfG/MG/SPD/PARTEI	7,436	27.9
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Jana Lübeck	The Left	1,470	5.5
Valid votes			26,693	98.7	25,433	98.6
Invalid votes			339	1.3	370	1.4
Total			27,032	100.0	25,803	100.0
Electorate/voter turnout			46,120	58.6	46,135	55.9
Source: Wahlen in Sachsen

The most recent city council election was held on 6 June 2024, and the results were as follows:

Template:Election table/category

Party		Votes	%	+/-	Seats	+/-
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Alternative for Germany (AfD)	28,496	37.2	Increase 6.4	14	Increase 1
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	19,765	25.8	Increase 3.8	10	Increase 1
	Citizens for Görlitz (BfG)	10,679	13.9	Decrease 3.6	5	Decrease 2
	Motor Görlitz (MG)	6,266	8.2	Increase 2.5	3	Increase 1
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	The Left (Die Linke)	4,727	6.2	Decrease 2.3	2	Decrease 1
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne)	3,309	4.3	Decrease 3.3	2	Decrease 1
bgcolor=Template:Party color|	Social Democratic Party (SPD)	1,951	2.5	Increase 0.2	1	Steady 0
	Free Saxons	1,377	1.8	New	1	New
Valid votes		76,570	100.0
Invalid ballots		428	1.6
Total ballots		26,964	100.0		38	±0
Electorate/voter turnout		45,068	59.8	Increase 1.1
Source: City of Görlitz

Twin towns – sister cities

File:18-09-29-Görlitz-RalfR-DJI 0418.jpg

Görlitz seen from its twin town Zgorzelec, Poland

Görlitz is twinned with:

• Template:Flagicon Amiens, France
• Template:Flagicon Molfetta, Italy
• Template:Flagicon Nový Jičín, Czech Republic
• Template:Flagicon Wiesbaden, Germany
• Template:Flagicon Zgorzelec, Poland

Being the easternmost town in the country, Görlitz has formed a 'Compass Alliance' () with the northernmost, westernmost and southernmost towns, List, Selfkant and Oberstdorf respectively. They participate in the annual German Unity Day celebrations to represent the modern limits of Germany.

Notable people

File:Michael Ballack 2009 cropped.jpg

Michael Ballack

• Adasse (fl.1348), money lender
• Michael Ballack (born 1976), football player
• Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), mystic and theologian
• Johann Christoph Brotze (1742–1823), educator
• Hans Georg Dehmelt (1922–2017), co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics
• Hans-Jürgen Dörner (1951–2022), football player and coach
• Werner Finck (1902–1978), comedian, actor and writer
• Richard Foerster (classical scholar) (1843–1922), classical scholar
• Johann Carl Gehler (1732–1796) physician, anatomist and mineralogist
• Gottlob Harrer (1703–1755), composer
• Clara Hepner (1860–1939), German-Jewish writer
• Torsten Gütschow (born 1962), football player
• Herbert Hirche (1910–2002), architect and designer
• Hanna von Hoerner (1942–2014), astrophysicist
• Emil Jannings (1884–1950), first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor
• Jens Jeremies (born 1974), football player
• Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006), historian
• Michael Kretschmer (born 1975), politician (CDU), Minister President of Saxony
• Lars Kaufmann (born 1982), handball player
• Selma Lohse (1883–1937), politician
• Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977), economist
• Gustavus Adolphus Neumann (1807–1886), publisher
• Arthur Pohl (1900–1970), set designer, director and screenwriter
• Hans Ulrich Rudel (1916–1982) highly decorated WWII pilot for Nazi Germany
• Pavle Jurišić Šturm (1848–1922), Serbian Army general, born in Görlitz
• Alfred Wagenknecht (1881–1956), American Marxist politician
• Sebastian Wippel (born 1982), politician
• Giorgio Zur (1930–2019), Catholic Archbishop and Apostolic Nuncio in Austria

Gallery

• St. Peter and Paul church, the Woad House and the river Lusatian Neisse in Görlitz
  St. Peter and Paul church, the Woad House and the river Lusatian Neisse in Görlitz
• Interior of St. Peter and Paul with its Sonnenorgel (sun organ)
  Interior of St. Peter and Paul with its Sonnenorgel (sun organ)
• The Schönhof, the oldest Renaissance building in Görlitz
  The Schönhof, the oldest Renaissance building in Görlitz
• Interior of the Görlitzer Warenhaus department store
  Interior of the Görlitzer Warenhaus department store
• View over Upper Market Square taken from Reichenbach Tower, residential buildings of Zgorzelec in the background
  View over Upper Market Square taken from Reichenbach Tower, residential buildings of Zgorzelec in the background
• Old town hall on the Lower Market Square
  Old town hall on the Lower Market Square
• Royal coats of arms of Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus (Old Town Hall)
  Royal coats of arms of Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus (Old Town Hall)
• Reichenbach Tower
  Reichenbach Tower
• Courthouse
  Courthouse
• The Landeskrone, literally "land's crown", the local mountain of Görlitz
  The Landeskrone, literally "land's crown", the local mountain of Görlitz
• Theatre
  Theatre
• Gothic Holy Trinity church
  Gothic Holy Trinity church
• Thick Tower
  Thick Tower
• Nikolai Cemetery
  Nikolai Cemetery
• Nikolai Tower
  Nikolai Tower
• St. Peter and Paul
  St. Peter and Paul
• Old town hall
  Old town hall
• Wilhelmsplatz
  Wilhelmsplatz

See also

• Ludwigsdorf
• Pließnitz

External links

• Template:Wikivoyage-inline
• Official website Template:In lang
• Template:Official website Template:In lang
• DW-World 'trial living' report.
• "Görlitz/ZgorzelecTemplate:SndUrban development from 12th to 21st century" on YouTube