Andrychów - historia lnem tkana. W 250. rocznicę nadania praw miejskich

In 2017 Andrychow is celebrating 250 years of its urban rights. The article presents cross-sectional history of the town from the Middle Ages to the outbreak of the World War II, focusing on important moments in the history of Andrychów. The settlement, founded in the early 1300s by immigrants from Moravia, for the first centuries of its existence underwent periodic depopulations and did not play much role. It was probably in the sixteenth century, and certainly in the seventeenth, inhabitants of the village and its surroundings, unable to support themselves exclusively from farming, began to be in craft weaving. As a result in the eighteenth century Andrychów has already became an important centre of linen industry, which gathered weavers not only from surrounding villages, but also from further centres. The linen produced here was sold by peasants from Smyrna (Izmir) to Barcelona and Hamburg. Andrychów’s development of industry and trade contributed to the fact that on 24th October 1767 king Stanisław August Poniatowski granted a charter allowing for foundation of a town in the rural location on Magdeburg rights. After the 1st partition of Poland, Andrychów got under Austrian rule. The nineteenth century was a period of economic regression of the town. As a result of the appearance of cotton as the new raw material on the market, and outwork system as the new way of organizing production, Andrychów was not able to compete with new textile centres emerging on Polish, Czech and Austrian lands. The breakthrough came only in 1907, when the “Czeczowiczka brothers First Galician Mechanical Weaving for Cotton Products” was established. After Poland regained independence in 1918, the city struggled with many difficulties conomic crisis, unemployment problems), but at the same time this was a time of rapid development for Andrychów, which was attempted to be promoted as an attractive tourist resort and climatic spa. These efforts were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.