An issue of the magazine "Polska" devoted entirely to Cieszyn. The text recalls the difficult history of Cieszyn as a city artificially divided into two sides. The past history is recalled, as well as the present. The issue is illustrated with, among others, photographs of the Cieszyn market square, the view from the castle hill, as well as the border bridge, the Olza River itself and individual buildings (Source: "Polska", Warsaw 1936, R: 2, no. 7, after: Jagiellonian Digital Library).

A modernised reading of the text

Cieszyn. The bleeding wound of the Polish nation.

"Cieszyn land, golden dream!
At the sight of you my heart melts,
The song of admiration shines in joyful tears.
O Earth of mountains! - Thou art like a true fairy tale...
Not in vain did Piast cradle Thee in his arms,
Thy arms were defended by the copper of axes gleaming with steel,
After all, a flower still hangs in Thy orchards,
The whiteness of the pear trees glistens, the apple trees burn with light.
Land of Cieszyn, golden dream!
At the foot of the mountains - your firs are fragrant with tendrils,
Though the world of the valleys has already sunk in mist,
On the tops of the mountains the eye is filled with sunshine...
Not for nothing does the holy spring of the Vistula flow from here,
That you have the smile - and the charm, and the sweetness of a child,
A dream fulfilled, your fetters broken,
Happy again, like an old Greek fairy tale.".

The word "border" for the inhabitants of the middle districts of the country is usually a distant notion of something normal and necessary and even joyful; under certain conditions, however, it can become a very close, sensitive and even painful issue, which constantly and peaceful people give thought to themselves. For many fortunate nations, the ends of their lands have been marked out by nature in the past, by the sea, mountains or rivers, producing natural boundaries which do not provoke reflexive opposition - boundaries which are settled, secure, safe, like the walls of a family home.

But when, across a carefree road, across a flourishing home, there is a barrier, on both sides of which there are guards in different uniforms, when the border line runs through the middle of a village or town, and the common parts of one district, as if cut with a knife, suddenly become parts of two different state organisms - then the concept of "border" acquires a special, tragic meaning for the nation. We Poles are in the unfortunate position of having an inherent bulwark only on one, the southern side, in the form of the mighty Carpathian and Tatra mountain ranges, firmly rooted in their foundations; on the other side, unfortunately, we are surrounded by open, defenceless, smooth spaces that were difficult to guard.

For centuries, therefore, neighbouring peoples had been encroaching on the undisputedly Polish land by force or peacefully seeping in, and when the reborn Poland was returning to its ancient possessions, it proved impossible in the face of the claims of partitioning neighbours to consolidate its ancient lands and define its ethnically fair state borders. Outside the borders of the Polish State remained 2½ million Poles, living on their eternal homeland, but under foreign, and unfortunately hostile, rule. This sad reality is most evident in Silesia, where the border specifically for us is unjust.

The voluntary agreement between the National Council of Těšín Silesia and the "Narodni Výbor pro Slezsko" of 5 November 1918 gave us the entire districts of Jablunkov, Těšín and Fryštát, with the exception of a few Polish municipalities, where the municipal boards were in the hands of the Czechs. But when Poland was shedding blood in the battles against the Bolsheviks, the Czechs, having broken the signed agreement, treacherously attacked Cieszyn Silesia, which had been stripped of our troops, and through intrigues led to the fact that the decision of the Council of Ambassadors of 28 July 1920 granted them purely Polish territories, and the city of Cieszyn itself was divided into two parts, henceforth becoming "a constantly bleeding wound" for Poland.

If the Czechs, having taken the Polish land, had not oppressed their brotherly nation, if they had given it the freedom to cultivate its mother tongue, the possibility to work freely in its organisations and associations and had not applied political and economic oppression - maybe there would have been a slow calming down and a concordant coexistence of the two brotherly nations! However, the Czechization of the Polish land has begun violently since almost ages, which causes in the Polish society the awareness and realization of this terrible injustice that has befallen us, and Cieszyn - this city torn in two - has become one of the biggest and most annoying pains of ours.

The origins of Cieszyn, one of Poland's oldest towns, are lost in the gloom of prehistoric times, and a legend circulating among the people, immortalised by an inscription in three languages on the Bracka well, tells how three brothers, sons of the mythical Polish prince Lech, having set out into the world after a long journey, met unexpectedly at a spring here around 810, and were so pleased by this that in honour of the joyous event they built a town and called it Cieszyn.

It was probably founded in the 9th century during the reign of the first Piast rulers in Poland as a stronghold on the Olza River, by the prehistoric trade route, which Roman merchants used to travel to the Baltic coast to buy amber. Traces of this settlement still exist today near the village of Podobory. There is also no doubt that in the times of Bolesław Chrobry a castellany existed here to defend the southern borders of the Polish state. The belonging of Silesia to the Polish state did not last. When Boleslaus III the Wrymouthed divided Poland among his four sons by his will in 1138, Silesia, together with the Kraków district, became the property of the eldest of them, Ladislaus II, and after his death Silesia was divided among his descendants.

This was a fateful date in the history of Poland and Silesia and marked the beginning of its definitive separation from the Motherland. Later, as a result of repeated divisions between successive heirs, Silesia fragmented into a number of small principalities, and in 1290, under the rule of Mieszko I, Cieszyn became the capital of the separate Duchy of Cieszyn, where the Piasts ruled until 1653. The Silesian Piasts, deprived of direct support from Poland, fell into dependence on the Czech crown, and then, together with the Czechs, became fiefs of the German state and became Germanised, pulling the upper layers of the nation with them.

The most powerful of the dukes of Tìšín was Premysláv I, who united a whole range of surrounding lands and granted the town a wide self-government in 1374; this was further extended by Duke Bolko I (1407-1431), while Duke Casimir II (1477-1528) renewed and extended the town walls. Their successor, Wenceslas II, having embraced the Reformation - according to the principle of the time "cuius regio, eius religio" (whose rule, his religion) - imposed it on his subjects that his son had already converted to Catholicism, followed by the majority of the elders. However, a significant part of the Polish population has remained Evangelical to this day. The last offspring of the Piast dynasty was Duke Elisabeth Lucretia, after whose death the Duchy of Cieszyn became a fief of the Habsburg dynasty.

Empress Maria Theresa gave Cieszyn to her daughter Maria Christina, the wife of Duke Albrecht of Saxony, who was the son of the Polish King August III and thus illegitimately assumed the title of Polish and Lithuanian Duke. Duke Albrecht bought out a large part of the estates of the declining nobility, creating a huge estate complex known as the "Chamber of Teschen". The archdukes themselves lived in Cieszyn only on a casual basis, while the "Komora" was ruled on their behalf by chieftains who, representing the interests of the members of the ruling house, became the all-powerful masters of the country and the city. They violently supported Germanisation and district separatism.

In spite of this, it was in Cieszyn that the Polish revival movement spontaneously arose in 1848, and lit up with an unusually bright light, which, as a result of the growth of the Polish intelligentsia, educated in schools established by the "Educational Society of the Duchy of Cieszyn", and supported in large part by donations collected by the great social activist from Warsaw, Antoni Osuchowski, called "the great almsman of the Polish Nation", grew so strong that in 1914 Cieszyn Silesia sent a separate army to the Legions. 1914 a separate Cieszyn branch to the Legions, and Cieszyn was the first city after Kraków to throw off the foreign yoke and declare affiliation with Poland as early as November 1, 1918, having created its own provisional government: The National Council. And strange was the history of this national revival in Cieszyn Silesia.

The conditions for Polishness in its lands were constantly so unfavourable that the survival of a national feeling for centuries bordered on the miraculous. The Polish people, separated centuries ago from their native land, separated by a political border from the lands of the Commonwealth of Poland, bound by several hundred years of dependence on the Czechs, recently transformed into Austrian slavery, germanised "par force". - without Polish historical and cultural tradition, without leaders and intelligent strata - yet remained faithful to its native language and customs. German were the schools, German were the offices, German the higher society.

The entire intelligentsia-Austrian opinion regarded Polishness with reluctance, disdain. Any able-bodied individual who stepped outside the bounds of traditionalism in the Silesian countryside or graduated from a grammar school was bound to become inevitably German both in language and in conviction, for there was no Polish literature at all, except for a handful of ancient religious prints, preserved in the villages from generation to generation as the highest of holies.

And here, in the midst of this ocean of Germanness, and to some extent of the Czech sea, small islands of dozens of peasant villages were able to preserve their linguistic and psychological distinctiveness in the purest, flawless form for a millennium. What an incredible vitality this Silesian people possessed, so docile on the surface, yet so steadfast and unyielding in their dearest feelings. What enchanted powers were hidden in this spark of Polishness, barely smouldering under a layer of dead ashes, if under favourable circumstances it burst into such a powerful flame.

Contrary to their intentions, it was ignited by the Germans themselves, since their oppression, as a reaction, gave birth to the idea of a Slavic movement, which in turn aroused the dormant national consciousness in Cieszyn Silesia. The seemingly germanised young sons of peasants in the towns woke up and felt openly, and even proudly, Polish. Having thrown off the yoke of foreign spiritual supremacy with a magnificent movement, they set to work with all the zeal of youth. Not with a gun in their hands, but with a pen, a word and their own self-sacrificing work, they conquered lost outposts of the national plain bit by bit.

Rev. Szersznik, Dr. Klucki, Cienciała, Stalmach, Rev. Świeży, Kotula, Bujak, Śliwka, Hreczko, Rev. Machlejda, Rev. Londzin - these are the unforgettable names of the first activists, swordsmen and apostles of the Polish resurrection movement in Cieszyn Silesia, of which the city of Cieszyn was the main centre.

The link that decided to unite Cieszyn Silesia with the rest of Poland was the native language, archaic but dignified, and the factor that enabled it to survive the long years of oppression was the Bible, the reading of which was an important part of home devotions. And so a strong and mutually reinforcing national-religious knot saved Těšín Silesia for Poland.

Already within the first decade, relations changed to our advantage to an unrecognisable degree. Fifty years later, Polishness represented a strong, serious force here, and in the following years, the sacrificial blood of Silesians in the fight for Poland's borders was spilled, and the banner with the "white eagle" appeared again on the Piast Tower in Cieszyn, symbolically ending the period of hard efforts and sacrifices in the struggle for the right to live in one's own land.

When, after the Czech invasion of Silesia in 1920, Cieszyn became the seat of the Allied Commission, holding the administration of the country during the preparations for the plebiscite, to which the Czechs did not allow in fear of unfavourable results for them, the Council of Ambassadors, by decision of 28 July 1920, divided the city into two parts, so that two thirds with the castle and market square were given to Poland, while the third part - newer - to the Czechs.

As a result of the division of the country, Cieszyn ceased to be the industrial centre of Cieszyn Silesia, and became a borderland town, which declined economically, and only thanks to the beautiful location in the valley of the Olza River, surrounded by mountains, the proximity of the Silesian Beskids chain and the excellent air, became a first-class tourist, spa and summer resort.

Cieszyn has a number of relics from the old days, and in the first place the Piast Tower, remaining from the old castle, probably erected in the 14th century by Prince Casimir on the very top of the mountain. It offers a magnificent view of the amphitheatre-like houses, churches and streets of Těšín, the silvery ribbon of the Olše River, further on to Polish and Czech Silesia, and as far as the blue Beskydy Mountains on the horizon. The castle used to have two such towers, of which only this one remains.

In place of the prince's chambers, where once the crunch of knights' armour could be heard, a beautiful garden with shady alleys has been laid out, and in the middle of it rises the Romanesque castle chapel, the oldest church in the city and the country. Below this is the new castle, built in the Renaissance style in 1837 and now housing the State Forestry Authority and the flats of the President of the Republic, who comes here every year for representative hunting trips.

The market square is decorated with a number of old houses with arcades and a two-storey town hall with a magnificent tower. In addition, Cieszyn has several ancient churches and many older and newer public buildings, including the "National House", built in 1911, which was the focal point of all Polish life at the time.

Cieszyn has now become a seat of high Polish culture, which radiates from here and to the Czech side of Cieszyn Silesia. From among the many educational and scientific institutions, the main attention is drawn here to the City Museum, one of the largest provincial museums, which occupies almost the entire former palace of Count Larysz and is given special care by the town and population.

It contains very rich collections from the most diverse departments of the former City Museum and Folklore Society, accumulated mainly by Fr. Londzin, and the Szersznik Museum, founded by Fr. Leopold Szersznik at the beginning of the 19th century, which itself has a library of 16,000 volumes of immeasurable bibliographical value. Opened in its present location in 1931, it has, in addition to a library, a large number of folk and ecclesiastical art objects, as well as numismatic, ceramic and natural history collections.

Since 1907, a regional literary-historical quarterly "Zaranie Śląskie" has been published in Cieszyn, which is now published in a very aesthetic form with the participation of the Silesian Institute, and discusses cultural issues of Cieszyn Silesia. It is proof of the great work the Polish people have done in this field.