The Polish county seat Kalisz was first mentioned in documents around 150 AD and is therefore called the oldest city in Poland. It is located in the valley of the Prosna River in the Wielkopolska Voivodeship. In the 16th and 17th centuries Kalisz was considered one of the most important cities in the Kingdom. In 1793, in the course of the second partition of Poland-Lithuania, Kalisz became part of Prussia. Between 1807 and 1815 Kalisz belonged to the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw, whose territories fell to the Russian Empire in 1815. Kalish became part of the so-called Congress Poland and experienced economic prosperity in the following years. During the First World War the town was almost completely destroyed by German troops. In the 1920s and 1930s, large parts of the city were rebuilt.
During World War II, the city became part of the so-called Wartheland and was subjected to the rigorous Germanization policy of the National Socialist German Reich. On the one hand, the Jewish population, which until then had not been victims of shootings or deportations to concentration or extermination camps, was ghettoized, and later - after the ghetto was dissolved in 1942 - transferred to the Litzmannstadt ghetto. Among other things, large parts of the Polish population were deported to make room for the German population to be resettled here in "Heim ins Reich" actions from the Baltic States, Transylvania or Bukovina.
After the Second World War Kalisz belonged to the People's Republic of Poland, since 1990 to the 3rd Polish Republic.
East Prussia is the name of the former most eastern Prussian province, which existed until 1945 and whose extent (regardless of historically slightly changing border courses) roughly corresponds to the historical landscape of Prussia. The name was first used in the second half of the 18th century, when, in addition to the Duchy of Prussia with its capital Königsberg, which had been promoted to a kingdom in 1701, other previously Polish territories in the west (for example, the so-called Prussia Royal Share with Warmia and Pomerania) were added to Brandenburg-Prussia and formed the new province of West Prussia.
Nowadays, the territory of the former Prussian province belongs mainly to Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast) and Poland (Warmia-Masuria Voivodeship). The former so-called Memelland (also Memelgebiet, lit. Klaipėdos kraštas) first became part of Lithuania in 1920 and again from 1945.
Galicia is a historical landscape, which today is almost entirely located on the territory of Poland and Ukraine. The part in southeastern Poland is usually referred to as Western Galicia, and the part in western Ukraine as Eastern Galicia. Before 1772, Galicia belonged for centuries to the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic, and subsequently and until 1918 - as part of the crown land "Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria" - to the Habsburg Empire.
Austria-Hungary (Hungarian: Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia), also known as Imperial and Royal Hungary Monarchy, was a historical state in Central and Southeastern Europe that existed from 1867 to 1918.
Bulgaria is a South-Eastern European country and is inhabited by about 7 million people. Sofia is the capital of the republic and the largest city in the country. Bulgaria is situated on the Black Sea in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The largest rivers in the country include the Danube and Maritsa.
The Ottoman Empire was the state of the Ottoman dynasty from about 1299 to 1922. The name derives from the founder of the dynasty, Osman I. The successor state of the Ottoman Empire is the Republic of Turkey.
Poland is a state in Central Eastern Europe and is home to approximately 38 million people. The country is the sixth largest member state of the European Union. The capital and biggest city of Poland is Warsaw. Poland is made up of 16 voivodships. The largest river in the country is the Vistula (Polish: Wisła).
