The functions of regional capital are shared between two cities – Gorzów Wielkopolski and Zielona Góra. Gorzów serves as the seat of the centrally-appointedvoivode (wojewoda), or governor, and Zielona Góra is the seat of the elected regional assembly (sejmik) and the executive elected by that assembly, headed by a marshal (marszałek). In addition, the voivodeship includes a third city (Nowa Sól) and a number of towns.
Medieval town walls ofŻary, one of the oldest towns in the province, first mentioned in 1007
The first leaders of the Polans,Mieszko I and especiallyBolesław I the Brave added a number of surrounding territories to the newly established core Polish state, and Lubusz Land came under Polish rule. Part of the historic province was located on the western bank of theOder River, where the main settlement Lubusz, later known as the German town ofLebus, was located. The entire territory of the present Lubusz Voivodeship was part of Poland by 1002. The oldest towns in the region, dating back over 1,000 years, includeTrzciel,Skwierzyna,Iłowa,Szprotawa,Jasień,Krosno Odrzańskie,Międzyrzecz andŻary, with most other towns also founded in theMiddle Ages, including the current regional capitals ofZielona Góra andGorzów Wielkopolski. The youngest towns areŁęknica,Czerwieńsk,Nowa Sól,Szlichtyngowa andZbąszynek, all either first mentioned or established in the later periods.
Żagań with its castle was a ducal seat for several centuries
Following the fragmentation of Poland into smaller provincial duchies, various portions of the present Lubusz Voivodeship were part of various duchies, initially the duchies ofGreater Poland andSilesia, and later alsoLegnica,Głogów,Lubusz andŻagań, ruled by various lines of thePiast dynasty. Over time, portions of the present Lubusz Voivodeship were lost by Poland. In 1250 the Lubusz Land was acquired by theAscanianmargraves ofBrandenburg. In 1319–1326 it was contested by various Polish and German rulers, before falling back to Brandenburg. After Brandenburg passed to theBohemian Crown in 1373,Poland made a peaceful attempt to regain the northern portion of the area. In 1402, the Bohemian rulers reached an agreement with Poland inKraków. Poland was to buy and re-incorporate the northern outskirts of the present Lubusz Voivodeship,[5] but eventually the Bohemian rulers sold the area to theTeutonic Order, who in turn sold it back to Brandenburg in 1454 to raise funds forwar against Poland. The southern part of the current voivodeship remained part of the duchies of Żagań and Głogów, ruled by the houses of Piast andJagiellon, with the Żagań duchy eventually passing to houses of foreign background, including Czech, Saxon and French, whereas other areas were gradually incorporated directly into theKingdom of Bohemia. In 1635, most of the south-western part of the present Lubusz Voivodeship passed from Bohemia toSaxony, and from 1697 formed part ofPoland-Saxony. In the 18th century,Wschowa was an importantroyal city of Poland, as it often hosted Polish kings and several sessions of the Polish Senate, hence being dubbed the "unofficial capital of Poland". KingAugustus III of Poland also often stopped inBrody.[6]
In 1701, theKingdom of Prussia was established, which included Brandenburg-held Lubusz Land, and various areas were eventually gradually annexed by Prussia in the following centuries, starting with the south-eastern part of the current voivodeship in 1742, followed by eastern portions (western outskirts of Greater Poland) in1793 (briefly regained by Poles in 1807–1815 as part of the short-livedDuchy of Warsaw), and the south-western part in 1815. Within Prussia and Germany the territory was divided between the provinces ofNeumark/Brandenburg,South Prussia/Posen, andSilesia/Lower Silesia.
DuringWorld War II, theOflag II-C,Stalag III-C,Stalag VIII-C andStalag Luft III majorGerman prisoner-of-war camps for Polish,French, British, Belgian, Canadian, Serbian,Italian, American, Australian, New Zealander, Soviet, Norwegian, Czech, Slovak, South African, Dutch, Greek, Yugoslav,Senegalese, Algerian and Moroccan POWs were operated in the territory. The latter was the site of the "Great Escape" in 1944. There are museums at the site of the camps inDobiegniew andŻagań, and a memorial to the victims of theStalag Luft III murders in Żagań.[7] Particularly infamous camps in the region were the Oderblicklabor education camp inŚwiecko and theSonnenburg concentration camp inSłońsk, in which Polish, Belgian, French, Bulgarian, Dutch, Yugoslav, Russian, Italian, Ukrainian, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Czech, Slovak and other prisoners were held, and many died.[8][9] There were also elevensubcamps of theGross-Rosen concentration camp and a subcamp of theSachsenhausen concentration camp, in which mostly Jewish and Polish, but also French, Russian, Czech, Italian, Greek, Yugoslav, Dutch, Romanian, Hungarian, Lithuanian and German prisoners were held.[10][11]Obrzyce was the place ofAktion T4 murders of mentally ill and disabled people. The region was the site of fierce fighting during the war in 1945. During the liberation of the Stalag III-C camp, Soviet troops killed some American POWs mistaking them for enemy troops.[12] On 18 March 1945, the Germans shot down an American bomber nearBucze.[13]
Under the terms laid down byJoseph Stalin in thePotsdam Agreement, the borders of Poland and Germany were redrawn and the area of the Lubusz Voivodeship fell within the new borders of Poland.[14][15]
In 1998,the government ofJerzy Buzek decided to introduce anadministrative reform, with its principles including the restoration of counties and a steep reduction in the number of voivodeships. A general consensus existed among scholars that the local administration exercised through the49 existing voivodeships established in 1975 was inefficient, anachronistic, impractical, detrimental to maintaining regional identity, and untenable. However, the reform draft accepted by the government surprised the public and caused widespread outcry, as its authors foresaw creation of only 12 large voivodships, thus going much further than the widely expected reconstitution of the 17 voivodeships existing prior to the1975 reform. As a consequence, the original draft made no provision for a separate Lubusz voivodeship – Gorzów was to become along withKostrzyn,Strzelce Krajeńskie andDrezdenko a part ofWest Pomeranian Voivodeship, Zielona Góra was to be included along with Krosno, Nowa Sól, Żagań, Gubin and Żary in theLower Silesian Voivodeship, while a narrow horizontal strip encompassingMiędzyrzecz,Sulęcin,Świebodzin,Słubice andSulechów was to be assigned to theGreater Poland Voivodeship as a bizarre sort-of corridor to the German border. However, mass protests broke out as a result in the cities such as Bydgoszcz, Koszalin, Opole or Kielce. Many of the people opposing the draft reform initially demanded retaining as many as 25 voivodeships (including the 2 ones seated in Gorzów and Zielona Góra), a number nevertheless widely regarded as a demand intentionally excessive to serve as an initial negotiating bargain, actually aiming to restore the 17 voivodeships existing prior to 1975 as an ultimate compromise. As Poland was at the time governed under political cohabitation, the opposition party constituting the political background of the President decided to capitalize on the popular discontent which erupted against the government on an unanticipated scale; the most obvious mean readily available for the opposition was a presidential veto, which in fact ensued. In order to salvage the reform from being killed altogether, the government was, in the face of lacking the supermajority required to overturn the veto at the time, forced to reconsider the original shape of the reform and to reconcile it with the reservations of the President and his political background, with the result of a compromise adjustment increasing the number of voivodeships to 16, with Lubusz Voivodeship included among the four additional ones created according to the agreement.
The path leading to such and outcome was far from smooth. The government made an effort to highlight and exploit the decades-long animosity between the approximately same-size two principal cities, spreading scare against its inevitable re-ignition and explosion in any of these two cities after designating the other one as the voivodeship capital, and hoping to use the engineered scare as the main argument in the ongoing discussions against creating the Lubusz voivodeship, The animosity, existing indeed between the cities, has been historically rooted in a widespread perception among Gorzów inhabitants that the 1950 decision to designate Zielona Góra as the voivodeship capital instead of their larger and more populous city, was taken by the anticlerical communist government due to a hidden motivation of punishing Gorzów for becoming the see of the newly established Roman Catholicapostolic administration governing the majority of theRecovered Territories, with the ensuing discrimination of the city by the voivodeship authorities in the years 1950–1975 in terms of establishing any new public cultural and educational institutions, other public investments or public funds allocations, in vivid contrast to the unjust favoring of their own seat, the city of Zielona Góra; a sentiment reinforced further by the surprise relocation of the see of theRoman Catholic Diocese of Gorzów to Zielona Góra in 1992, renamed as a result theRoman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów, and finally and perhaps most importantly, by the historical, perpetual and almost sacred rivalry between themotorcycle speedway clubs located in both cities. The objective of the local elites in Zielona Góra was in turn to become a single capital centre, reverting to the situation before 1975, while any prospect of sharing the governing institutions was for a long time treated with their hostility. In spite of that, the looming threat of a "everybody lose" scenario set to materialize in case of a possible implementation of the original reform draft, paved the way for neutralizing this argument through forcing both rival sides into the breakthrough reconciliation accord known as the Paradyż Agreement, brokered by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów and formalized in a document signed during a highly publicized local summit in theGościkowo-Paradyż Abbey on 13 March 1998. This compromise agreement, was negotiated and concluded between the delegations of both rival cities, composed of the respectively aligned most powerful local and national scene politicians and business people, with its most important provision being the unusual arrangement to divide and distribute the governing institutions of the voivodeship more or less equally between the two cities. On the basis of this broadly supported agreement, an effective public pressure endorsed jointly by the two centers was successfully exerted on the central government which ultimately acquiesced to the demand of establishing Lubusz Voivodeship.[16]
Nevertheless, creating any new type of public institution at voivodeship level in Poland continues to ignite almost automatically a fierce battle in the Lubusz Voivodeship regarding the seat of the institution. There have also been numerous attempts to relocate some of the existing public institutions under various pretexts from one city to another, in some cases successful, as well as of merging a pair of equal institutions of a type existing in both cities, in order to make one of them a branch of the other, with obscure or no justification in most cases for such merger. Nevertheless, a general local majority consensus prevails that the compromise, although unsatisfactory for any of the two cities, spared both of them the fate of a number of cities which lost in 1999 entirely the status of a voivodeship capital and all voivodeship-level institutions, along with the associated attractiveness and prestige of the city as a place to live, crucial for its growth, with the ensuing profoundly detrimental phenomena.
The Lubusz Voivodeship is a land of forests and lakes; forests cover 48% of the area. The riverOder, flowing through the voivodeship, is one of the few large European rivers retainingbroadleaved andriparian forests. Areas with the highest natural values are protected as national parks (Drawa National Park andWarta Mouth National Park),landscape parks andwildlife reserves. The 19th centuryMuskau Park, located on both sides of thePolish–German border, has entered theUNESCO World Heritage List. The voivodeship abounds in lakes, especially in its central and northern parts; around those lakes numerous bathing resorts, holiday centres and farms offering tourist services have been established.[17]
The southern part of the voivodeship withZielona Góra is one of the leadingwinemaking regions of Poland, and other traditional beverages from the voivodeship arebeer,mead,nalewki andvodka.
Various types of traditional Polishkiełbasa, also designated as traditional foods by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland, are produced in theNowa Sól,Wschowa,Zielona Góra,Żagań andŻary counties in the southern part of the Lubusz Voivodeship, whereasSiedlisko, Nowa Sól County produces a variety of traditional cheeses andquarks.
Thegross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 10.8 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.2% of Polish economic output. The GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 17,600 euros or 58% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 67% of the EU average.[19]
A2 autostrada with view towards west in the Voivodeship
Major museums dedicated to the history of the region are located in Gorzów Wielkopolski and Zielona Góra. There are museums dedicated toAllied prisoners of war at the formerGerman POW camps inDobiegniew and Żagań.[7] In Żagań, there is a memorial to the victims of theStalag Luft III murders of Allied POWs, perpetrated by Nazi Germany in World War II. There are multiple other memorials to victims of Nazi Germany in the region. InBucze there is a memorial to American airmen shot down by the Germans in 1945.[13] The garrison town of Żagań hosts Poland's oldest monument ofWojtek, the soldier bear of thePolish II Corps.[29]
Kuna, the world's oldest in serviceriver icebreaker, is docked in the river port of Gorzów Wielkopolski and is open to the public as amuseum ship.[30]
Motorcycle speedway enjoys a large following in the province with theStal Gorzów Wielkopolski andFalubaz Zielona Góra clubs being among the most accomplished in the sport in the country. The teams contest the Lubusz Voivodeship Derby, one of the fiercest speedway rivalries.
^It is likely that it was a response to the names of some German military units; they have been named after lands that since at least 1945 belong to Poland and the very city ofLubusz is located just outside the Polish border in Germany.
^Rogalski, Leon (1846).Dzieje Krzyżaków oraz ich stosunki z Polską, Litwą i Prussami, poprzedzone rysem dziejów wojen krzyżowych. Tom II (in Polish). Warszawa. pp. 59–60.
^Megargee, Geoffrey P.; Overmans, Rüdiger; Vogt, Wolfgang (2022).The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945. Volume IV. Indiana University Press, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 408–409.ISBN978-0-253-06089-1.
^abLubuskie po drodze. Świat militariów i fortyfikacji (in Polish). Zielona Góra. p. 54.ISBN978-83-8009-168-9.
^Lubuskie po drodze. Świat militariów i fortyfikacji (in Polish). Zielona Góra. pp. 14, 18, 21.ISBN978-83-8009-168-9.
^Orłow, Aleksander (2011). "Oficerski obóz jeniecki twierdzy Kostrzyn nad Odrą 1914−1918". In Mykietów, Bogusław; Bryll, Wolfgang Damian; Tureczek, Marceli (eds.).Forty. Jeńcy. Monety. Pasjonaci o Twierdzy Kostrzyn (in Polish). Zielona Góra: Księgarnia Akademicka. pp. 18, 21, 27.
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