Dobrzyń Land

Dobrzyń Land in present-day Poland

Dobrzyń Land (German: Dobriner Land; Polish: ziemia dobrzyńska) is a historic region around the town of Dobrzyń nad Wisłą in Poland, east of the Vistula River and south of the Drwęca, where it borders on the Kulmerland. The territory approximately corresponds with the present-day powiats of Lipno and Rypin within the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodship.

The lands of Dobrzyń had been part of the Civitas Schinesghe under the Piast duke Mieszko I of Poland (960-992). Upon the death of his descendant Duke Bolesław III Wrymouth in 1138, they were allocated to the newly established Duchy of Masovia. In his Prussian Crusade, Duke Konrad I of Masovia in 1228 established the Order of Dobrzyń of German knights (fratribus militiae Christi in Prussia), whom he vested with the Dobrzyń estates. Soonafter however, this order was absorbed by the Teutonic Knights, who had established the Order's State in the adjacent Kulmerland, resulting in an ongoing territorial conflict about the area with the Masovian dukes.

During the Polish–Teutonic War of 1326-1332, the forces of the Order's State occupied Dobrzyń Land, which however was relinquished to the Kingdom of Poland in the 1343 Treaty of Kalisz. The Knights regained control in the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War of 1409-1411, but after their defeat at the Battle of Grunwald had to return it again according to the Peace of Thorn. The lands of Dobrzyń were incorporated into the Inowrocław Voivodeship of the Polish Crown and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

While the western part of the voivodeship had already been annexed by Prussia in the course of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Dobrzyń Land on the eastern banks of the Vistula was incorporated into South Prussia during the Second Partition in 1793. It was administered with New East Prussia from 1795 onwards, until in 1807 it became part of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw according to the Treaties of Tilsit. In 1815 however, it was attached to Congress Poland under the Russian Empire.

Dobrzyń Land after World War I fell from Russia to the re-established independent Second Polish Republic, it was occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II, whereafter it was finally restored to Poland.

See also

• Ziemia

External links

• Ziemia Dobrzyńska On-line (Polish)