Founding
city in Slovakia
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Košice is the largest city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary and Ukraine. With a population of approximately 230,000, Košice is the second-largest city in Slovakia, after the capital Bratislava.
Being the economic and cultural centre of eastern Slovakia, Košice is the seat of the Košice Region and Košice Self-governing Region, it belongs to the Košice-Prešov agglomeration, and is home to the Slovak Constitutional Court, three universities, various dioceses, and many museums, galleries, and theatres. In 2013, Košice was the European Capital of Culture, together with Marseille, France. Košice is an important industrial centre of Slovakia, and the U. S. Steel Košice steel mill is the largest employer in the city. The town has extensive railway connections and an international airport.
The city has a preserved historical centre which is the largest among Slovak towns. There are heritage protected buildings in Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Art Nouveau styles with Slovakia's largest church: the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth. The long main street, rimmed with aristocratic palaces, Catholic churches, and townsfolk's houses, is a thriving pedestrian zone with boutiques, cafés, and restaurants. The city is known as the first settlement in Europe to be granted its own coat of arms.
The first written mention of the city was in 1230 as "Villa Cassa". The name probably comes from the Slavic personal name Koš, Koša → Košici (Koš'people) → Košice (1382–1383) with the patronymic Slavic suffix "-ice" through a natural development in Slovak (similar place names are also known from other Slavic countries). In Hungarian Koša → Kasa, Kassa with a vowel mutation typical for the borrowing of old Slavic names in the region (Vojkovce → Vajkócz, Sokoľ → Szakalya, Szakál, Hodkovce → Hatkóc, etc.). The Latinized form Cassovia became common in the 15th century.
Another theory is a derivation from Old Slovak kosa, "clearing", related to modern Slovak kosiť, "to reap". According to other sources the city name may derive from an old Hungarian first name which begins with "Ko".
Historically, the city has been known as Kaschau (in German), Kassa (in Hungarian), Kaşa (in Turkish), Cassovia (in Latin), Cassovie (in French), Cașovia (in Romanian), Кошице (in Russian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn), Koszyce (in Polish), קאשוי (Kashoy) (in Yiddish), and more. Below is a chronology of the various names:
The first evidence of habitation can be traced back to the end of the Paleolithic era. The first written reference to the Hungarian town of Košice (as the royal village of Villa Cassa) comes from 1230. After the Mongol invasion in 1241, King Béla IV of Hungary invited German colonists (see Zipser Germans, Germans of Hungary) to fill the gaps in population. The city was in the historic Abaúj County of the Kingdom of Hungary.
There were two independent settlements, Lower Kassa and Upper Kassa, which were amalgamated in the 13th century around the long lens-shaped ring, of today's Main Street (Hlavná ulica). The first known town privileges come from 1290. The town proliferated because of its strategic location on an international trade route from agriculturally rich central Hungary to central Poland, itself part of a longer route connecting the Balkans and the Adriatic and Aegean seas to the Baltic Sea. The privileges given by the king helped develop crafts, business, increasing importance (seat of the royal chamber for Upper Hungary), and for building its strong fortifications. In 1307, the first guild regulations were registered here; they were the oldest in the Kingdom of Hungary.
As a Hungarian free royal town, Košice reinforced the king's troops at the crucial moment of the bloody Battle of Rozgony in 1312 against the strong aristocratic Palatine Amadé Aba (family). In 1347, it became the second-placed city in the hierarchy of the Hungarian free royal towns, with the same rights as the capital Buda. In 1369, it was granted its own coat of arms by Louis I of Hungary. The Diet convened by Louis I in Košice decided that women could inherit the Hungarian throne.
The significance and wealth of the city at the end of the 14th century were mirrored by the decision to build an entirely new church on the grounds of the previously destroyed, smaller St. Elisabeth Church. The construction of the St. Elisabeth Cathedral, the biggest cathedral in the Kingdom of Hungary, was supported by Emperor Sigismund, and by the apostolic see itself. From the beginning of the 15th century, the city played a leading role in the Pentapolitana – the league of the five most important cities in Upper Hungary (Bardejov, Levoča, Košice, Prešov, and Sabinov). During the reign of King Matthias Corvinus, the town reached its medieval population peak. With an estimated 10,000 inhabitants, it was among the largest medieval cities in Europe.
The history of Košice was heavily influenced by the dynastic disputes over the Hungarian throne, which, together with the decline of the continental trade, brought the city into stagnation. Vladislaus III of Varna failed to capture the city in 1441. John Jiskra's mercenaries from Bohemia defeated Tamás Székely's Hungarian army in 1449. John I Albert, Prince of Poland, failed to capture the city during a six-month-long siege in 1491. In 1526, the city paid homage to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. John Zápolya captured the town in 1536, but Ferdinand I reconquered it in 1551. In 1554, the settlement became the seat of the Captaincy of Upper Hungary.
In 1604, Catholics seized the Lutheran church in Košice. The Calvinist Stephen Bocskay then occupied Košice during his Protestant insurrection against the Habsburg dynasty, with the backing of the Ottomans. The future George I Rákóczi joined him as a military commander there. Giorgio Basta, commander of the Habsburg forces, failed in his attempt to recapture the city. At the 1606 Treaty of Vienna, in return for giving back territory that included Košice, the rebels won from the Habsburgs a concession of religious toleration for the Magyar nobility and brokered an Austrian-Turkish peace treaty. Stephen Bocskay died in Košice on 29 December 1606 and was interred there.
For some decades during the 17th century, Košice was a part of the Principality of Transylvania, and consequently a part of the Ottoman Empire, and was referred to as Kaşa in Turkish. On 5 September 1619, the prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen captured Košice with the assistance of the future George I Rákóczi in another anti-Habsburg insurrection. By the Peace of Nikolsburg in 1621, the Habsburgs restored the religious toleration agreement of 1606 and recognized Transylvanian rule over the seven Partium counties: Ugocsa County, Bereg County, Zemplén County, Borsod County, Szabolcs County, Szatmár County, and Abaúj County (including Košice). Bethlen married Catherine von Hohenzollern, of Johann Sigismund Kurfürst von Brandenburg, in Košice in 1626.
After Bethlen died in 1629, Košice and the rest of the Partium were returned to the Habsburgs.
On 18 January 1644, the Diet in Košice elected George I Rákóczi the Prince of Hungary. He took the whole of Upper Hungary and joined the Swedish army besieging Brno for a projected march against Vienna. However, his nominal overlord, the Ottoman Sultan, ordered him to end the campaign, though he did so with gains. In the 1645 Treaty of Linz, Košice returned to Transylvania again as the Habsburgs recognized George's rule over the seven counties of the Partium. He died in 1648, and Košice was returned to the Habsburgs once more.
Subsequently, Košice became a centre of the Counter-Reformation. In 1657, a printing house and university were founded by the Jesuits, funded by Emperor Leopold I. The 1664 Peace of Vasvár at the end of the Austro-Turkish War awarded Szabolcs and Szatmár counties to the Habsburgs, which put once more positioned Košice further inside the borders of Royal Hungary. In the 1670s, the Habsburgs built a modern pentagonal fortress (citadel) south of the city. Also in the 1670s, the city was besieged by Kuruc armies several times, and it again rebelled against the Habsburgs. The rebel leaders were massacred by the Emperor's soldiers on 26 November 1677.
Another rebel leader, Imre Thököly captured the city in 1682, making Kaşa once again a vassal territory of the Ottoman Empire under the Principality of Upper Hungary until 1686. The Austrian field marshal Aeneas de Caprara took Košice back from the Ottomans in late 1685. In 1704–1711, Prince of Transylvania Francis II Rákóczi made Košice the main base in his War for Independence. By 1713, the fortress had been demolished.
When not under Ottoman suzerainty, Košice was the seat of the Habsburg "Captaincy of Upper Hungary" and the seat of the Chamber of Szepes County (Spiš, Zips), which was a subsidiary of the supreme financial agency in Vienna responsible for Upper Hungary. Due to Ottoman occupation of Eger, Košice was the residence of Eger's archbishop from 1596 to 1700.
From 1657, it was the seat of the historic Royal University of Kassa (Universitas Cassoviensis), founded by Bishop Benedict Kishdy. The university was transformed into a Royal Academy in 1777, then into a Law Academy in the 19th century. It was to cease to exist in the turbulent year 1921. After the end of the anti-Habsburg uprisings in 1711, the victorious Austrian armies drove the Ottoman Army back to the south, and this major territorial change created new trade routes that circumvented Košice. The city began to decline and, from a rich medieval town, became a provincial town known for its military base, and was mainly dependent on agriculture.
In 1723, the Immaculata statue was erected on the site of a former gallows on Main Street (Hlavná ulica) to commemorate the plague of 1710–1711. The city also became one of the centers of the Hungarian linguistic revival, including the publication of the first Hungarian-language periodical, called the Magyar Museum, in Hungary in 1788. The city's walls were demolished step by step from the early 19th century to 1856; only the Executioner's Bastion remained among limited parts of the wall. The city became the seat of its own bishopric in 1802. The city's surroundings became a theater of war again during the Revolutions of 1848, when the Imperial cavalry general Franz Schlik defeated the Hungarian army on 8 December 1848 and 4 January 1849. The city was captured by the Hungarian army on 15 February 1849, but the Russian troops drove them back on 24 June 1849.
In 1828, there were three manufacturers and 460 workshops. The first factories were established in the 1840s (sugar and nail factories). The first telegram message arrived in 1856, and the railway connected the city to Miskolc in 1860. In 1873, there were already connections to Prešov, Žilina, and Chop (in today's Ukraine). The city gained a public transit system in 1891 when the track was laid down for a horse-drawn tramway. The traction was electrified in 1914. In 1906, Francis II Rákóczi's house of Rodostó was reproduced in Košice, and his remains were buried in the St. Elisabeth Cathedral.
After World War I and during the gradual break-up of Austria-Hungary, the city at first became a part of the transient Eastern Slovak Republic, declared on 11 December 1918, in Košice and earlier in Prešov under the protection of Hungary. On 29 December 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions entered the city, making it part of the newly established Czechoslovakia. However, in June 1919, Košice was occupied again, as part of the Slovak Soviet Republic, a proletarian puppet state of Hungary. The Czechoslovak troops secured the city for Czechoslovakia in July 1919, which was later upheld under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
Jews had lived in Košice since the 16th century, but were not allowed to settle permanently. There is a document identifying the local coiner in 1524 as a Jew and claiming that his predecessor was a Jew as well. Jews were allowed to enter the city during the town fair, but were forced to leave it by night, and lived mostly in nearby Rozunfaca. In 1840, the ban was removed, and a few Jews were living in the town, among them a widow who ran a small Kosher restaurant for the Jewish merchants passing through the town.
Košice was ceded to Hungary by the First Vienna Award from 1938 until early 1945. The town was bombarded on 26 June 1941, by a still unidentified aircraft, in what became a pretext for the Hungarian government to declare war on the Soviet Union a day later.
The German occupation of Hungary led to the deportation and almost certain extermination of Košice's entire Jewish population of 12,000 and an additional 2,000 from surrounding areas via cattle cars to Nazi concentration camps. A concentration camp was established in Košice under Hungarian László Csatáry (1915–2013). In 1948, Csatary was tried and sentenced to death in absentia in Czechoslovakia, but he fled to Canada. Canadian officials accused him of lying about his wartime activities and, in 1997, stripped him of his citizenship. He was discovered living in Budapest in 2011 and detained there. He was arrested on 18 June 2013, aged 98, and died before trial on 12 August 2013.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Košice”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.