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- See also Duchy of Silesia.
The Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia (German: Herzogtum Ober- und Niederschlesien) was an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Austrian Empire. It is also known as Austrian Silesia (German: Österreichisch Schlesien; Czech: Rakouské Slezsko; Polish: Śląsk Austriacki), and despite the official name it only included parts of Upper Silesia, while none of Lower Silesia was within its borders. It is largely coterminous with the present-day region of Czech Silesia.
[edit] History
As part of the Bohemian kingdom, Silesia was inherited by the House of Habsburg in 1526 after the death of the last Jagiellon king Louis II. The First Silesian War between Frederick II of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria, part of the War of the Austrian Succession, was concluded in 1742 with the Treaty of Breslau, in which Silesia was divided. The Kingdom of Prussia received most of the territory, while a small part of southern Silesia consisting of the duchies of Teschen (Cieszyn) and Troppau (Opava) with the former Duchy of Jägerndorf (Karniów) and parts of the Duchy of Neisse (Nysa) remained with the Habsburg Monarchy as the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia.
In 1918, the Austrian monarchy was abolished and the major part of the duchy was ceded to the newly-created state of Czechoslovakia by the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, with the exception of Cieszyn Silesia (the former Duchy of Teschen), which was split in 1920 between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Smaller parts of the duchy also became a part of Poland while the Hlučín Region of the Prussian Province of Silesia fell to Czechoslovakia.
[edit] Demographics
Austrian Silesia (in yellow) in 1880
According to an Austrian census, Austrian Silesia in 1910 was home to 756,949 people, speaking the following languages:
[edit] Major towns
Towns with more than 5,000 people in 1880:
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