Milicz commune

Milicz is a town with a great and rich history; suffice it to say that settlements in its vicinity probably existed as early as 7,000 years BC. The earliest mention of the settlement comes from a bull of Innocent II from 1136. The town was described there under the name Miliche.

Milicz was granted town rights at the turn of the 13th/14th century (it is mentioned as a town in a document of 1323), but already several decades back it was quite a large medieval town. Remnants of the buildings of that time still exist today on the northern side of the Barycz River. As one of the properties of the Archbishopric of Gniezno, the castle "Milich" - is mentioned in a bull of Pope Hadrian V from 1155, while a document from 1249 mentions Milicz in Latin as Milicium.

The town under its current name Milicz is recorded in a Latin-language document by Przemysl I from 1249. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the town shared the fate of the whole of Silesia, a territory to which several states laid claim. It was under the domain of the Piasts and Jagiellons, and was part of Bohemia, Germany and Poland. When the last of the Olesnica Piasts died in 1492, the town came under the rule of the King of Bohemia, this time Władysław the Jagiellonian. The latter in turn handed it over in 1494 to Sigismund Kurzbach von Witkau, who divided the town between his sons. The Kurzbach family ruled the town for more than a century. During this time, carp farming developed here. It brought new settlers to the town, who cleared forests, founded villages and built dams. Milicz developed and grew. When the last of the Kurzbach family, Ewa Popiela, married Baron Joachim III Maltzan and soon died, the Maltzan family took over Milicz. It was not a bad period. During the Maltzans' reign, among other things, a palace, two churches (Grace in 1709 and St. Anne's in 1807) were built and the construction of parks began. The family also contributed to the economy: wool and cotton manufactories, a cloth factory and a spinning mill were established. A new town hall was erected and a water supply and sewage system was built. The position of the Maltzans can be testified to by the fact that it was at their house in Milicz in 1813 that the Russian Tsar Alexander stayed when he went to meet the King of Prussia.

In the 18th century, Milicz passed from Austrian rule to Prussian rule, at the end of the 19th century it was in the German Empire, then there was the Weimar Republic and finally the Third Reich. On 22 January 1945, it was captured by the Red Army and, together with the so-called Recovered Territories, granted to Poland as part of the post-Yalta agreement by the victorious World War II powers as compensation for the Eastern Borderlands lost by Poland. Officially it happened on 7 June 1945. The town was taken over from the Soviets by the first starost Karol Michalak.

Milicz's coat of arms depicting Saint George on horseback slaying a dragon has existed at least since the 15th century, as such an image appears on the oldest surviving town seal. In German times, Milicz's flag was white and yellow and originated from the flag of the local chancery brotherhood; it was not used during the communist era. The subject of the flag was revived after the system's collapse and the first free local elections in 1990. Green (symbolising the forests surrounding Milicz) was added to the German colours to distinguish it from the papal flag popular in Poland. By resolution of the Milicz Town Council, the flag of the Milicz commune is 3 horizontal stripes: white - yellow - green.

Source: www.milicz.pl