Cottbus

Cottbus or Chóśebuz is a university city and the second-largest city in the German state of Brandenburg after the state capital, Potsdam. With around 100,000 inhabitants, Cottbus is the most populous city in Lusatia. Cottbus lies in the Sorbian settlement area of Lower Lusatia, and is the second-largest city on the River Spree after Berlin, which is situated around downstream. The city is located on the shores of Germany's largest artificial lake, the Cottbuser Ostsee.
Cottbus is the political and cultural center of the Lower Sorbian-speaking Sorbs, also known as the Wends in Lower Lusatia; the overall center of Sorbian culture is Bautzen/Budyšin. Cottbus is the largest bilingual city in Germany. Signage is mostly in German and Lower Sorbian. The city hosts several Lower Sorbian institutions like the Lower Sorbian version of the Sorbischer Rundfunk/Serbski rozgłos, the Lower Sorbian Gymnasium, and the Wendish Museum. The use of the Lower Sorbian language, however, is more widespread in the surrounding municipalities than in the city itself. The Wendish Quarter is a part of the city supposed to resemble the traditional Sorbian architectural style.
In the 10th century, the Wends constructed the largest Slavic castle of Lower Lusatia, a gord, on a Spree island. This former gord is considered the nucleus of the city. On it rises the massive 13th-century Castle Tower with its blue clock.
Cottbus is the seat of the Brandenburg University of Technology. Due to this, the city has the official names Universitätsstadt Cottbus/Uniwersitne město Chóśebuz. Branitz Castle, built in 1770–71, in the southeast of the city, was a residence of the Prince of Pückler-Muskau. The prince, who also created Muskau Park, designed the extensive Branitz Park on the shores of the Spree, with its two grass pyramids. Cottbus State Theater is the only state theater in Brandenburg. Cottbus main station is a major railway junction with extensive sidings/depots.

Names

The placename Cottbus is derived from the Lower Sorbian personal name Chóśebud, which in turn means "cheerful watchman" or "vigilant hero". The name of the place can thus be interpreted as "settlement of Chóśebud". At its first documented mention in 1156, the spelling was Chotibus; in 1301, the manor was referred to as opidum et castrum Kotebuz. In documents from 1348 and 1386, the town appears as Kothebus. The spelling Kottbus first appears in 1391.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the spelling of the city's name was disputed. In Berlin, the spelling "Kottbus" was preferred, and it is still used for the capital's Kottbusser Tor. Locally the traditional spelling "Cottbus" was preferred, and it is now used in most circumstances. Because the official spelling used locally before the spelling reforms of 1996 had contravened even the standardized spelling rules already in place, the stressed the urgent recommendation that geographical names should respect the national spelling standards.
A citizen of the city may be identified as either a "Cottbuser" or a "Cottbusser".
According to the city's main statutes, its official name is Cottbus/Chóśebuz. In addition to its name, it also carries the designation "University City".
Names in different languages:

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History

Medieval period

The settlement was established in the tenth century, when Sorbs erected a castle on a sandy island in the River Spree. It was captured by the March of Lusatia in 965, then it passed to Poland under Bolesław I the Brave in 1002, and back to the March of Lusatia in 1032.
The first recorded mention of the town's name was in 1156. In the 13th century German settlers came to the town and thereafter lived side by side with the Sorbs. In the Middle Ages Cottbus was known for wool, and the town's drapery was exported throughout Brandenburg, Bohemia and Saxony. It was also located on an important trade route, called the "Salt Road", which was used to transport salt from Halle to Lusatia and further east to Poland. It was part of the Margraviate of Lusatia and later Lower Lusatia, which was held by the House of Wettin until it became a Bohemian Crown Land in 1367. In 1445 Cottbus was acquired by the Margraviate of Brandenburg from Bohemia. It was an exclave almost completely surrounded by Bohemian Lower Lusatia.

Modern period

In 1514 Jan Rak founded the Universitas Serborum, a Sorbian gymnasium, in the city. In 1635 Lower Lusatia was ceded by Bohemia to Saxony, thereby making Cottbus an enclave of Saxony. Since the 1690s, French, Walloons and Palatines settled in the city. In 1701 Brandenburg-Prussia became the Kingdom of Prussia.
In 1807, following the War of the Fourth Coalition, Cottbus was ceded by Prussia to the Kingdom of Saxony by the Treaty of Tilsit, reuniting it with Lower Lusatia. Cottbus was returned to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the Napoleonic wars. Lower Lusatia was also ceded to Prussia and both became part of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg, where they remained until 1947. In the 19th century, the Bramborski Serbski Casnik Sorbian newspaper was published in the city, and in 1880, the first Lower Lusatian department of the Maćica Serbska organization was established there.
Up to 142 French prisoners of war were held in the town by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. In 1871 Prussia, and therefore Cottbus, became part of the German Empire. According to the Prussian census of 1905, the city of Cottbus had a population of 46,270, of which 97% were Germans, 2% were Sorbs and 1% were Poles.

World War I and the interwar period

During World War I, Germany operated two prisoner-of-war camps and a detention center for Allied privates in the city. The first captives, some 7,500 Russians, were mostly kept outdoors, which, combined with poor sanitary and medical conditions, resulted in an epidemic typhus outbreak, with 70% of the prisoners falling ill, and some 400 dying. Soon, also POWs of other nationalities, including French, British, Belgian, Serbian, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese and Australian were held in the POW camps in Cottbus. Conditions in the camps were poor due to overcrowding, filth, inadequate heating in winter, and insufficient medical supplies in the camps' lazarettes. Western Allied POWs were eventually released until mid-January 1919, whereas Russian POWs remained in the camps and were employed at local lignite mines. Many Russian POWs preferred to stay in the camp rather than leave for Soviet Russia and be forced into the Communist Party and army, and many were released to Russia only between September 1920 and January 1921, however some 600 to 1,000 Russians remained in the camp as of June 1921.
The former prisoner-of-war camp was used as a concentration camp for some 1,200 to 1,500 Polish activists, civilians and insurgents of the Silesian Uprisings of 1919–1921, who were often subjected to harassment, beatings and tortures, with their deportation from Upper Silesia to Cottbus being a breach of the Treaty of Versailles. Among the prisoners were dozens of women with children, and elderly men, and camp conditions remained poor. It was also the site of a concentration camp for unwanted Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. Since late 1922, also Polish laborers and their families were detained in the camp before their deportation to Poland. The camp was eventually closed in December 1923.

1914 to 1945

On 1 August 1914, many citizens of Cottbus greeted the outbreak of the First World War with jubilation. Emergency final examinations were held at the grammar school, and a few days later Infantry Regiment No. 52 marched to the train station, cheered on by thousands of Cottbus residents. In September, a camp for 10,000 prisoners of war was set up at the racecourse in the northern part of the city. On 4 September 1914, the first transport of 7,000 Russian prisoners of war arrived. In 1915, an additional prisoner-of-war camp was established near Merzdorf.
After the First World War, the textile industry continued to dominate the economy, although unemployment was at times high. In the 1932 elections, the NSDAP already won a majority of the votes. In 1934, the "Cottbus gold find" attracted public attention. Between 1934 and 1937, the city received a new town hall, as the old building on the Altmarkt was no longer able to handle the growing administrative workload. During the National Socialist era, the old Prussian prison was first used as a men's prison starting in early 1937, and then as a women's prison from August 1937 onward. In January 1939, the prison was converted into a women's penitentiary. From 1938, the Phänomen Works in Zittau produced the ZKW tracked vehicle for the Wehrmacht. In 1939, the Focke-Wulf aircraft works relocated parts of their production to Cottbus. In addition, a German Air Transport School and a hydrogenation plant were established. For the antisemitic persecution, see below.
In the autumn of 1940, the people of Cottbus experienced the first air raids on the city. Polish actor Władysław Hańcza was imprisoned in a forced labour camp in the city in 1944–1945. On 15 February 1945, a bombing raid by 459 American B-17 bombers destroyed large parts of the city. More than 1,000 people were killed. On 22 April 1945, after three days of heavy fighting, troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army captured the city. Among the buildings destroyed were the historic town hall on the Altmarkt and the station's reception building. Today, about one-third of Cottbus consists of buildings dating from before the Second World War. In January 1946, Cottbus issued 34 semi-postal postage stamps to help finance rebuilding the city.

German Democratic Republic

After the end of the war, Cottbus belonged to the Soviet Occupation Zone, from which the German Democratic Republic emerged in 1949. On 1 July 1950, Cottbus was incorporated into the district of Cottbus, thereby losing its status as an independent city. In 1952, Cottbus became the capital of the newly established GDR district of Cottbus. On 17 June 1953, Cottbus also experienced the popular uprising. When restrictions on living standards were to be implemented, people took to the streets and also raised political demands. Soviet tanks and workers' militias suppressed the uprising.
In 1954, Cottbus once again became an independent city, and the surrounding district was renamed Cottbus-Land. That same year, the University of Civil Engineering was founded. It was initially closed in 1963 and re-established in 1969 as the University of Civil Engineering.
In 1952, the Socialist Unity Party declared that the Cottbus district was to be developed into the coal and energy district of the GDR. The area around the city subsequently became the most important supplier of coal and energy. However, construction—led by the Construction and Assembly Combine —as well as the textile and furniture industries and food production also shaped the city's economic structure. The first prefabricated housing buildings were built in the late 1950s in the Spremberg suburb. Between 1968 and 1970, immediately west of the old town, the city promenade was constructed, with its nearly 175-meter-long "residential slab", which was urbanistically designed as the new city center. On 14 January 1975, a MiG-21 fighter jet crashed into a residential block in Cottbus. The pilot and five female residents died instantly; another resident died later.
On 17 September 1975, construction began on the large housing estate of Sachsendorf-Madlow, between the villages of Sachsendorf and Madlow, which had since been incorporated into Cottbus. The apartment blocks were mostly of the prefabricated P2 type. The first apartments were ready for occupancy in January 1976; in total, 12,500 new apartments were built. On September 4, 1976, the population of Cottbus exceeded 100,000, making it a major city. The last large housing estate to be built was the Neu-Schmellwitz district, starting in 1983, with prefabricated WBS 70 apartment blocks, mainly intended for employees of the nearby textile combine. Immediately before reunification, in 1989, the city reached its highest population level, with 128,943 inhabitants.
The Cottbus prison was a central collection point for political prisoners who were "bought free" by the West German government. Today, the Cottbus Prison Memorial is located there.