Český Těšín: the suburb across the Olše that became a town

Two banks of one river

Český Těšín belongs to the Karviná District in the Moravian-Silesian Region and lies in historical Cieszyn Silesia, on the left, western bank of the Olše. The state border with Poland runs down the middle of the river; it was drawn this way when Těšín was divided in 1920. The old historic core of Těšín, with Castle Hill and the Piast Tower, lies on the Polish side; it can be seen from the Czech riverbank. The town consists of seven parts: besides Český Těšín itself, which includes the former village of Svibice, they are Dolní and Horní Žukov, Koňákov, Mistřovice, Mosty and Stanislavice. Svibice is today the town's southern district, with a housing estate from the 1980s.

The town's coat of arms is a historical one². In a blue shield, on a blue wavy base, stands a silver castle with two round towers and a lower tower between them; above the middle tower is a golden eagle. The town received its flag, with three horizontal stripes of red, yellow and blue, by a decision of 1 February 1994². The symbol of Cieszyn Silesia and of Český Těšín itself is a spring plant, Hacquetia epipactis, known locally as těšíňanka. It is one of the first plants to flower, as early as March.

The name Těšín is explained by a legend that is also told by the town's information centre³. Three brothers, the sons of Prince Leško – Bolko, Leško and Češko – are said to have met happily at a spring after long wanderings, and in memory of how they rejoiced (in Czech, těšili se) at the meeting they built a castle and named it Těšín. The Well of the Three Brothers stands today in Polish Cieszyn. Documented history begins with a charter of Pope Adrian IV of 23 April 1155, which mentions Těšín castle as the centre of a castellany⁴. The castle and the old town now lie in Poland; for Český Těšín they are part of a shared history.

The suburb across the river

Until 1920, the area of today's Český Těšín was a suburb of Těšín, the seat of the Dukes of Těšín⁴. The left-bank suburbs were sparsely built up and belonged to the ducal chamber estate. Three suburban quarters lay here: Brandýs, Kamenec and the youngest, Saská kupa. Saská kupa was founded at the end of the 18th century by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, son-in-law of Maria Theresa. Along the road from the castle he had dozens of cloth-makers' workshops built, laying the foundation of today's Hlavní třída⁴.

More people began to settle on the left bank after the great fire of Těšín in 1789, after which the town walls were pulled down. For a long time, however, the suburb kept its rural character, with wooden cottages roofed with straw or shingles⁴. From that period survives the Empire-style house at Masarykovy sady 18, built in 1833, which according to the town is the oldest surviving non-religious building in Český Těšín⁵. Above the entrance it bears the inscription Gott segne das Haus, God bless this house. In Brandýs there once stood a Renaissance chateau, the summer residence of the Piasts of Těšín. It no longer stands.

The park around the house was laid out at the beginning of the 19th century as Albrecht Avenue; today it bears the name Masarykovy sady, Masaryk Park⁶. The suburb is also home to the Střelnice, the shooting-range building. It was built in 1882 by the Těšín Shooting Society, founded in 1795 under the patronage of Duke Albert, and in 1890 Emperor Franz Joseph I took part in a shooting competition here.⁷ The suburb also had the Prochaska family's printing works, a gasworks and, in Svibice, Josef Jaworek's bentwood furniture factory.

The station of all of Těšín

The turning point came with the railway. The Košice–Bohumín Railway, which linked Bohumín with Košice, ran along the left bank of the Olše. Its first section, 32 kilometres long, from Bohumín to Těšín, opened in 1869⁸. The station on the left bank became the main station of all of Těšín, and an industrial district began to grow up around it. Before the First World War, the railway carried around five million passengers, and Těšín station had the most passengers on the whole line⁸.

In 1887–1888, a new station building went up on the eastern side of the tracks, and it was then used by two railway companies⁸. It was designed by the architect Anton Dachler and is built of fair-faced, that is unplastered, brick⁸ in the Neo-Renaissance style⁹. Today it is a listed cultural monument¹⁰. Distinguished guests passed through the station, among them Emperor Franz Joseph I and Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria.⁹ According to the town's information centre, in August 1906 Buffalo Bill also came here with his Wild West show on his last European tour⁸. From 12 February 1911, a tram ran from the station across the bridge over the Olše to the historic centre¹¹. The line was just under two kilometres long¹¹.

The church in Masaryk Park

At the end of the 19th century, the Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus was built in Albrecht Avenue. It was built on the initiative of the Jesuits in 1891–1894 to a design by the Viennese architect Ludwig Zatzka¹². It is Neo-Gothic, with a transept and a large rose window in the façade. The interior furnishings were supplied by the sculpture workshop of Ferdinand Stuflesser from St. Ulrich in Tyrol¹². The church holds the relics of St Melchior Grodziecki, who was martyred in Košice in 1619 and canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1995.¹² Today it is a parish church and a listed cultural monument¹⁰.

The park has other monuments too. The Baroque polychrome statue of St John of Nepomuk from the first half of the 18th century is, according to the town, the oldest sculpture in Český Těšín⁶. The Neo-Renaissance Fulda Villa was designed by the Viennese architect Julius Mayreder and built in 1899 for Friedrich Eduard Fulda; its façade is dominated by a gable with a stylised sundial¹⁰. Before the Second World War it housed the German consulate, and after the war a nursery school¹³.

The former villages that are now part of the town have churches of their own. In Koňákov stands the rural Church of Divine Providence, whose grounds, with an avenue of trees and folk-style statues of the apostles, are a listed cultural monument¹⁰. In old Svibice, the Těšín builder Friedrich Fulda built the Neo-Romanesque Church of St Hedwig of Silesia, consecrated in 1893. Mass is celebrated there in both Czech and Polish. Also a listed cultural monument is the small early Baroque chapel in Mosty known as the Swedish Chapel, dating from the end of the 17th century¹⁰.

1920: one town, two states

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, both Czechoslovakia and Poland laid claim to Cieszyn Silesia. The dispute was to be settled by a plebiscite, but it was never held. In the end, the division of Cieszyn Silesia was decided on 28 July 1920 by the Conference of Ambassadors, that is, representatives of the great powers⁴. The border ran through the town of Těšín, along the Olše. The historic core with the square, the castle, the town hall and the theatre went to Poland, and the left-bank industrial part with the station and roughly a third of the population went to Czechoslovakia.

The division affected both sides: Polish Cieszyn was left without its station and industrial districts, the left bank without the historic centre, the offices and the cultural institutions. The suburbs of Saská kupa, Kamenec and Brandýs became the new town of Český Těšín, in Polish Czeski Cieszyn. It covered about 2.7 km² and had around 8,000 inhabitants⁴. Before it received its official name, according to the town's information centre, it was referred to as Těšín – nádraží, that is, Těšín station⁸. The left bank had the station, the gasworks and a school, but it lacked offices, further schools and housing. The tram continued to run across the border, but thorough checks on the bridge made smooth operation impossible. It ran for the last time on 2 April 1921¹¹. The cars were stored in the depot on the Polish side and later sold to Bielsko and Łódź¹¹.

The new town of the 1920s and 1930s

The suburb became a district town⁴. In 1922, the Czechoslovak government granted it a loan of 15 million crowns for the construction of public buildings, and in 1927 the Moravian architect and urban planner Emil Leo drew up a plan for the town's expansion⁴. In the 1920s and 1930s, a town hall, a post office, schools, a hospital, a cemetery, churches, a synagogue, banks, hotels and apartment buildings went up here. The building boom was only brought to a halt by the year 1938⁴.

The town hall was designed by the Ostrava architect Vilém Richter, whose entry under the motto “Braň se” (Defend yourself) won the competition in February 1925. The firm of Eugen Fulda built it between 2 April and 5 December 1928¹⁴. The square in front of it has remained a marketplace, and the ground plan of the house of the Tetl family, on whose land the town hall stands, is marked in the paving¹⁴. Near the station, a Functionalist post office building went up. The grammar school building on Frýdecká Street, built in 1932–1935, was designed by the Prague architect Jaroslav Fragner; it has been a listed cultural monument since 1986¹⁵.

Protestant congregations also built churches of their own. The Na Rozvoji church from 1927 was a German Protestant church before the war¹⁶. The church of the Church of the Brethren on Frýdecká Street, from 1928–1929, was designed by Eduard David¹⁷. The same architect also designed the Na Nivách church from 1932, with a tower 50 metres high¹⁸; it was built for a Polish-speaking Protestant congregation. The municipal cemetery on Hřbitovní Street opened in 1925, and the Jewish community had its own section there¹⁹.

In 1928, the Orthodox society Schomre Schabos, meaning Guardians of the Sabbath, built a synagogue to a design by Eduard David in what is now Božkova Street²⁰. From 1933 to 1939, the centre of social life was the Café Avion by the bridge below the castle, where a resident orchestra used to play²¹. The villa of Gottlieb and Stella Fantel on Smetanova Street dates from 1930; it was inspired by the English hall house and has an almost intact interior. It too is a listed cultural monument¹⁰.

The war years

In early October 1938, after the Munich Agreement, Czechoslovakia accepted the Polish demand and ceded part of Cieszyn Silesia to Poland. The Polish army took control of the town, and Český Těšín was joined to Polish Cieszyn as Cieszyn Zachodni, West Cieszyn⁴. After the defeat of Poland in September 1939, the whole area passed to Germany, and during the occupation the left-bank part of the town was called Teschen West⁴. In the autumn of 1939, the Nazis destroyed the town's synagogues¹⁹. Only the Schomre Schabos synagogue survived: it stood in a row of terraced buildings, so it was not burnt down, but its interior was destroyed. During the war it served as a store for theatre scenery¹⁹. The Café Avion was damaged in 1939 when the bridge was blown up, and the Nazis then demolished it as Jewish property¹⁹.

In 1941, the Nazis set up a prisoner-of-war camp in the Kontešinec district. It held prisoners of war from all over Europe, most of whom worked in the mines²². Since 1979, the site of the camp has been marked by the Monument to the International Solidarity of the Anti-Fascist Coalition, with bronze reliefs of prisoners by the sculptor Štěpán Mikula²². The Red Army entered the town on 3 May 1945, and the border returned to its 1920 form⁴. The dispute over it was finally settled by a treaty between Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1958.

Theatre, museum and two languages

Right after the war, a permanent theatre was founded in Český Těšín. It gave its first premiere, Noc na Karlštejně (A Night at Karlštejn), on 6 October 1945 in the unheated hall of the Střelnice²³. In 1951 it was joined by the Polish Company, and in 1961 both companies moved into a building of their own designed by Zdeněk Vávra and Jan Černohorský²³. Since 2008, the theatre has also included the Bajka puppet company²³. A theatre where a Czech and a Polish company perform under one roof is unique in Czechia⁹.

The first town museum in Český Těšín was founded as early as 1925. After the war it was re-established on 11 June 1948, and its first curator was the teacher and local historian Ladislav Báča²⁴. Today's main building of the Museum of the Těšín Region on Hlavní třída was built in 1885–1886 as the house of the architect Alois Jedek. In 2018–2019 it was completely renovated, and in June 2020 it opened with an exhibition on the development of Cieszyn Silesia²⁵. Since 1996 the Střelnice has been home to a cultural centre, and the town also has the Těšín Jazz Festival, held since 1973⁷.

In 1960, Český Těšín ceased to be a district town and became part of the Karviná District⁴. New housing estates grew up on its outskirts, including the Svibice estate in the 1980s. The town is home to the Congress of Poles in the Czech Republic²⁶ and the Polish Cultural and Educational Union (PZKO)²⁷, which bought the former synagogue building in 1967²⁰. The Polish monthly Zwrot is published here²⁸²⁹, the town has Polish nursery and primary schools as well as the Polish Grammar School³⁰, and the streets have bilingual Czech and Polish names.

Bridges without borders

According to the town, Český Těšín was the busiest border crossing between Czechoslovakia and Poland throughout the post-war period⁴. The two parts of the town are linked by two road bridges, the Friendship Bridge in the north and the Freedom Bridge in the south. Checks on them ended in 2007, when Czechia and Poland joined the Schengen Area, and today Český Těšín and Cieszyn together form the heart of the Cieszyn Silesia Euroregion⁴. The third link is the Sports Footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists in Adam Sikora Park, built at the turn of 2011 and 2012. It is more than 95 metres long, and people hang padlocks on it³¹.

Since 2010, the Avion reading room and café, designed by the architect Czesław Mendrek, has stood by the Friendship Bridge²¹. It is a new building that follows on from the original interwar café. The ground plan of the original café is marked in the paving, and by the entrance there is a Stolperstein bearing the name of its Jewish owner, Rosalie Wiesnerová. In front of the building stands the broom of Crazy Markéta from a song by Jaromír Nohavica²¹. In Adam Sikora Park there is a scaled-down replica of the Piast Tower by Viktor Holczak from 1913³²; the real tower stands on the other bank. In September 2010, a monument to T. G. Masaryk by the sculptor Martin Kuchař was unveiled in Masaryk Park³³.

Since 2014, the town centre has been an urban heritage zone³⁴. It protects the centre from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with buildings in the styles of Classicism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the traditionalism of the interwar First Republic³⁴. The zone extends from Střelniční Street in the south to Masaryk Park in the north, and from Nádražní Street to the Olše⁴. People born in Český Těšín include the writer Ludvík Aškenazy, the film director František Vláčil, the actor Jaromír Hanzlík and the chemist and former president of the Academy of Sciences Jiří Drahoš.