Konotop (Kontop, Kontopp in German) is today a village in the municipality of Kolsko (Gmina Kolsko) in the county of Nowosolski (Powiat Nowosolski) in the Polish voivodeship Lubuski (Województwo Lubuskie), located in the western part of Poland near Zielona Góra (germ. Grünberg).
Historically, before the Second World War, Konotop was part of Prussia in what was administrative district of Zielona Góra (germ. Kreis Grünberg) in the Prussian province of Lower Silesia (germ. Schlesien).
It lies to the right of the river Odra (germ. Oder) by the river Obrzyca (germ. Ober), which flows there slowly through marshlands. The river Odra is the second largest river in Poland and is 9 km away. The river Obrzyca meanders through the village and connects Lake Sławskie (germ. Schlawaer) with the river Odra. Konotop is 4 km from the Lake Sławskie. It is 13 km long and affords good facilities for water sports, swimming, fishing as well as general relaxation.
The Polish-German border (Guben-Gubin) is just 94 km away. The village sits on the crossroads of the no.:278 between Krosno Odrzańskie (germ. Crossen) – Sulechów (germ. Züllichau) – Wschowa (germ. Fraustadt) and no.:315 between Nowa Sól (germ. Neuslatz) – Wolsztyn (germ. Wollstein).
Konotop is centrally located with good road connections and public transport with the surrounding towns and cities such as: Głogów, Gubin, Krosno Odrzańskie, Leszno, Nowa Sól, Poznań, Sława, Sulechów, Wolsztyn, Wschowa, Zielona Góra, Żary.
The nearest international airport is Poznań Ławica (germ. Possen) approx. 102 km north-east of Konotop.
The landscape of Konotop, like most of Poland, is primarily flat. Konotop is surrounded by a large expanse of woodland which is mostly pine with some deciduous trees. There is an abundance of wild life and birds to be enjoyed during peaceful, pleasant walks. Wild blue berries and mushrooms can be freely gathered in season. There are also two natural reservoirs of outstanding beauty, the Mesze and Święte, which are protected by law.
Founded in the Middle Ages (it may have existed as early as the 13th century), Konotop received the status of a city at the start of the 18th century. Although its time as a city lasted only a little longer than 100 years, Konotop never developed into an actual city, which can be seen in its village-style architecture and in the fact that it has no guilds. After the Napoleonic Wars, reforms were implemented and the new Prussian legal system introduced sanctions, which the population refused or rather could not fulfil so that the status as a city was lost. It belonged alternately to Poland (Greater Poland), Bohemia (Duchy of Lebus and Duchy of Głogów), Austria (Austrian Habsburgs), Prussia, Germany and to the German Reich. Up until 1945, Konotop was a market town and around 1930 had 1000 inhabitants. There used to be a municipal court, which differentiated it from a village, as well as a bank and a small hospital.
Today Konotop has 1138 inhabitans (as at 30th June 2008). There are 2 schools: primary (1-6 years) and secondary (7-9 years). Konotop also has a kindergarten and gymnasium, a Doctors surgery, voluntary fire brigade (OSP), a newly renovated village hall, numerous shops including two supermarkets as well as 2 petrol stations. The village has an active womens society - Koło Gospodyń Wiejskich and a folk music group – “Śnieżynki”. Sporting organisations include “Mieszko Konotop” football club and a table tennis club.

Contents

1. Name
2. History
3. Status as a “Herrschaft” and a “Rittergut”
4. Weblinks

Name
An interesting legend is connected with the village coat of arms. It is about an evil water sprite harassing travellers and drowning horses. The village earned its name from the sprite’s nick name.
During that mysterious time in this region many horses drowned in the swamps, that's why the area was named "Konotop" - a swampy land or a horse-ford where horses drowned. The name of Konotop is of Slavic origin.
German folk lore claims that Konotop means “horse-pond”, the place where horses are led into a river in order to cool their legs after work on the plough and in order to wash them, which is possibly a reference to a ford on the Obra. The syllable “koń” comes from “horse”, the syllable “top” means “drown (someone)” or “sink (something)” when literally translated from the Polish (which is also confirmed in the Russian). Two explanations are mooted today. The traditional legend states that horses drowned here in the marshes, but “to drown” and “to be drowned” are not the same thing. A modified interpretation consequently arose. According to an old fairy tale a “water sprite” lived there, who would draw the horses that pulled along merchants into the marshes in order to get at the wares they kept in their wagons. In any case the city’s emblem depicts a horse swimming out of a city gate, an invention from the early 18th century, when Konotop had had its name for a long time. In the Ukraine there is another place with the name Konotop, identified as a ‘horse-pond’. The Konotop in Poland also lies in the middle of marshes due to the alluvium of the river Obrzyca.

History

The village dates back to early medieval times. The land of Konotop was under the Polish rules from the Piast Dynasty. The first settlement is presumed to have been in the 13th century.
The historic late-Renaissance Catholic Church of Saint Anne is worth a closer look. The face of the church has changed over the years and at present is baroque in style. Most of Konotops’ notaries are buried in the crypts of the church. The church was mentioned for the first time in 1308.
In the 15th century the village was the property of the noble family von Zabeltitz, which also owned Deutsch-Wartenberg. Sigismund von Zabeltitz was mentioned by name in 1451 and two brothers von Zabeltitz were executed as highwaymen by Johann II von Glogau. The rule of the family von Zabeltitz ended in 1482. The ownership was transferred in the 16th century to Balthasar von Löbell, Wolff von Dyherrn (1572) and Sigismund von Kottwitz (1576). During this time, the Church of Saint Anna was rebuilt, possibly due to having been burnt down; it had been Protestant from 1550 to 1654. A fortified Renaissance manor house was built at the site of the old Wartenberg in 1592. The female proprietor of Konotop, Anne von Kottwitz, donated a bell tower to the Church of Saint Anna in 1595, which stood separately from the main building (the bells from that time and the grave stones of the owners in the vestibule are still in existence today). Adam Wenzel von Kottwitz built a baroque manor house on the ruins – precisely how they were ruined is unknown – of the Renaissance manor house in 1693, situated upon new oak stakes in the swampy underground, the graves were reformed and the park was constructed. After the death of her husband, Anna von Kottwitz completed construction in 1696. In order to lend her office more weight, the Kottwitz family made an effort to achieve city-status, which was awarded by the Emperor Joseph Habsburg I on 28th May 1706. The original documentation can still be seen in the National Archive in Stary Kisielin near Zielona Góra.
As a result the site gained its emblem and other privileges. At that time the Church of St. Anna was reconstructed in the baroque style and a presbytery was attached. Adam Heinrich von Kottwitz had the Protestant Church of Peace constructed in and unadorned timber-framed architectural style, which is also simply called the “prayer house”.
From 1788 the proprietors of the manor changed in quick succession from the Lords von Luckow, counts von Rothenburg (until 1811), the Barons von Falkenhayn and the Barons von Kalckreuth. Around 1790 Konotop was divided into the city and the estate of the masters of the manor house. It had 831 inhabitants, 3 windmills, a hospital, 2 vicarages and from 1790 a Protestant school. Due to the fact that it all belonged to Prussia with its strict laws and because of the reforms following the Napoleonic Wars, Konotop lost the rights of a city at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1845 only 67 houses, 1 royal post, 1 brewery, 1 distillery, 2 windmills, 4 smiths, 3 bakeries, 4 tailors and 471 inhabitants (34 of whom were Catholic) were counted. After Heinrich Gräff (Graeff), Adelbert Foerster acquired the place in 1845 the estate developed and became larger, economic and residential buildings were built anew, the distillery extended, the manor house fundamentally renovated and reconverted, as well as given a side wing, a section of the park converted into an English garden and a bower and a neo-classical burial site were erected. Altogether the place underwent a significant revival. The opening of a Catholic school is dated to have occurred in 1885, shortly after that the municipal court came about in 1893. In 1900, Konotop had 1073 inhabitants again, and got a railway station in the early years of the 20th century and so became a railway-junction for the single track line from Wollstein over Neusalz to Sagan intersecting the line from Wollstein to Züllichau. A locomotive shed and a stockyard for wood transports were built. This development brought further revival.

Under Kurt Adalbert Lothar Foerster, who presided over the administration from 1922 to 1945 as the last proprietor, the estate was 2000 hectares large, of which just about 375 hectares were fields, 125 hectares meadows and 1500 hectares forests. Under his initiative, the meadows were dehydrated with drainage trenches and the distillery received an improved licence to create industrial spirits made from inedible potatoes. On the other hand, the vineyard, the sawmill, and the steam-powered peat press were scrapped. The court became a model plant in Lower Silesia, Kurt Foerster was a widely acknowledged expert in potato crops. As their patron he had both churches fundamentally renovated, as well as the manor house.

Until 1939 the village’s populace was purely German and consisted of peasants and officials. After the Germans joined the war, Polish workers immigrated from the district of Wollstein which lay a few kilometres away and which had been a part of Poland since 1918 and had a mixed populace. They were driven out of there in 1939 and assigned to other courts by the German government, whilst the Germans from the Baltic resettled in the Polish courts in the province of Posen. On the 23rd of January 1945 the trek from Konotop to the West began, the exodus away from the Soviet armies that were already advancing into earshot. A few days later a massacre erupted amongst those left behind over the rights to the industrial spirits from the distillery and the family vault of the estate owners was damaged. In the following years the Polish communists tore down the Protestant church and blew up the manor house, of which only the brick-lined core of one half remains today. The estate with the milk-cows and the small outer farms were continued as state-run concerns, the distillery came under the Polish spirits monopoly. In the Protestant vicarage and in the hospital, apartments were established for the Poles who had been moved on from the East by the Soviets. The municipal court is used to this day as a school and for a while an agricultural evening school was set up there. The stretch of railroad was not closed for passenger traffic until 2002 and has been used since then strictly for the transportation of goods, occasional wood transports, or tours of mushroom collectors and nostalgic lovers of steam locomotives.

Status as a “Herrschaft” and a “Rittergut”

Konotop was a “Herrschaft”, which means that in the Bohemian period (14-16th century) the jurisdiction fell to the proprietors (with the courtroom in the manor house). Bohemian laws were continued in the Austrian period. The “Herrschaft” consisted of the “Rittergut” (manor) of Konotop with the manor house, the estate of Polame (1945: 1500 hectares of forest predominantly pine) and the three out-lying agricultural centres of Marienhof (today Marianki), Heinrichau (by Striemehne, today Strumiany) and Birkvorwerk each with stables, barns, paddocks and residences for the workers. There were two forester’s ranges and Lake Schwendt also belonged to the estate. Since the soil was not good enough for wheat and sugar beet, the fields were used for the cultivation of seed potatoes, rye, barley, oats, maize, fodder beets, lupines, and mixtures used as ‘green manure’, which were ploughed in or used as cattle feed. During the war, sunflowers and rapeseed were also planted for oil production.

The manor house had 32 rooms and was surrounded by the park and moats. The crypt of the Foerster family and members of the Graeff family who had married them was situated in the park. Between the streets and the manor house lay the courtyard with tenements for the employees and workmen, along with the distillery for the production of industrial alcohol made from potatoes which were not suitable for consumption or sowing, along with forges, stables, storage, barns, feed kitchens, and cart depots. Behind the park there was a nursery garden with a gate, which extended out to the village, with goods that could be bought by the village dwellers. The current-day operators live in the old long tenements for the workers of the ruling court. They run the distillery and keep cows. These days, geese are bred instead of the ducks that were kept there earlier.

Weblinks:

• Polish websites:

konotop.pl
wikipedia.org
zgapa.pl
glogow.pl


• German websites:

de.wikipedia.org/Konotop
wissen-im-web.de
weblexikon.de

Researchers and translators: Charles David Booth, BA (Somerville College, University of Oxford), Daniel Kurowski, BA; July 2008
Proof-reader: Prof. Dr. Fiona Stafford, Somerville College, University of Oxford, July 2008

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