Country Poland Gmina Rychtal Local time Saturday 2:08 PM | County Kępno Population 1,300 | |
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Weather 11°C, Wind W at 24 km/h, 38% Humidity Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship | ||
Rychtal [ˈrɨxtal] (German: Reichthal, 1939-45: Reichtal) is a village in Kępno County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Rychtal. It lies approximately 18 kilometres (11 mi) south-west of Kępno and 153 km (95 mi) south-east of the regional capital Poznań.
Map of Rychtal, Poland
In 1233 Duke Henry I the Bearded of Silesia opened the area to German and Walloon colonists in the course of the Ostsiedlung. Their settlement Reichthal ("Rich Valley") was first mentioned in 1294 as a possession of the Bishop of Wrocław. It replaced an older locality Bandlowice held by the Teutonic Knights. Due to the proximity of the Bishops' land to Greater Poland, Rychtal remained bilingual with both German and Polish speaking populations and predominantly Catholic.
After the secularization of the Bishopric's estates under Prussian rule in 1810, Rychtal belonged to the Namslau district of the Silesia Province. After the German defeat in World War I, the area (Reichthaler Ländchen) was allocated to the Greater Polish Poznań Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The adjacent area of the Namslau district around Noldau (present-day Domaszowice) in the south was included in the 1921 Upper Silesia plebiscite with 97.6% of the votes being cast for Germany.
In the course of the 1939 Invasion of Poland, Rychtal was again occupied by Nazi Germany as part of the "Reichsgau Wartheland", attended with persecutions of the Polish speaking inhabitants. The area was overrun by the Red Army in the course of the Vistula–Oder Offensive in January 1945 and restored to the Republic of Poland.