BRESLAU, a city of Germany, capital of the Prussian province of Lower Silesia, and an episcopal see, situated in a wide and fertile plain on both banks of the navigable Oder, 350m. from its mouth, and 202m. from Berlin on the railway to Vienna. Pop. (1933) 625,219. It is the seventh city of the Republic. The Oder, which here breaks into several arms, divides the city into two unequal halves, crossed by numerous bridges. The larger portion, on the left bank, includes the old or inner town, sur rounded by beautiful promenades on the site of the ramparts dismantled after 1813. Outside the ramparts, and across the Oder, lies the new town, with extensive suburbs, containing many handsome streets and spacious squares. In the ancient inner town, with its narrow streets, are several mediaeval buildings of great interest. The cathedral, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, was begun in 1148, completed in the 15th century, and enlarged and restored later. One of its chief treasures is the high altar of beaten silver. The Kreuzkirche (church of the Holy Cross), dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, is an interesting brick building, remarkable for its stained glass and its historical monu ments. The Sandkirche, dedicated to Our Lady of the Sand, dates from the 14th century. The Dorotheen, or Minoritenkirche, remarkable for its high-pitched roof, was founded by the emperor Charles IV. in 1351. Of the Evangelical churches the most im portant is St. Elizabeth (c. 125o), rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries, and restored in 1857. The church possesses a celebrated organ, fine stained glass, a magnificent stone pyx (1455) over 52ft. high, and portraits of Luther and Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach. The reformation in Silesia was first proclaimed in 1523, in the Gothic church of St. Mary Magdalen (14th century).
The business streets of the city converge upon the Ring, the market square, in which is the 14th-16th century town-hall, a fine Gothic building, containing the Fiirstensaal, in which the diets of Silesia were formerly held, while beneath is the famous Schweidnitzer Keller, used since as a beer and wine house. The university (founded in 1702), a striking Gothic building fac ing the Oder, was built (1728-1736) as a college by the Jesuits, on the site of the former imperial castle presented to them by the emperor Leopold I., and contains a magnificent hall (Aula Leopoldina), richly ornamented with frescoes. It was greatly augmented by the incorporation of the university of Frankfurt am-Oder in 1811. The library is specially rich in oriental litera ture. In 1925 the university had 2,541 students. The faculty of theology is here mixed (both Protestant and Roman Catholic) as at Bonn, Munster and Tubingen. Breslau has also a famous technical high school, with 896 students. Among other public buildings are the Stadthaus (civic hall), the royal palace, the Government offices (a handsome pile erected in 1887), the provincial House of Assembly, the municipal archives, the courts of law, the Silesian museum of arts and crafts and antiquities, the museum of fine arts and the exchange. Statues and fountains are numerous. It is, however, as a commercial and industrial city that Breslau is most widely known. It is the chief industrial centre of eastern Germany, with iron-founding and manufactures of machinery, linen, clothes, railway-carriages, paper and fur niture. Important fairs are held in spring and autumn. Trade is greatly facilitated by its situation close to the extensive coal and iron fields of Upper Silesia, in proximity to the Austrian and Polish frontiers, at the centre of a network of railways and on a deep waterway connecting with the Elbe and the Vistula. Between 1912 and 1917 a new canal, the Breitenbachfahrt, for the use of barges from Upper Silesia, was constructed, linking the Oder with the Alte Oder.
History.—Breslau (Lat. Vratislavia) is first mentioned by the chronicler Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg, in A.D. moo, and was made the seat of a bishop in the 11th century. It formed part of Poland until 1163, when it became the capital of an independent duchy. Destroyed by the Mongols in 1241, it soon recovered its former prosperity and received a large influx of German colonists. The bishop obtained the title of a prince of the empire in 129o. When Henry VI., the last duke of Breslau, died in 1335, the city came by purchase to John, king of Bohemia, whose successors retained it until about 146o, giving the growing town many privileges. Disliking the Hussites, Breslau placed itself under the protection of Pope Pius II. in 1463, and a few years after wards came under the rule of the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus. After his death in 1490 it again became subject to Bohemia, passing with the rest of Silesia to the Habsburgs when in 1526 Ferdinand, afterwards emperor, was chosen king of Bohemia. It passed to Prussia in 1741, though held for a short time by the Austrians in 1757, and by the French in 1807 and 1813. The sites of the fortifications, dismantled by the French in 1807 were given to the civic authorities by King Frederick William III., and converted into promenades.