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Brněnec

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Location of Brněnec in the Czech Republic
Schindler's factory in 2004

Brněnec (German: Brünnlitz) is a village in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has around 1,400 inhabitants.

Villages Chrastová Lhota, Moravská Chrastová and Podlesí are administrative parts of Brněnec.

History

Next to an old trade route, the settlement of Moravská Chrastová was founded after 1200 by monks from a monastery in Litomyšl. It is first mentioned in a document from 1323.

The first written mention of Brněnec is to be found in the 1557 act of partition of the dominion of Swojanow. In 1892, workers carrying out improvements to the Bělá nad Svitavou road stumbled upon the remnants of prehistoric clay jars in the vicinity of the Nová Amerika ("New America") inn, one kilometre west of Brněnec. Systematic excavation on this site in 1893 unearthed further archaeological finds. A neighbouring hillside of crevices and caves, known as Jeskyně Čertovy, had already yielded traces of earlier settlements.

With the construction of the railway from Prague to Brno, Brněnec received its own railway station on this main line. This incouraged the implantation of numerous new industrial enterprises such as textile factories around the dominant business of the Daubek mills.

In 1930, the municipality of Brněnec (including the then districts of Zářečí nad Svitavou, now part of the municipality of Březová nad Svitavou, and Podlesí) counted 606 inhabitants, of whom 208 held German nationality. In 1939, as a result of German occupation and the ensuing retreat of Czech inhabitants, the total population had dropped to 490.

The municipality extended at that time only to the bohemian right bank of the river Svitava. On the opposite moravian bank sat the independent village of Moravská Chrastová, which, together with its districts of Chrastová Lhota and Půlpecen (now part of the municipality of Chrastavec), had a total population in 1939 of 1,143 inhabitants and was therefore twice the size of Brněnec.

The town of Brněnec formed part of the administrative and judiciary region of Politschka. After the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany, it was integrated into the county of Zwittau.

In 1944, Oskar Schindler relocated his Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik (German Enamelware Factory), together with the associated prison camp of 1,200 Jewish forced labourers, from Kraków to a munitions factory acquired by him in Brněnec. The jewish workforce thus escaped transport to the extermination camps and was liberated on the 10th of May 1945.

There are 800 employment positions in Brněnec today.

Districts

The municipality of Brněnec is composed of the following districts (German names in parentheses):

Famous natives of Brněnec

References

  • Much of the content of this article has been translated from the equivalent German-language Wikipedia article (retrieved 10 June, 2006)
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