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KÖNIGSHÜTTE

This  is  the  largest  and  most  central  of  a  cluster  of  towns  situated  within  a
triangular  area  of  about  150  square  miles  of  coal  and  iron  producing  country  in
the  extreme  south-easterly  corner  of  the  German  Empire,  bordering  on  the
Russian  and  Austrian  frontiers,  and  known  as  the  Upper  Silesian  Black
Country.  Of  the  towns  grouped  round  Königshütte  the  most  important  are
Gleiwitz,  Beuthen,  Zaborze,  Kattowitz,  Myslowitz,  Ruda  and  Chorzow,  with
populations  of  61,000,  60,000,  56,000,  36,000,  13,000,  13,000  and  10,000
respectively,  while  Königshütte  itself  numbers  some  66,000  inhabitants.
Though  separate  units  for  purposes  of  local  government,  all  these  towns  have
been  brought  into  such  close  communication  with  each  other,  not  only  by
railway  but  also  by  a  system  of  electric  tramways,  that  they  may  almost  be
regarded  as  forming  a  single  urban  agglomeration.
The  development  of  the  Upper  Silesian  coal-mining  industry  may  be  said
to  have  begun  with  the  opening  of  the  Brandenburg  Mine  near  Ruda,  a  few
miles  west  of  Königshütte,  in  1750.  In  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century
two  other  mines  were  opened,  and  in  connection  with  one  of  these  (called  the
Königsgrube  or  King’s  Mine),  a  blast  furnace  was  erected  in  the  year  1802,  near
some  small  pools  a  few  miles  east  of  Ruda,  and  this  was  the  origin  of  the
present  town  of  Königshütte.  Some  forty  years  later  the  Upper  Silesian
railway  was  built,  and  immediately  gave  a  great  impetus  to  the  local  coal  and
iron  industries.  Succeeding  years  saw  a  rapid  extension  of  transport  facilities
over  the  whole  of  the  district  and  at  the  present  day  every  mine  and  iron  and
steel  works  in  the  Upper  Silesian  Black  Country  is  connected  by  a  narrowgauge
  line  with  the  Prussian  State  railway  system  and  so  brought  into
communication  with  all  the  great  industrial  and  distributing  centres  of
Germany,  Austria-Hungary  and  Russia.  Königshütte  is  within  forty  miles
of  the  point  where  the  river  Oder  becomes  navigable,  i.e.  at  the  town  of  Ratibor,
whence  products  of  the  Upper  Silesian  Black  Country  are  conveyed  in  barges
down  the  Oder  to  Breslau,  Frankfort,  Stettin  and  as  far  as  Swinemünde  on  the
Baltic  Sea.  Except  for  purposes  of  business,  Königshütte  has  few  visitors  from
other  parts  of  Germany,  and  this  is  equally  true  of  the  other  industrial  towns  in
this  remote  corner  of  the  Empire.  In  the  stretches  of  open  country  lying
between  various  centres  of  population  and  traversed  by  the  electric  tramway
system  already  referred  to,  the  winding  gear  of  colliery  shafts,  mounds  of
colliery  and  blast  furnace  refuse,  smoking  chimneys  and  stagnant  pools  are  the
outstanding  features.  The  environment  is  rendered  additionally  depressing  by
the  appearance,  at  frequent  intervals,  of  posts  exhibiting  the  sign  of  a  skull  and
cross  bones,  and  intended  as  a  warning  that  the  adjacent  surface  has  been
rendered  dangerous  through  the  mining  operations  carried  on  beneath  the  soil.
The  appearance  of  the  workpeople,  which  suggests  cheerlessness  and  poverty,  is
in  harmony  with  these  surroundings.  The  men  and  women  are  neither  so
robust  nor  so  well  clad  as  those  of  North  and  West  Germany,  while  their
children  almost  without  exception  go  barefoot  in  all  weathers  and,  in  general,
give  the  impression  of  being  indifferently  cared  for.  Both  in  origin  and
sentiment  the  great  majority  of  the  workpeople  of  the  Upper  Silesian  Black
Country  are  Polish,  and  in  their  intercourse  with  each  other  seldom  make  use  of
any  other  language.  In  spite  of  their  apparent  inferiority  of  physique,  however,
they  are  regarded  by  local  employers  as  being  at  least  equal  in  endurance  to  the
workpeople  of  German  origin,  and  as  they  have  also  the  reputation  of  being
more  tractable  and  less  exacting  in  their  standard  of  comfort  than  workpeople
from  other  parts  of  Germany,  they  are  preferred  to  the  latter  for  all  work  in
which  the  quality  of  endurance  is  the  main  requisite.
Asa  town  Königshütte  had  no  existence  until  the  year  1869,  its  official
recognition  as  such  having  been  conferred  by  a  Royal  Order  dated  July  17th,
1868.  The  earliest  census  figure  for  this  town  relates  to  the  year  1871,  when