Liberec

Liberec has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb). The annual average temperature is 8.3 °C (46.9 °F), the hottest month in July is 18.0 °C (64.4 °F), and the coldest month is −1.2 °C (29.8 °F) in January. The annual precipitation is 845.3 millimetres (33.28 in), of which July is the wettest with 107.1 millimetres (4.22 in), while April is the driest with only 41.3 millimetres (1.63 in). The extreme temperature throughout the year ranged from −24.4 °C (−11.9 °F) on February 6, 2012 to 36.2 °C (97.2 °F) on July 31, 1994.

In the 11th or 12th century, a settlement named Habersdorf, which was the predecessor of Liberec, was established on the trade route from Bohemia to Lusatia by Czech settlers and German colonizers. In the 13th century, the second settlement named Reichenberg was established near the first one. The two settlements later merged. The first written mention of Liberec under its German name Reichenberg is from 1352.[7]

From 1278, the area was owned by the noble Bieberstein family. Reichenberg suffered from the march of troops during the Hussite Wars, then it was burned down in 1469 during the battles with the army of King George of Poděbrady. After the Biebersteins died out, the Frýdlant estate which included Reichenberg was bought by the Redern family in 1558. The Rederns contributed significantly to the development of the settlement as they built new buildings, modernized the settlement and laid the foundation of the textile industry. In 1577, Reichenberg was promoted to a town by Emperor Rudolf II. He gave the town the coat of arms it still uses today.[7]

From 1600, the town was administered by Kateřina of Redern, who obtained the right to trade in salt for the town, had a chapel added to the castle and contributed to the construction of the town hall. When the Redern family was forced to leave Reichenberg after the Battle of White Mountain (1620), it was acquired by Albrecht von Wallenstein. After his death it belonged to the Gallas and Clam Gallas families, who didn't care much about the town. The prosperous local industry was interrupted by the Thirty Years' War and a great plague in 1680. The crises resulted in a series of harshly suppressed serf uprisings.[7]

In the 18th century, Reichenberg flourished. The number of inhabitants tripled and the cloth industry was very successful. The Battle of Reichenberg between Austria and Prussia occurred nearby in 1757 during the Seven Years' War, but the town continued to develop. During the 19th century, the town became the centre of textile industry in the entile Austria-Hungary. In 1850, it became a self-governing city.[7]

Reichenberg became a rich industrial city without representative buildings. In the late 19th century, a spectacular collection of representative buildings was created, mostly in the neo-Renaissance style: the city hall, the opera house, the North Bohemian Museum, the Old Synagogue, and others. A representative villa district and a forest with a botanical garden and a zoo were created.[7]

Until 1918, the city was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Austrian monarchy (Austrian side after the compromise of 1867), seat of the Reichenberg district, one of the 94 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in Bohemia.[8] After the end of World War I, Austria-Hungary fell apart and the Czechs of Bohemia joined newly established Czechoslovakia on 29 October 1918 whilst the Germans wanted to stay with Austria to form reduced German Austria on 12 November 1918, both citing Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the doctrine of self-determination. Liberec was declared the capital of the German-Austrian province of German Bohemia. Czechs however argued that these lands, though German-settled since the Middle Ages, were historically an integral part of the Duchy and Kingdom of Bohemia. On 16 December 1918, the Czechoslovak Army entered Liberec and the whole province remained part of Bohemia.

In the 1920s and the 1930s, Liberec became the unofficial capital of Germans in Czechoslovakia, a position was underlined by the foundation of important institutions such as Bücherei der Deutschen, a central German library in Czechoslovakia, and by failed efforts to relocate the German section of the Charles University there from Prague.

The Great Depression devastated the economy of the area with its textile, carpet, glass and other light industry. The high number of unemployed people, hunger, fear of the future and dissatisfaction with the Prague government led to the flash rise of the populist Sudeten German Party (SdP), founded by Konrad Henlein, born in the suburbs of Liberec. Whilst he declared fidelity to the Republic, he secretly negotiated with Adolf Hitler. In 1937 he radicalized his views and became Hitler's puppet in order to incorporate the Sudetenland into Germany and destabilize Czechoslovakia, which was an ally of France and one of the leading arms producers in Europe.

The city became the centre of Pan-German movements and later of the Nazis, especially after the 1935 election, despite its important democratic mayor, Karl Kostka (German Democratic Freedom Party). The final change came in Summer 1938, after the radicalization of the terror of the SdP, whose death threats forced Kostka and his family to flee to Prague.

In September 1938, after two unsuccessful attempts by the SdP to stage a pro-Nazi coup in Czechoslovakia, which were stopped by police and the army, the Munich Agreement awarded the city to Nazi Germany and it became the capital of Reichsgau Sudetenland. Until 1945, the city was administered as a part of the Regierungsbezirk Aussig of Reichsgau Sudetenland. Most of the city's Jewish and Czech population fled to the rest of Czechoslovakia or were expelled. The important synagogue was burned down. Henlein himself confiscated a villa in Liberec that had belonged to a Jewish businessman, which remained Henlein's home until 1945.[9] During a rally in December 1938, Hitler laid out the future of the Hitler Youth.[10]

After World War II, the city again became a part of Czechoslovakia and nearly all of the city's German population was expelled following the Beneš decrees. The region was then resettled with Czechs, completely altering the traditional language and culture of the city and its region. The city continues to have an important German minority, consisting of descendants of anti-Nazi Germans who were active in the struggle against Hitler, as well as Germans from Czech–German families and their descendants. Liberec also has a Jewish minority with a newly built synagogue and a Greek minority, originating from Communist refugees who settled there after the Greek Civil War in 1949.

White tiger in Liberec Zoo

The Liberec Zoo was the first to be opened in Czechoslovakia in 1904. The zoo contains a wide variety of fauna (about 143 species on 13 ha), including large mammals like elephants, giraffes, sea lions and white tigers, which are a genetic anomaly and hence very rare. It participates in breeding activities of endangered species to help preserve the gene pool.

The Botanical Garden in Liberec (completely rebuilt in 1995–2000) comprises nine glasshouses for visitors (with a total area of 3,000 m² (32,291.73 sq ft) and 13 exhibition themes), nine plantation glasshouses and a large exterior terrain. It continues the legacy of a botanical garden established in 1876 by the Verein der Naturfreunde ("Society of Friends of Nature") on a nearby site and it is therefore considered the oldest one in the Czech Republic.