In the summer of 1770, while the Commonwealth still seethed with the Bar Confederation, the Austrians marched into the southern borderlands of Lesser Poland. Their pretext was a sanitary cordon against the plague, but the boundary posts, moved on 2 August as far as Mogilna, spoke for themselves.
The partition treaty of 1772 merely set the seal on what had already happened: Stary Sącz became part of a new province of the empire, named Galicia. That is why the town’s chronicle must record both dates – the occupation in 1770 and the partition in 1772. In 1774 the town was assigned to the Wieliczka district, and from 1784 to the Nowy Sącz Kreis.
An emperor in place of an abbess
For five hundred years Sącz had been ruled by the Poor Clares. Joseph II, an enlightened emperor and deeply suspicious of religious orders, took that power from them at a stroke of the pen. In 1782 the convent estates, together with the town, passed into imperial ownership. From then on official papers recorded them as “K.K. Ex-Nonnen Herrschaft Alt-Sandez” – the imperial-royal estate of the former nuns.
The novitiate was closed, and the sisters were permitted only to live out their days within the convent walls. The community lost the valuables, archives and library gathered since the days of its foundress.
On the confiscated land the government settled German colonists. In 1785, on the Podmajerz manor farm, Neudörfel was founded – a separate rural commune with a neat grid of plots. A second colony grew up beside the Franciscan friary, whose church became the newcomers’ parish in 1786. The old town self-government gave way to a magistrate’s office. In 1783 a new cemetery was opened by St Roch’s church. The little chapel of St Kinga by the spring, built in 1779, survived.
The Franciscans did not outlast the imperial order of things. A decree of Francis I of 19 October 1814 dissolved their friary, and the last two brothers were moved to Krosno in 1815. Their property passed into other hands: in 1813 the granary was taken over as a salt store, in 1831 the town bought it and turned it into a town hall (today 25 Batorego Street), and in 1854–1855 the church and friary were rebuilt as a court and a prison.
It was a school that saved the Poor Clares. In 1811 the authorities restored the novitiate, on condition that the sisters would teach girls. From 1813 the teaching was directed by a Benedictine nun, Karolina Wota.
In 1821 the school was given its own building within the convent walls. By the end of the century it was a seven-class primary school, from 1904 the Private Women’s Teachers’ Seminary, and in 1912 the Queen Jadwiga Public Girls’ School was opened.
The year of three fires
The year 1795 was seared into the town’s memory by fire. On 24 April, at about four in the morning, in a strong wind, a fire broke out. In less than half an hour it consumed 130 houses and 90 barns, the presbytery, the hospital with the church of the Holy Cross, St Barbara’s chapel, part of the parish church, the school, the butchers’ stalls and the town hall on the market square. On 8 August lightning set the barns alight, and on 19 November another 22 houses burned down.
The townsfolk did not sit idly by. The very day after the first fire, the magistrate appealed for help. Emperor Francis II granted timber from the crown forests and three years of tax relief, and the town council lent money to 85 people burnt out of their homes.
The town hall, the church of the Holy Cross and St Barbara’s chapel were never rebuilt. Building regulations were tightened, yet timber reigned in Sącz until the end of the 19th century. When two arcaded houses burned down in 1871, a square known as the “Butter Square” (Maślany) appeared in their place.
Even more dangerous than fire could be the pestilence. On the slope of Miejska Góra a cholera cemetery of 1831 survives to this day. The population grew unevenly: in 1844 there were 3,816 inhabitants, but after the plague, famine and crop failure of 1855 only 3,006. Then the town recovered: about 3,900 in 1880, nearly 4,600 in 1900 and, according to Orłowicz, 5,300 in 1914.
Neighbours on Staszica Street
Jews settled in Stary Sącz late, for over the centuries the convent, as the town’s owner, had barred their way. In 1830 the parish counted 75 Protestants and a mere 20 Jews.
The Jewish community was founded in 1860, a wooden synagogue went up in 1876, and in 1905 a brick synagogue on Staszica Street, designed by Józef Kostański. The old wooden one was closed on 21 May 1901. In 1880 there were 325 Jews, in 1900 there were 517, and just before the war they made up 13% of the inhabitants.
On the night of 25–26 June 1898 a mob plundered several dozen Jewish shops and houses. The authorities brought in troops, who were stationed in the town for a month. The town council condemned the looting.
The railway, the lamps and the “Sokół”
In 1876 the first train passed through Sącz on the line from Tarnów through both Sączes all the way to Budapest. The station was built outside the centre. The railway woke the little town – though as early as 1864 oil lamps had lit the streets, replaced by gas lamps in 1913.
In 1874 the Volunteer Fire Brigade was formed, a lesson learnt from many fires. In 1876 a loan society was founded, in 1890 a brickworks, in 1893 a tannery run by a shoemakers’ and tanners’ company, in 1895 a market on the former Franciscan farm, and in 1907 mills on the Poprad. From 1867 the town was governed by a town council under the Galician statutes. In 1910 the commune of Podmajerz was incorporated into the town.
Social and patriotic life gained new spirit from the “Sokół”. On 15 June 1893 the advocate Edward Szayer and the apothecary Julian Fijałkowski called a founding meeting, attended by 30 people. On 15 May 1907 the foundation stone was laid on Batorego Street for a building designed free of charge by Zenon Remi.
The town had long campaigned for a school to train teachers, with efforts going back to 1894. On 5 October 1903 the teachers’ seminary was at last opened, under the direction of Józef Dobrowolski. The town promised to put up a building for it and to contribute 1,000 Rhenish florins a year.
The holy lady and the Great War
Throughout the century the memory of Kinga endured. Conservation work in the Poor Clares’ church was carried out in 1861 and 1893. In July 1892 the town spent a week marking the six-hundredth anniversary of its foundress’s death. Cardinal Dunajewski translated her relics to a new reliquary coffin, and on 24 July celebrated Mass with a sermon by Archbishop Issakowicz, while a procession wound across the market square. In 1901 Kinga became patroness of the Diocese of Tarnów, and in 1905 Pius X allowed her canonisation process to be resumed.
The Great War came straight to Sącz. In 1914 the seminary’s young men went off to the Austrian army and the Legions, and the school building was occupied in turn by Russian and Austrian troops. Nowy Sącz was under Russian occupation until 12 December 1914, and the following day Piłsudski entered it at the head of the 1st Regiment of the Legions.
At the cemetery on Węgierska Street, War Cemetery No. 348 was laid out, designed in 1915 by Gustaw Ludwig. By 1918 the seminarians were joining the Polish Army.
In old and new photographs
