Bielsko

Bielsko lies beneath the Beskid Mountains on the western bank of the Biała River. Its castle and town developed under the dukes of Cieszyn, who granted a charter recorded in 1312. For centuries the Biała marked a frontier between Silesia under the Bohemian Crown and Lesser Poland; the settlement of Biała grew on the opposite bank.

Lutheran teaching reached Bielsko in the 1530s, and its Protestant community remained strong even after the Habsburg Counter-Reformation. Worship continued in homes and in the surrounding forests when restrictions prevented public services. After Joseph II's Patent of Toleration in 1781, a new Protestant district with a church and schools grew north of the old town. Bielsko remained under Habsburg rule when most of Silesia passed to Prussia in 1742.