Görlitz

Görlitz stands on the western bank of the Lusatian Neisse, on the east-west Via Regia, a Bohemian-ruled town of Upper Lusatia whose lords were the kings of Bohemia until 1635. In 1339 it received the staple right for woad, the plant that dyed cloth blue and was in demand across Europe, and on 21 August 1346 it joined Bautzen, Kamenz, Lauban, Löbau and Zittau in the Upper Lusatian League of Six Towns, set up by Charles IV to keep the peace in the region. As the economy grew, the guilds rose against the council in 1369, 1390 and 1405, and failed each time.

From 1377 to 1396 Görlitz was the centre of a duchy that Charles IV created for his seven-year-old son John, who allowed the expulsion of the Jews in 1389. In 1429, during the Hussite wars, the southern and eastern suburbs were burned although the walled city was not besieged. In 1466 and 1468 the town was drawn into the quarrels between the Church and nobles and the Hussite King George of Poděbrady, the Görlitz Gunpowder Plot, and then into the struggle for the Bohemian throne between George and Matthias Corvinus, so that the suburbs were ringed with a ditch and palisade by 1477.

In 1491 the town fought a beer war with Zittau over the right to bring beer in without tolls. Görlitz burghers had bought large estates since 1440, and around 1500 the town had about 10,000 inhabitants. Under Matthias Corvinus the town prospered further in the late fifteenth century.