Nazwy miejscowości wolnego pszczyńskiego państwa stanowego na mapie Andreasa Hindenberga z 1636 roku w zestawieniu z innymi źródłami od połowy XV do końca XVIII wieku

Abstract

Place names of the Free State of Pszczyna on Andreas Hindenberg’s map of 1636 in comparison with other sources from the mid-15th to the end of the 18th century This article is a continuation of the efforts to promote Andreas Hindenberg’s map of 1636. Researchers from various disciplines were invited to study the map. They presented the results of their research at a conference held at the castle in Pszczyna (2021), which resulted in a volume of “Szkice Archiwalno-Historyczne” (no. 19 of 2022) devoted entirely to the source. The author discussed the problem of place names, which were placed on the map of 1636 in ribbons under the pictures of towns and villages (exceptionally also of manors, e.g., Kiełpowy). He tried to determine their state of preservation, types of damage and loss, as well as subsequent changes. To achieve this, he conducted a detailed examination of the map after conservation, comparing it with scans postconservation, as well as photocopies made in 1905. He also considered the findings of J. Kolenda, who had the opportunity to examine Hindenburg’s map itself and its copy made in 1721 (the author of the latter being Siegmund Carl Meußler). The next step was to determine how place names (it was not possible to collect them for all towns and villages) were recorded in other sources from the 15th to the end of the 18th century. The author used various types of these sources, analysing archival material both from the domain of the Pszczyna lords and from ecclesiastical (produced by Catholics and Lutherans), municipal and state sources (e.g., the Carolingian cadastre). In addition to paper sources, he also considered versions of toponyms found on parchment documents and seals. He also made use of other cartographic materials, which allowed him to determine how the names of towns and villages in the Pszczyna region were recorded by cartographers acting on behalf of the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns and the Polish king. The different versions of place names, sometimes different in the same source (e.g., in two languages), show the variety of possible variants of their notation. These findings lead to the conclusion that during the three centuries of the existence of the Free State of Pszczyna, there was not a single place that was referred to in the sources by only one and the same toponym throughout this period. This means that the problem of how to write the names of the towns and villages of the Pszczyna land was probably faced by A. Hindenberg himself.