Fort Srebrna Góra: A Prussian Mountain Fortress in Poland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page9 sections
History
Fort Srebrna Góra is a former Prussian military fortress in Poland, built in the eighteenth century to protect Silesia after Prussia seized the region in 1740. It guarded the Silver Pass, a strategic route between Bohemia and Prussian Silesia, and became a major defensive stronghold in the mountain landscape of Lower Silesia.
Construction under Frederick the Great
King Frederick II of Prussia, commonly known as Frederick the Great, ordered the fortress to be built. Construction lasted from 1765 to 1777. The initial design was prepared by the Prussian military engineer and architect Ludwig Wilhelm Regeler, then modified by Frederick II with assistance from several military engineers.
Between 4,000 and 4,500 workers took part in the twelve-year project. The work cost 1,668,000 thalers, including 70,000 thalers contributed by Silesians, and was financed through a special tax imposed in Silesia. The planned garrison numbered approximately 2,500 to 3,500 soldiers, while the completed fortress could accommodate up to 3,756.
Defensive stronghold and the Napoleonic campaign
Fort Srebrna Góra remained a major defensive position until about 1800. Its continued maintenance was supported by Frederick William II, the Prussian king who succeeded Frederick II and died in that year. John Quincy Adams, then the United States ambassador to Prussia and later the sixth president of the United States, visited the fortifications in 1800.
The fortress saw active military engagement only during the Napoleonic campaign of 1806–1807, a series of wars in which Napoleon’s forces fought European coalitions and extended French influence across the continent. On 28 June 1807, Bavarian and Württemberg troops allied with Napoleon attacked the fortress. The garrison, commanded by the Prussian officer Bogislaw von Schwerin, repelled the assault. The gates were opened only after the Treaty of Tilsit was signed on 9 July 1807.
Prison, obsolescence, and civilian use
From 1830 to 1848, the fortress served as a prison and internment site for activists of the Young Germans movement. Among those held there were Wilhelm Wolff and Fritz Reuter. Wolff’s imprisonment lasted from 30 July 1835 to 30 July 1838.
An order issued on 1 January 1860 declared the fortress obsolete, and the last soldiers departed in 1867. For several years afterward, the fortifications served as a testing ground for artillery and explosives. Later in the nineteenth century, Prussian authorities ended these destructive experiments and instructed local authorities to make the fortress attractive to visitors. Inspection routes were established in the early twentieth century. The main fort was repaired after the First World War, a guesthouse opened in 1913, and a museum followed in 1931. The repaired main fort also contained a restaurant called Donjon.
Wartime camps and post-war preservation
During the Second World War, the forts housed German prisoner-of-war camps for Polish officers. Oflag VIII B, the German wartime designation for an officers’ camp, operated there from 15 December 1939 to 1 September 1941. It was followed by Stalag 367 from 1941 to 1945. More than 300 prisoners were held at the fortress, including Rear Admiral Józef Unrug, Commander Stefan Frankowski, and General Tadeusz Piskor.
During the night of 5–6 May 1940, nine Polish officers escaped. Three eventually reached Syria by travelling through Central and Southeastern Europe and Turkey. They joined the Carpathian Rifle Brigade and later fought at Tobruk in Libya. The other six escapees were captured.
After 1945, Fort Srebrna Góra became part of the Polish territories transferred from Germany. Red Army soldiers looted the buildings, and the fortifications deteriorated into ruins from the late 1940s. A new preservation effort began in 1965, when the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society and the Lower Silesian unit of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association began turning the fortress into an architectural monument. Fort II Rogowy was cleared and renamed Harcerz, while Fort Ostróg was cleared with assistance from the Ministry of Mining in 1969 and renamed Górnik.
A heavy firearms museum opened in Fort Donjon on 28 June 1974. The fortress entered Poland’s cultural-heritage register in 1961, became a cultural park in 2002, and was declared a Polish Historic Monument by presidential decree in 2004. Fort Srebrna Góra is recognized as a rare surviving example of an eighteenth-century European mountain fortress and is noted for never having been captured by an enemy. A local historical-reenactment group continues the tradition of a Prussian infantry unit stationed at the fortress.
Remains
Fort Srebrna Góra is a mountain fortress formed by six forts, several bastions, and associated defensive works. A bastion is a projecting section that allows defenders to fire along adjoining walls. The complex combines artillery positions placed around the site with a central citadel above the Silver Pass, at approximately 586 metres above sea level, between the Sowie and Bardzkie Mountains.
Mountain setting and defensive layout
The fortress is associated with Warowna Góra, also called Forteczna Góra, which rises to 686 metres, and with Ostróg, also called Spitzberg, at 627 metres. A wider description of the complex extends across three hills and includes Wielki Chochoł at 740 metres. The defensive system was arranged to control the pass and to combine the central stronghold with outlying artillery positions.
Central citadel
The central Fort Donjon stands on Warowna Góra. A donjon is a major fortified tower or central stronghold, and here the Donjon forms the core of the citadel rather than a separate medieval castle tower. It consists of four towers joined by fortified walls, or curtains. Each tower has a diameter of about 60 metres, while the masonry walls reach 12 metres in thickness. The Donjon contains 151 fortified rooms, known as casemates, arranged on three levels. Casemates are fortified vaulted chambers used for purposes such as housing troops, storing supplies, or mounting artillery. The highest buildings have three storeys.
The fortress included large stores, an armoury, a chapel, a prison, a hospital, a bakery, a brewery, workshops, and a powder magazine. Together with supplies of ammunition, fuel, and food, these installations enabled the garrison to support itself during a prolonged siege. The complex was equipped with 264 guns and mortars. Nine wells were sunk within the fortress, including one at Fort Ostróg that reached 84 metres and another in the Donjon that reached 70 metres.
Outlying forts and surviving fabric
Fort Ostróg and Fort Wysoka Skała, also known as Hohenstein, contained the Second World War prisoner camp. In later use, Fort Harcerz was identified with Wysoka Skała. These outlying forts formed part of the wider defensive system surrounding the central citadel.
The upper platform of the Donjon provides a viewpoint toward the Bardzkie Mountains. The Donjon is described as the largest structure of its kind in Europe, while the fortress is characterized as Europe’s highest bastion citadel. The fortifications survived with relatively little modernization or physical damage compared with many other European fortifications. Their surviving fabric has been cleared, repaired, and examined through architectural surveying, including geodetic measurements and an architectural inventory carried out in October 2017.
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