Town Administration
Cieszyn was initially run by the wójt (a historical word for the chief of a village or villages), a descendant of the town’s founder. After Cieszyn came under Magdeburg Law from the end of the 14th century it was administered by the Town Council which selected an Executive Board consisting of 4 councillors with a mayor at the head. They formed the Municipal Office in conjunction with the town scribe. The Municipal Office was responsible for administering the town and its assets, keeping order, supervising crafts and commerce, but in addition for looking after the decorum and morality of the townspeople. Cieszyn also possessed judicial powers, with the right to impose the death penalty for crimes committed within the town boundaries. Executions took place from time to time and the town had its own executioner who was also hired out to serve other towns in Cieszyn Silesia and beyond. The lodgings he was given, the so-called “executioner’s cottage”, stood until the 20th century. The Municipal Office also kept the town archive into which entries were written concerning decisions of importance to the town and to individual citizens. General town meetings, at which resolutions dealing with the weightiest matters were approved, ceased at the end of the 17th century.
Up until the 16th century the members of the Town Council and Municipal Office were elected annually, but later three-year terms of office were adopted. This became the rule for economic reasons after the Habsburgs took over the rule of the town. The Town Council was approved by the Prince of Cieszyn, later by the district starosta in the name of the Emperor, then by the Archdukes of the Lorraine Habsburg dynasty and finally in the first half of the 19th century by the chiefs of the Teschener Kammer (the administrative body governing the Habsburgs’ property in the Duchy of Cieszyn). At the beginning of the 17th century the office of primator, an individual with more power than the mayor, was introduced. This office was done away with in 1712, but in 1744 the position of town administrator was created – a state organ which supervised the Town Council and mayor. So in fact the independence of the local authority was extremely limited. True self-government was introduced with the Austrian communal statute of 1849 which was made permanent in 1861. The legislative assembly was the Town Council (in Cieszyn called the Wydział) made up of 30 elected councillors and 15 deputies in the three electoral constituencies, which created a five-man Executive Board led by the mayor. This continued in Cieszyn and Český Těąín up to the inter-war period. After the Second World War instead of town councils so-called national councils operated, with a Town Secretary and later a Town Commander. They were organs of the party-state communist authorities. Only after the democratic changes in 1989 and 1990 were the principles of local government restored to both towns.
The Town Hall (Ratusz) was traditionally the seat of the town’s government. Cieszyn’s oldest town hall was located near the present Plac Teatralny which was then the town centre. In 1496 Prince Kazimierz II donated two houses which were converted into the new town hall, located in the present Market Square (Rynek). It was most probably wooden but had a clock and a tower, from which watchmen kept lookout day and night against fires or enemy attacks. In accordance with the Prince’s will, rooms were prepared in the Town Hall for the shoemakers’ and bakers’ guilds, for the town’s court, for weighing scales, and for the storage of various goods. A whipping-post stood in front of the Town Hall to which people convicted of minor infringements would be tied to be flogged and taught a lesson. The Town Hall burned down in 1552, again in 1720 and once more in 1789. It was rebuilt in the same year, designed by Ignacy Chambrez as an elegant neo-classicist building with a tower which was completed in 1800. The Municipal Office was located on the ground floor, along with cells, the town’s scales and a cellar from which wine and other beverages reserved for townspeople were sold. In 1818 the hundred-year-old auditorium at the rear of the Town Hall was rebuilt and became the ballroom. Following the next fire in 1836 the Town Hall was rebuilt again in the years 1844-45, to plans by the famous Viennese architect, Josef Kornhäusel. The shambles which adjoined the Town Hall were rebuilt and turned into the District Court, functioning in this location until 1906. Then the building became part of the Town Hall in which the present grand Council Chamber was created, decorated with symbols of Cieszyn’s guilds, and portraits of Cieszyn and Austrian rulers and individuals awarded honorary citizenship of the town.
The Town Council, apart from the Town Hall, also managed the remaining municipal assets. During the years of Cieszyn’s great prosperity in the Middle Ages it was even the owner of neighbouring villages and in the 16th century purchased several fish ponds near Strumień. Later it owned only the land close to Cieszyn that finally became the village of Pastwiska and several buildings within the town’s boundaries. They included market stalls in the Town Square, the town’s scales, the apothecary’s, the brickworks and the town’s baths. The stalls were rented out to merchants from outside Cieszyn. Most of the town’s buildings yielded meagre profits but were essential for the functioning of Cieszyn and its people. The town’s bathhouse was built in 1571 at the end of ul. Srebrna, with the permission of the Prince. The town’s water was initially supplied by wells. The best known of them was the one near the monastery gardens of the Dominicans, called for that reason the studnia bracka (the “friars’ well”). The other well was located in the Town Square. In 1679 the well was re-built in stone and adorned by a figure of Neptune by the sculptor Lubliński. The well continued to be an important feature for the town’s authorities, although the plan to transform it into a monumental fountain commemorating Emperor Franz Joseph I never reached completion. The wells were never sufficient to meet the town’s water requirements, so in the 15th century wooden supply pipes were built which conveyed water from a grange on the hill above the town. New wells were built after the fire of 1789 and the town had to buy a water-pump for protection against fires.
Cieszyn, as a modern municipal entity only came into existence in the second half of the 19th century. Owing to an extensive and well planned rebuilding programme before the First World War the town could boast a gasworks, a piped water supply, an abattoir, a sawmill and carpenter’s workshop, swimming baths and a power station. The town also possessed a tramway, first opened in 1911, and a municipal cemetery. The mayor and Town Council managed these assets with the help of the Municipal Office, supervising the town guard, the building inspectorate, a treasury and an office of sanitation. There was also a social welfare committee which had ultimate control over the town’s social services such as the orphanage, the old people’s home, several kindergartens – the equivalent of today’s nurseries – and a common room for poor children located in ul. Górna. The local authorities also had great influence on the running of Cieszyn’s schools. The town was also the owner of a two-year trade school. A gymnasium was built for the use of all the schools. From 1901 the town subsidised the Town Museum, then located in the Town Hall, later in the building previously housing the military hospital in ul. Limanowskiego, and from 1905 in a building at number 2, Stary Targ owned by the town. After all of Cieszyn’s museum collections had been combined after the First World War, the museum was moved to the former residence of the Counts Larisch, bought by the town from the Demel family.
The Komunalna Kasa Oszczędności Muncipal Savings Bank, founded in 1859, assisted greatly in the financing of such community projects. Cieszyn’s main income was taxes paid by the town’s residents and by firms operating in the town, and from property owned by the town, which were rented out for various purposes; most often as shops and cafés.