Ústí nad Orlicí

Wildenschwert was founded 1241 by Wilhelm von Dürnholz. It was first called Wilhelmswert and was part of the Herrschaft Landskron. In 1292 the Bohemian King Wenzel II. gifted the town to the Cistercian monks at Königsaal. They passed the town to the Leitomischl bishopric in 1358. After the Hussite Rebellion, when the churches influence was eclipsed, the town was owned by the Kostka von Postupice, the von Pernstein and the Hrzan von Harras families. Wildenschwert was first referred to as a town in 1544.

Since the end of the fifteenth century Wildenschwert was host to the Bohemian Brethren but expelled them in 1626 in the wake of the counter-reformation. Then after the Battle of White Mountain, 8 November 1620, Wildenschwert was under the control of the Dukes of Liechtenstein. There were Guilds of Weavers established here in the sixteenth century. The town was slow to recover from the lootings of the thirty years war, then was destroyed by fire in 1706. It gained municipal status in 1795. When Wildenschwert was connected to the railway network by the Olmütz – Prague Line in 1845, the textile business boomed. It gained the tagline of The Manchester of Eastern Bohemia, and became an important textile centre. It was an important railway junction and from 1850 became a regional centre. It was given the Czech name of Oustí or Austi; the nad Orlicí refers to the name of the local river.

Wildenschwert was a German-speaking town in Austro-Hungary until it was allocated to Czechoslovakia in 1918 at the conclusion of the World War I. Ústí nad Orlicí as it was now called remained an important textile town, and in the 1960s the Výzkumný ústav bavlnářský (Cotton Researching Institute) developed the Open end spinning technique that provided a faster alternative to ring spinning.

• František Martin Pecháček (1763–1816), composer
• Leopold Jansa (1795–1875), violinist and composer
• Quido Kocian (1874–1928), sculptor
• Fritz Löhner-Beda (1883–1942), Jewish author
• Jaroslav Kocian (1883–1950), violinist
• František Korte (1895–1962), composer
• Oldřich Marek (1911–1986), entomologist
• Michal Šlesingr (born 1983), biathlete
• Ondřej Moravec (born 1984), biathlete
• Jaroslav Kulhavý (born 1985), mountain biker, 2012 Olympics winner
• Kamil Vacek (born 1987), footballer

Ústí nad Orlicí, Oldřichovice

Ústí nad Orlicí is twinned with:[2]

• Amberg, Germany
• Bystrzyca Kłodzka, Poland
• Massa Martana, Italy
• Neukölln (Berlin), Germany
• Poprad, Slovakia

• Official website

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