Jarocin

Jarocin (ja'roćin) (Jarotschin) is a town in west-central Poland with 25,700 inhabitants (1995), the administrative capital of Jarocin County in Greater Poland Voivodeship. Jarocin is a historical town, having been founded and granted city rights in the 13th century. The marketplace features a Ratusz town hall built between 1799 and 1804, which is now home to the Jarocin Regional Museum. The town also became famous in the 1980s thanks to the Jarocin Festival, one of the first rock-punk music festivals of the former Warsaw Pact and in Europe. The first event was organised in 1980. The lordship of Jarocin was first mentioned in a 1257 deed issued by Duke Bolesław the Pious of Greater Poland. The town was conveniently located at the intersection of the trade routes from Wrocław to Toruń and from Poznań to Kalisz. It was a private town of Polish nobility, administratively located in the Pyzdry County in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. Jarocin was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the 1793 Second Partition of Poland and administered within the newly formed province of South Prussia. It was part of the Duchy of Warsaw from 1807–13 during the Napoleonic Wars, but was restored to Prussia afterwards. The town was included within the Grand Duchy of Posen from 1815 and the Province of Posen from 1848. It became part of the German Empire in 1871. In 1889 it was included within the newly created Jarotschin District of the Province of Posen. Jarocin participated in the Greater Poland Uprising (1918–1919) and had the first soldiers' council in the Province of Posen. Polish insurgents captured the local military barracks and rail junction on November 8–9, 1918, just days before Poland declared independence on November 11. It was subsequently included in the Second Polish Republic. 42 Polish insurgents from Jarocin and nearby settlements were killed in the uprising. In the interbellum Jarocin was a county seat in the Poznań Voivodeship.