Topics of coins
600th Anniversary of granting municipal rights to Łódź
Łódź was granted municipal rights in the 15th
century, when on 29 July 1423 the king of Poland
Ladislas Jagiello authorised the foundation of the
city and granted it a charter of incorporation
based on the Magdeburg law, also known as the
German law. The charter was issued in Przedbórz.
In this way, the ruler complied with the request
of the Bishop of Włocławek, Jan Pella, the owner
of the estate in which the village of Łodzia was
located.
In legal terms, Łódź was to be modelled
on Łęczyca, then the capital of the Łęczyca
Voivodeship. The court system of the town was
determined by a royal charter. The inhabitants
were excluded from the jurisdiction of royal
officials and from then on they were responsible
only to the mayor, and the latter to the bishop
who owned the city.
In the charter, the monarch also established the
foundations for the economic existence of Łódź.
Markets every Wednesday and two fairs a year
were allowed. The first took place the day after
Corpus Christi, and the second on 16 August,
the day after the feast of the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
Not without significance was that the
townspeople were given areas of land that could
be used for agricultural purposes. They amounted
to 20 lans, i.e. about 470 hectares of land.
The original document of Ladislas Jagiello has not
survived. The royal charter known from later copies
did not contribute to the transformation of Łódź
into a thriving urban centre. Łódź remained a small
agricultural town. Only decisions made in the 1820s
by the authorities of the Kingdom of Poland led to
an influx of new settlers and the transformation of
the city into a centre of the textile industry.
Maciej Janik, PhD
The obverse of the coin shows in the foreground
the southern façade of Ludwik Geyer’s factory (the so-called White Factory), currently the seat
of the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź. In the
background, the silhouettes of the Church of the
Holy Spirit and the Łódź Town Hall are depicted.
The reverse bears the inscription 600-LECIE
NADANIA ŁODZI PRAW MIEJSKICH (600th
Anniversary of Granting Municipal Rights to
Łódź). Next to it there is an effigy of King Ladislas
Jagiello based on a drawing by Jan Matejko and
an image of the 1577 seal with the coat of arms
of Łódź.