Gröbnig, Schönbrunn and Neustift

Welcome to the Gröbnig / Grobniki Ortsfamilienbuch

This Ortsfamilienbuch reconstructs the families of the historic Catholic parish of Gröbnig / Grobniki in the former Leobschütz district. The parish also included Schönbrunn / Debrzyca and Neustift / Nowosady. According to the February 1940 population list cited in the earlier OFB material, Gröbnig had 1,825 inhabitants.

The Gröbnig commandery in the Middle Ages

Older accounts place the beginnings of Hospitaller property at Gröbnig as early as the late twelfth century. Some of the very earliest traditions, however, require careful source criticism. What is certain is that by the thirteenth century Gröbnig had emerged as an important center of the Order of St John in the Silesian–Moravian borderlands. Especially valuable is the surviving body of medieval and early-modern charters of the commandery preserved in the Národní archiv in Prague.

1256 — an original charter of the Gröbnig Hospitallers

Among the earliest surviving originals is charter no. 148 from 1256. It concerns a donation by Pardus to the Hospital of St John at Gröbnig, including property at Dzierżysław / Dirschel. The surviving seals make this an especially vivid witness to the early history of the commandery.

Charter of 1256. Národní archiv, Maltézští rytíři - české velkopřevorství (1085-1875), no. 148. Digital image: Monasterium.net.

1279 — Gröbnig, Leobschütz and ecclesiastical patronage

Charter no. 149 of 18 October 1279 shows the close connection between the Hospitaller commandery and the ecclesiastical life of neighboring Leobschütz / Głubczyce. Gröbnig was therefore not simply an isolated village, but the center of a regional network of churches, estates, patronage rights and dependent settlements.

Charter of 18 October 1279. Národní archiv, Maltézští rytíři - české velkopřevorství (1085-1875), no. 149. Digital image: Monasterium.net.

Gröbnig and Leobschütz — connected for centuries, in conflict during the Reformation

For many centuries the history of Gröbnig was closely bound to Leobschütz / Głubczyce, only a few kilometers away. Already in the Middle Ages the Hospitallers of the Gröbnig commandery held ecclesiastical rights of patronage and presentation over the parish church in Leobschütz. The Order was therefore involved in the appointment and support of clergy there. For a period the commander's seat was even located in Leobschütz; from the early sixteenth century it was once again permanently based at Gröbnig.

This older arrangement came under strong pressure during the Reformation. While Leobschütz under its contemporary ruler increasingly moved toward Protestantism, the Hospitaller commandery at Gröbnig remained a Catholic institution. One local historical account explicitly describes the renewed conflicts as having partly economic and partly religious causes.

The legal records themselves describe the conflict chiefly in the language of law: patronage rights, appointment of church personnel, possession, privileges, dues and jurisdiction. They should therefore not simply be read as records of a religious war. The confessional divide nevertheless formed a striking historical background: an increasingly Protestant town faced a Catholic commandery that invoked centuries-old rights in Leobschütz. This contrast probably intensified an already existing institutional and economic conflict.

Later documents likewise show that the jus patronatus remained contested. In a later complaint Leobschütz appealed to its own long-standing exercise of the patronage right and explicitly referred to earlier claims by the “Commendatores zu Gröbnigk.” Only the confessional and political changes of the later seventeenth century made a substantial part of these older disputes lose their practical importance.

Gröbnig as a commandery seat in the sixteenth century

Among the best-known commanders at Gröbnig was Georg von Proskau. Historical accounts attribute to him the construction in 1559 of the commandery building that still survives today. The commandery held patronage rights over several churches in the region, including Babitz, Leobschütz, Dittmerau, Altzülz and Leisnitz; some of these rights continued until secularization in 1810.

Former commandery building in Gröbnig / Grobniki. Photograph: Horst Laqua, 2016.

1575 — the commandery villages in an early-modern charter

The Prague documentation extends well beyond the Middle Ages. Charter no. 174 from 1575 is especially interesting because it concerns the legal status of subjects from several commandery villages. In this way the written record leads directly into the rural world whose families later become individually traceable in the church books.

Charter of 1575. Národní archiv, Maltézští rytíři - české velkopřevorství (1085-1875), no. 174, in: Monasterium.net, https://www.monasterium.net/mom/CZ-NA/RM/174/charter, accessed 9 August 2026.

The people of the commandery villages

A particularly valuable description is provided by Alois Moch's 1898 study Die socialen Verhältnisse der Malteserkommende Gröbnig zu Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts. It discusses not only the administration of the commandery, but also farmers, gardeners, cottagers, labor obligations, dues, schools and ecclesiastical conditions.

For 1788, for example, Moch gives populations of 1,028 for Gröbnig, 979 for Leisnitz, 518 for Schönbrunn, 446 for Dittmerau, 515 for Babitz, 122 for Wernersdorf, 468 for Jernau and 293 for Leimerwitz. Behind the abstract structure of lordship, therefore, stood a rural community of several thousand people whose families were interconnected across generations.

Schönbrunn / Debrzyca

Schönbrunn / Debrzyca was closely associated with the Gröbnig commandery for centuries. Local tradition identifies 1265 as the first documentary mention under the name Schonebrunne. The name is traditionally connected with the village's abundant springs; the old municipal seal likewise showed a well with a bucket suspended above it.

Ecclesiastically, Schönbrunn was served from Gröbnig for a long period. Later the village obtained its own church and eventually its own church books. This separate body of records now forms an important part of the Ortsfamilienbuch.

Neustift / Nowosady

Neustift / Nowosady was a very small settlement compared with Gröbnig and Schönbrunn. From the surviving documentation and the families represented in the OFB, it appears that at many points there were only a few houses and a few families there.

The name Nowosady is still marked on present-day local maps, but no buildings remain at the former settlement site. Neustift is therefore a particularly clear example of why genealogical records, historical maps and Ortsfamilienbücher can preserve the memory even of very small settlements that have since disappeared from the landscape.

Church, cemetery and living local history

The Catholic parish church and the surrounding cemetery remain a visible center of Grobniki today. The surviving buildings connect the medieval and early-modern record with the present-day village and its Polish community.

Parish church and cemetery in Gröbnig / Grobniki. Photograph: Horst Laqua, 2016.

Crucifixion group in the cemetery at Gröbnig / Grobniki. Photograph: Horst Laqua, 2016.

What is included in the Ortsfamilienbuch?

Sources used for the Ortsfamilienbuch

The family reconstruction is based on several complementary series of records. Because some years are missing, combining church books, duplicate registers and later civil-registration records is especially important.

A collaborative and continuing project

Selected historical literature and sources

• Národní archiv, Prague: Maltézští rytíři - české velkopřevorství (1085-1875), records of the Gröbnig commandery; especially no. 148 (1256), no. 149 (1279) and no. 174 (1575), digitized through Monasterium.net.
• Alois Moch: Die socialen Verhältnisse der Malteserkommende Gröbnig zu Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts, Jahres-Bericht des Königlichen katholischen Gymnasiums zu Leobschütz, 1898.
• Artur Hein (ed.): Schönbrunn, Kreis Leobschütz O/S. Ein oberschlesisches Dorf in Bildern, with contributions by Berthold Richtarsky, Robert Reisch and Josef Mende, 2008.
• Heimatkalender 2000 / Wieści o Gminach 2000, section on Georg von Proskau as commander of the Order at Gröbnig.
• Records of the Gröbnig–Leobschütz legal dispute: early-modern copies and procedural records from the Leobschütz municipal archive, including the “long-running dispute” between the town of Leobschütz and Niklas Zedlitz von Braun, commander at Gröbnig, together with later material concerning the jus patronatus.

Direct links to the three charters shown above

• 1256 — Národní archiv, no. 148
• 1279 — Národní archiv, no. 149
• 1575 — Národní archiv, no. 174

Image credits: historical charters: Národní archiv, Prague / Monasterium.net. Photographs of the church, cemetery, memorial and former commandery building: Horst Laqua, 2016, used with his kind permission.

Historical place names are given according to the language and period of the relevant source. For the present-day communities, the official Polish names Grobniki, Debrzyca and Nowosady are given on an equal basis.