Pardubitz.

Title

Pardubitz.

Description

View showing the town of Pardubice (German: Pardubitz) on the Elbe in Bohemia. Drawn from nature and lithographed by R. Bürger, printed by F. Weider.

ca. 1845

Artist

Weider

Historical Description

Pardubice is a town in the Czech Republic. It lies on the River Elbe and is famous for the Pardubice Steeplechase horse race. Pardubice was first mentioned in 1295. From the end of the 14th century, the town changed hands several times, and from 1490 it was owned by the von Pernštejn family, who had the castle built. Jaroslav of Pernštejn had to sell the town and castle to Emperor Ferdinand I in 1560; from this time onwards, Pardubice was a royal town. Administratively, the town belonged to the Chrudim district. After the abolition of the patrimonial dominions, the town became the seat of the Pardubitz judicial district. In 1855, Emperor Franz Joseph I pledged the Imperial-Royal Kameralherrschaft Pardubitz as a government bond to the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, which sold it to the Imperial-Royal Privileged Austrian Credit Institute for Trade and Commerce on June 25, 1863. In 1866, the large industrialist Heinrich Drasche acquired the estate. In 1868, the town became a district town and the seat of the district of Pardubitz. In 1881, Richard von Drasche-Wartinberg bought the Pardubice and Kunětická Hora estates. After Czechoslovakia was founded, Drasche-Wartinberg's Bohemian properties were expropriated in 1919 on the basis of the law on the confiscation of large estates. From 1920 to 1927, Pardubice was the seat of a county.