Chełmno (), historically known as Culm in both German and English (Modern German: ), is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. After the area was granted to the Teutonic Knights as a Polish fief in 1232, the Germanized name Culm/Kulm was used in official documents regarding the town, as the city was a member of the Hanseatic League and part of the State of the Teutonic Order. Chełmno was annexed by Prussia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772 and, as part of a larger Germanization effort, it was officially renamed Kulm. During the German occupation in World War II, the town was again renamed from Chełmno to Kulm.
History
thumb|left|Medieval town walls with the Powder Tower
The first written mention of Chełmno is known from a document allegedly issued in 1065 by Duke Bolesław II the Generous of Poland for the Benedictine monastery in Mogilno. In 1226 Duke Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to Chełmno Land. In 1233 Kulm was granted city rights known as "Kulm law" (renewed in 1251), the model system for over 200 currently Polish, Lithuanian and Russian towns. The town was made the nominal see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chełmno under the archbishop of Riga by the papal legate William of Modena in 1243 (however, the cathedral and the residence of the bishop were located actually in the adjacent Chełmża). The town grew prosperous as a member of the mercantile Hanseatic League.
In the 14th century, papal verdicts ordered the restoration of the town and region to Poland, however, the Teutonic Knights did not comply and continued to occupy it. The town remained part of the Teutonic Knights' state until 1454. In 1440, the town was one of the founding members of the Prussian Confederation, which opposed Teutonic rule, and upon the request of which King Casimir IV Jagiellon reincorporated the territory to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. On 28 May 1454 the town pledged allegiance to the Polish King in Toruń. After the end of the Thirteen Years' War, the Teutonic Knights renounced claims to the town, and recognized it as part of Poland. It was made the capital of Chełmno Voivodeship. After dissolution of the Archdiocese of Riga in 1566, the bishops of Chełmno attended the councils of the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan of Gniezno. This practice was recognised by the Holy See by the Bull De salute animarum in 1821, when Chełmno diocese became de jure a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno. Chełmno diocese was enlarged on that occasion (Górzno, Krajna and Działdowo). In 1692, the local gymnasium was transformed into the Chełmno Academy (Akademia Chełmińska), which in 1756 became a branch of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, the oldest and leading Polish university. Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, one of the greatest Polish Baroque composers, was a lecturer at the Academy in the 1690s.
In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the town was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. Between 1807 and 1815 Chełmno was part of the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw, being re-annexed by Prussia at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
As Kulm, it had been a garrison town. In 1776 Frederick the Great founded here a cadet school which was to serve in Germanising Polish areas and nobility. In 1890 the garrison included 561 military staff. On 1 October 1890 the cadet school was moved to Koszalin (then Köslin) in Pomerania. Also as part of anti-Polish policies, the Prussians expelled the Kraków professors from Chełmno, Poles were subjected to various repressions, local Polish newspapers were confiscated. Rydygier sold the clinic to one of his employees, Leon Polewski, in 1887, due to harassment from the Prussian authorities. The atrocities took place in Klamry, Małe Czyste, Podwiesk, Płutowo, Dąbrowa Chełmińska, and Wielkie Łunawy, while many other Poles were executed in forests. and Szare Szeregi were also active in the area. The area was administered as part of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and served as the seat of the district/county (kreis) of Kulm. On 25 January 1945 German forces set fire to several buildings in the city, including a hospital, a railway terminal, and a brewery, while retreating (see scorched earth).
The town was administratively part of the Toruń Voivodeship from 1975 to 1998.
Demographics
Since its founding, the city had a mixed population of Poles and Germans, with the former making up two-thirds of its population in the second half of the 19th century.