Štramberk is a town in the Nový Jičín District with the Trúba castle tower, whose foundation charter of 1359 has survived.
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Štramberk is a town in the Nový Jičín District in the Moravian-Silesian Region. According to the town's website, its territory was settled as early as prehistoric times, and above the town stands the ruin of a castle with the Trúba tower, which is the town's landmark.[1]
Prehistory and the Middle Ages
Settlement is documented by finds in the Šipka cave and in Čertova díra, which is now filled in. Remains of a settlement and skeletal finds of Neanderthal man date to roughly 40,000 years BC. Later archaeological finds come from the Late Stone Age and the Late Bronze Age, when a hillfort arose on Kotouč.[1]
Medieval settlement is documented for the first half of the 13th century, at the end of which a castle was built, older than the small town below it. The first mention of the castle village dates from 1211. The founding and ownership of the castle remain unclear.[1]
On 4 December 1359 the Margrave of Moravia, John Henry of Luxembourg, brother of Charles IV, issued the town a foundation charter. Štramberk is the only town in the Nový Jičín District whose founding charter has survived.[1] The town arose below the castle to keep order in the northeast of Moravia. It received the mile right, under which crafts practised in the town could not be carried on within a radius of one mile (eight kilometres), as well as the right to brew beer, to sell meat and bake bread, and a weekly Tuesday market. The town was headed by a reeve with a hereditary reeveship and by councillors, and it was exempted from payments and levies to the margrave.[1]
The early modern period
From the 15th century most inhabitants, including the authorities, most often professed the faith of the Bohemian Brethren. In 1624 the town passed to the Jesuits. The Thirty Years' War affected the town and its surroundings and laid them waste several times. The Olomouc Jesuits wanted to make Štramberk a centre of the Counter-Reformation, and so two churches arose there, a Way of the Cross to Kotouč and a Holy Sepulchre in the Čertova díra cave, and the tradition of pilgrimages was revived. The reforms of Joseph II abolished both pilgrimages, which hit the town hard, and many non-Catholics left for Saxony, where they founded a settlement of Czech brethren in Upper Lusatia.[1]
The inhabitants long made their living by trade and crafts, with agriculture as a supplement. The first guilds arose at the start of the 17th century, and in the 1860s the first Czech associations appeared in the town.[1]
The 19th and 20th centuries
In 1880 Professor K. J. Maška of Nový Jičín found on Kotouč part of the lower jaw of a Neanderthal child, the so-called Šipka jaw, which according to the town's website is a discovery of exceptional importance.[1] In 1895 a branch of the Club of Czech Tourists was founded in Štramberk. Under the leadership of Dr. Adolf Hrstka it saved the remains of the castle, which had been heavily damaged in the Thirty Years' War and fell into decay in the 18th century. The association bought the ruin and in 1903–1904 had the cylindrical tower roofed and adapted as a lookout tower.[1]
Greater economic development came at the end of the 19th century with the founding of a limestone quarry on Kotouč. In 1881 a local railway to Studénka was built, and in 1896 another to Veřovice.[1] After Munich, Štramberk fell within the annexed Sudeten territory, and on 10 October 1938 German troops occupied it.[1]