Poland

Friday, June 29, 2007

Introduction to Currency Vocabulary

Bank-bank
Banknote-banktot
Bankrupt-bankrut
Borrow money-pożyczć pieniądze od kogoś
Cash account-konto gotówkowe
Cash at bank and in hand-środki pieniężne
Cash point-bankomat
Cash register-kasa fiskalna
Cash-gotówka
Coin-moneta
Credit card-karta kredytowa
Credit-kredyt
Currency-waluta
Deposit zaliczka gotówką
Discount-rabat
Earn-zarabiać
Electronic cash-elektroniczna gotówka
Exchange of currency-Wymiana walut
Exchange office-kantor
Finances-finanse
Foreign currency-Obca waluta
Fortune-fortuna
Greedy-chciwy

more words ...

# posted by Sopyan MK @ 8:11 AM 0 comments

BANKNOTES OF POLAND

Sigismund I the Old

Sigismund I the Old (Polish: Zygmunt I Stary; Lithuanian: Žygimantas II Senasis; 1 January 1467 – 1 April 1548) of the Jagiellon dynasty reigned as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 to his death at age 81 in 1548. Before that, Sigismund had already been invested as Duke of Silesia.
Sigismund I owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
The son of King Casimir IV Jagiellon and Elisabeth of Austria Habsburg, Sigismund followed his brothers John I of Poland and Alexander I of Poland to the Polish throne. Their elder brother Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia became king of Hungary and Bohemia. Sigismund was christened the namesake of his mother's maternal grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who had died in 1437.
Sigismund faced the challenge of consolidating internal power in order to face external threats to the country. During Alexander's reign, the law Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade Kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the Sejm. This proved crippling to Sigismund's dealings with the szlachta and magnates.
Despite this Achilles heel, he established (1527) a conscription army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it.
Intermittently at war with Vasily III of Muscovy, starting in 1507 (before his army was fully under his command), 1514 marked the fall of Smolensk (under Polish domination) to the Muscovite forces (which lent force to his arguments for the necessity of a standing army). Those conflicts formed part of the Muscovite wars. 1515 he entered an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.
In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the Second Peace of Thorn, Sigismund consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Sigismund's nephew, Louis II.
The Polish wars against the Teutonic Knights ended in 1525, when Albert of Brandenburg, their marshal (and Sigismund's nephew), converted to Lutheranism, secularized the order, and paid homage to Sigismund. In return, he was given the domains of the Order, as the First Duke of Prussia. This was called the Prussian Homage.
Sigismund's eldest daughter Hedwig (Jadwiga) (1513-1573) married Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg.
In other matters of policy, Sigismund sought peaceful coexistence with the Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes. Sigismund was a Humanist. He and his third consort, Bona Sforza, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, were both patrons of Renaissance culture, which under them began to flourish in Poland and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
On Sigismund's death, his son Sigismund II August became the last Jagiellon king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jogaila, or Władysław II Jagiełło[1] (ca 1351–1434), was a Grand Duke of Lithuania and

King of Poland. He ruled in Lithuania from 1377, at first with his uncle, Kęstutis. In 1386, he converted to Christianity, married the eleven-year-old Queen Jadwiga of Poland, and was crowned Polish king as Władysław Jagiełło.[2] His reign in Poland lasted a further forty-eight years and laid the foundation for the centuries long Polish-Lithuanian union. He gave his name to the Jagiellon dynasty which ruled both states until 1572[3], and became one of the most influential dynasties in medieval Europe.[4]
Jogaila was the last pagan ruler of medieval Lithuania, and a holder of the title Didysis Kunigaikštis.[5]As King of Poland, he pursued a policy of close alliances with Lithuania against the Teutonic Order. The allied victory at the battle of Grunwald in 1410, followed by the First Peace of Toruń, secured the Polish and Lithuanian borders and marked the emergence of the Polish-Lithuanian alliance as a major European force. The reign of Władysław II Jagiełło extended Polish frontiers and is often considered the beginning of Poland's "Golden Age"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Casimir III of Poland

Casimir III, called the Great (Polish: Kazimierz Wielki; April 30, 1310 – November 5, 1370), King of Poland (1333-70), was the son of King Władysław I the Elbow-high and Jadwiga of Gniezno and Greater Poland.
Born in Kowal, Casimir (Kazimierz) the Great first married Anna, or Aldona Ona, the daughter of the prince of Lithuania, Gediminas. Their daughters were Cunigunde (d 1357), who was married to Louis VI the Roman, the son of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and Elisabeth, who was married to Duke Bogislaus V of Pomerania. Kazimierz then married Adelheid of Hessen, and this was the start of his bigamous marriage career. He divorced Adelheid in 1356, married a lady named Christina, divorced her, and fourth (when at least Adelheid and possibly also Christina were alive) c. 1365 married Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Glogow and Sagan.
His three daughters by his fourth wife were very young and regarded as of dubious legitimacy because of their father's bigamy. Due to the fact that all of the 5 children he fathered with his first and fourth wife were daughters, he would have no lawful male heir to his throne.
When Kazimierz, the last Piast king of Poland, died in 1370, his nephew King Louis I of Hungary succeeded him to become king of Poland in personal union with Hungary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bolesław I the Brave(Valiant) (Polish: Bolesław I Chrobry; 966 or 967 - June 17, 1025),

in the past also known as Bolesław I the Great, in Polish: Bolesław I Wielki ), of the Piast Dynasty — son of Mieszko I and of his first wife, the Bohemian princess Dobrawa — ruled as Duke of Poland, 992-1025, and as King of Poland in 1025.
In 984 Bolesław married Henilda, daughter of Rikdag (Riddag, Ricdag), Margrave of Meißen. Subsequently he married Judith, daughter of Geza, Grand Duke of Hungary; then Enmilda, daughter of Dobromir, Duke of Lusatia (their daughter Regelinde became the wife of Hermann of Meißen); and lastly Oda, another daughter of the Margrave of Meißen. His wives bore him sons, including Bezprym, Mieszko II and Otton; and a daughter, Mathilde. After his father's death around 992, Bolesław expelled his father's second wife, Oda von Haldensleben, and her sons, thereby attempting uniting Poland again.In 997 Bolesław sent Saint Adalbert of Prague to Prussia, on the Baltic Sea, on a mission to convert the heathen Prussians to Christianity — an attempt that would end in Adalbert's martyrdom and subsequent canonization.
Bolesław was the first Polish king, since it was during his reign that Poland became a kingdom, despite the fact that some Polish rulers before 1295 would never receive a crown. Poland had thus the royal status before their ethnic relatives and neighbors, Bohemia.He was the first Polish ruler that had been baptised at birth, thus the first real Christian ruler of Poland. He founded the independent Polish province of the Church and made Poland a strong power in Europe.Bolesław for the first time unified all the provinces that subsequently came to comprise the traditional territory of Poland: Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Masovia, Silesia and PomeraniaHe was a national hero to the Sorbs of Lusatia

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mieszko I (ca. 935 - May 25, 992), son of the semi-legendary Siemomysł, was the first historically known Piast duke of the Polans, who gave their name to the country that would later be called "Poland (Polska)". Mieszko was not the duke's actual name but was given to him later - contemporary documents called him Mesco, Misico, Mesico, Msko[citation needed] or similar, with one strange exception - he also appeared as Dagome in a document called Dagome iudex.
In 965 he married Dobrawa (Dobrava, Dubrawka), daughter of Boleslav I, Duke of Bohemia. In 980 he married Oda von Haldensleben, daughter of Dietrich (Theoderic) of Haldensleben, Count of the North March (965-985), after abducting her from the monastery of Kalbe.
The early career of Mieszko was dominated by fighting with the tribes of Wieletes and Volinians south of the Baltic Sea, and their ally, the Saxon count Wichman. Mieszko was baptised in 966, probably under the influence of his Christian first wife or perhaps in order to avoid confrontation with the Holy Roman Empire to the west. He built a church dedicated to Saint George at Gniezno and in 968 he founded the first Polish cathedral in Poznań dedicated to Saint Peter. Those events are also known as the baptism of Poland.
At the time of the reign of Mieszko there was no single place serving as the capital, instead he built several castles around his country. Of the most important were: Poznań, Gniezno and Ostrów Lednicki. The latter was a ring-fort some 460 feet in diameter, containing his residence, a fine stone palace, the country's first monumental architecture.
He had probably one sister of unknown name, and two brothers: one of them, name unknown, was killed in battle around 964; the second, chronicled as Cidebur (Polish: Czcibor), helped Mieszko to defeat margrave Hodo, successor of Dietrich von Haldensleben in the Battle of Cedynia in 972.
Some historians suggest that Mieszko I had pledged allegiance to emperor Otto I the Great, to emperor Otto II and again to emperor Otto III. However, there is much dispute over this point from the Polish side - mainly whether his allegiance represented the whole of Poland, or only part (the disputed fragment is "usque in Vurta fluvium" from Thietmari chronicon). One medieval chronicle (Thietmari chronicon too) also states that Mieszko pledged allegiance to Margrave Gero, but since the chronicle itself is believed to be an abstract of another which does not mention this, it is now considered to be a myth.
His reign began around 962 in Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), Kuyavia (Kujawy) and possibly in eastern Pomerania. In the 960s he probably at least partially conquered western Pomerania, and in the 990's he conquered Silesia (Śląsk) and Little Poland (Małopolska).
Much of his military activity was along the Baltic coast, in territory later called Pomerania. He defeated Margrave Hodo of the Northern March at Cedynia in 972, and reached the mouth of the Oder (Odra) river in 976. The decisive battle, fought in 979, ensured Mieszko's position as ruler of the area (or forced him to make alligiance with emperor Otto II). The following year he celebrated his temporary conquest by dedicating a fortress at the Gdańsk. Settlements there have existed for millennia and Pomeranian and Prussian territories overlap at the mouth of the Vistula River.
In 981 Mieszko I lost the land known only as Grody Czerwieńskie to Vladimir I, prince of Kiev (but this territory could belong to another polish tribe: Lędzianie, which wasn't under Mieszko's control before 987/988). In 986, upon the death of Emperor Otto II (†983), after short time of being opposed to the idea, he pledged allegiance to the Emperor Otto III, and helped Otto with wars with the Polabians. Shortly before his death he gifted his state to the pope and received it as a fief of the Pope in a document usually called the Dagome Iudex (this is one of many theories, which try to explain motives of making this document). This document indexes the lands of (Mieszko), referred to as "Dagome" in the document, and his wife "Ote" (former nun Oda von Haldensleben) and her sons by him. The other son Boleslaw I is not mentioned, perhaps to insure Oda and her sons territory to them (by papal protection). As it turned out, upon his father's death Boleslaw did expel Oda and her sons in order to claim all territory for himself .
From his first marriage he had a son, his successor Boleslaus, and two daughters, Sygryda (Świętosława) and one with unknown name. Sygryda was the wife (as queen Sigrid the Haughty) of Eric the Victorious, king of Sweden and then (as queen Gunhilda) of king Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, and mother of king Canute of Denmark and England. "Świętosława" is generally accepted by historians as the best approximation of this first daughter's Slavic name. The second daughter was most likely married to a Pomeranian Slavic Prince.
From his second marriage he had three sons; Mieszko, Lambert, and Świętopełk.

# posted by Sopyan MK @ 7:26 AM 0 comments