Cheb (; ) is a town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 32,000 inhabitants. It lies on the Ohře river.
Before the 1945 expulsion of the German-speaking population, the town was the centre of the German-speaking region known as Egerland, part of the Northern Austro-Bavarian dialect area. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation.
Administrative parts
Cheb is formed by 19 town parts and villages:
Bříza
Cetnov
Cheb
Chvoječná
Dolní Dvory
Dřenice
Háje
Horní Dvory
Hradiště
Hrozňatov
Jindřichov
Klest
Loužek
Pelhřimov
Podhoří
Podhrad
Skalka
Střížov
Tršnice
Etymology
The first name of the town, documented in 1061, was Egire. It was a Latin name, which was derived from the Celtic name of the Ohře River Agara. The German name Eger was then derived from the Latin name.
The Czech name Cheb first appeared in the mid-14th century. The name is derived from the old Czech word heb (modern Czech oheb, ohyb), which means "bend". It is related to bends of the Ohře River.
Geography
Cheb is located about southwest of Karlovy Vary on the border with Germany. The town lies on the river Ohře. The northern and western parts of the municipal territory lie in the Fichtel Mountains; the rest of the territory lies in the Cheb Basin, named after the town. The highest point is the hill Zelená hora at above sea level.
There are two large reservoirs in the municipal territory: Skalka (northeast of the town and supplied by the Ohře) and Jesenice (southeast of the town and supplied by the Wondreb). There are also several small ponds, especially in the southern part of the territory.
Climate
History
The earliest settlement in the area was a Slavic gord at what is now known as the Cheb Castle complex, north of the town centre. In 807 the district of today's Cheb was included in the new margraviate of East Franconia, which belonged at first to the Babenbergs, but from 906 to the margraves (marquis) of Vohburg.
The first written mention of Cheb is from 1061. Děpolt II founded the castle on the site of the gord around 1125. In 1149, Cheb was described as a fortified marketplace. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa acquired Cheb in 1167. In 1203, it was first referred to as a town. It became the centre of a historical region called Egerland.
From 1266 to 1276, the town was property of King Ottokar II of Bohemia. The historic town centre was established after the fire in 1270. King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia held the town in 1291–1304, then Albert I of Germany acquired the region. It wasn't until 1322 that Cheb became a permanent part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, when King John of Bohemia acquired it from Emperor Louis IV. The later local history was marked by continued resistance against incorporation into Bohemia.
On 5 May 1389, during a Reichstag between King Wenceslaus IV and a group of Imperial Free Cities of southwest Germany, the Treaty of Eger was agreed upon, after Wenceslaus had failed to secure his interests in the town. In the 15th century, Cheb was one of the largest and wealthiest towns of Kingdom of Bohemia with 7,300 inhabitants.
The town suffered severely during the Hussite Wars, during the Swedish invasion in the Thirty Years' War in 1631 and 1647, and in the War of the Austrian Succession in 1742. In 1634, during the Thirty Years' War, Albrecht von Wallenstein was killed here. In 1723, Cheb became a free royal town. The northern part of the old town was devastated by a large fire in 1809, and many middle-age buildings were destroyed.
In 1757, the town's financial self-government was abolished for the sake of Austrian centralization. In 1848, the citizen's council demanded separation from Bohemia and reconstitution of its Landtag.
The terms of the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye triggered civil unrest between the Sudeten German population and the new First Czechoslovak Republic, just as in the rest of the Sudetenland. In the interwar period, many ethnic Czechs came to the town with the boom of industry.
During the Sudeten Crisis, the town was occupied by the Nazi German-sponsored Sudetendeutsches Freikorps paramilitary group. On 3 October 1938, the town was visited by Adolf Hitler; shortly afterward Wehrmacht troops marched into the Sudetenland and seized control. From 1938 until 1945, the town was annexed to Germany and was administered as part of Reichsgau Sudetenland. Cheb was liberated by the 97th Infantry Division of the United States Army on 25 April 1945.