BIELSKO: THE EDUCATION CENTRE FOR INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION BETWEEN AUSTRIAN SILESIA AND GALICIA AT THE TURN OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

This study deals with the issue of industrial education on the Silesian-Galician border in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Against Cisleithanian-wide trends it depicts the establishment of the so-called state industrial school (Staatsgewerbeschule) in the town of Bielsko in the 1870s and the development of this educational institution, which stood at the top of the system of schools for professional education of the time, until as late as the outbreak of the First World War. Among other things, it focuses on the founding of this important school, its organizational transformations and the composition of its students. In the study Bielsko is presented as one of the most prominent places in the Cisleithanian part of the monarchy from the aspect of educating a qualified workforce at a time of advancing industrialization and the socioeconomic changes it induced.