CIESZYN AS AN ALTERNATIVE CENTRE OF COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRIAN SILESIA BEFORE 1918?

The study deals with the issue of commercial education in Austrian Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It specifically focuses on schools oriented this way in the East Silesian centre of Cieszyn (Teschen), whose development is placed in the context of more general trends in the development of Silesian and pre-Austrian commercial education. It primarily focuses on the circumstances of the emergence of schools and their composition, organization, curriculum content and students. The study aims to assess to what extent Cieszyn fulfilled the role of an alternative centre for commercial education in Silesia during the observed period alongside the provincial capital of Opava, and to what extent the significance of local educational institutions crossed provincial borders and benefited the population of the southern regions of neighbouring Galicia.