SLOVAK	Spišská Belá and history.	DEUTSCHE
	Unofficial page the town Spisska Bela, including history.  Creator:  Dušan Bozik

Archaeological excavations have revealed that people inhabited this area in prehistoric times, and there are also Celtic remains, but permanent settlement was started by the Slavs, ancestors of the present - day Slovaks, who gave their settlement its name and identifid parts of teritory.This later become part of the Greater Moravian Empire, and by the mid - 12th century the setllemen was already organized into a village proper. It had both civil and church and authorities, and parish estabilished between the yars 1072 and 1092, most probably centered on older Benedictine hermitage with its chapel dedicated to St. Anthony the Hermit. Towards the 11th century, after Greater Moravia lost its independence, the whole Spis region was annexed to Hungary. During the reign of King Bela IV. after the Tartar invasion of 1241, or maybe earlier, German colonists came and set up in the neigbourhood of the Bela settlement. They gradually formed one comunity with the original inhabitants, keeping its name and St. Anthony the Hermit as its patron saint. The first written mention of the village itself can be found in a letter of warrant granted by Bela IV. in the year 1263. The Hungarian king Stephen V. awarded the Spis Germains wide - ranging privileges in 1271; their settlemements became free towns, one of them being Spisska Bela. German law was practised here: the citizens were free people with the right to choose their own priest and magistrate, they could inherit property, go hunting and fishing, and mine and smelt metal ores. The town became a member of the Community of 24 royal towns, and the priest was a member of the Brotherhood of 24 royal priests.

In 1412 King Sigismund montgaged Spisska Bela together with 12 towns of the Comunity to the Polish Jagellonian king Vladislav in return for a loan of 277 500 ounces of Czech silver. The towns remained in collateral until 1772. They were not detached from Hungary, but they had pay taxes to the Polish lord-lieutanant in Lubovna Castle. In 1545 the Reformacion came to Spisska Bela due to the efforts of its sons, Serpilius Quendel, when he returned home after graduating in Wittenberg. He became the Protestant priest and took over the church, vicarage and school, which returned to Catholic control in 1674 during the Counter- reformacion.Recatolicizacion was not imposed forcefully, so a significant proportion of the inhabitans remained Protestant.

Using its privileges, Spisska Bela became an important town. Local craftsmen started estabilishing guilds as early as 1551, and by 1772 ther were 5 separate guilds representing 250 artisans in these trades: cobblers, butchers, carpenters, dyers, furriers, tailors, bootmakers, locksmiths, copersmiths, goldsmiths, bakers, and weavers who exported linen cloth as far afield as Turkey. Agriculture also prospered. Making use of the meadows in that area of the Tatra mountains, the town became a powerful livestock centre. Forest riches were exploited, and tmber was exported in rafts down the Poprad and Vistula rivers all the way to the Baltic Sea, as well as being used locally, for example for making roof shingles. Millstones were produced here, there a brick works, a paper and three mills, and produkcion of Slovak gin (Borovicka) and beer fluorished. Completion of the railway line from Kosice to Bohumin in 1871 and connection of Bela to it gave further stimuls to industrial activity, with the opening of a weaving mill (1869), a fulling mill (1878), a saw mill (1876) and tobacco - processing plant (1898). The 19th century saw the development of active cultural and social life in Spisska Bela. In the past this had been promoted through the so-called brothershoods, then in the guilds, and now in various clubs. Bela Spa was founded in 1818 as a place of communal recreacion, followed by the area of Tatranska Kotlina, developed for tourism after the discovery of Bela Cave in 1881. The economic and cultural prosperity of the townspeople is demonstrated by various historically and artistically significant buildings, such as the church of St. Anthony the Hermit (1260), the bell- tower (16th century), the town-hall (also 16th century), of the Virgin Mary called the Immaculata (1729), and the Protestant church (1786), as well as the houses of the town gentry in late-Renaissance and Baroque styles.

From its very beginnings, Spisska Bela was a predominantly German town.It started to take on Slovak character in the 19th and 20th centuries, and especially after the withdrawal and enforced expulsion of the German population after the Second World War.

In the cultural field, the town boasts the J.M. Petzval Museum and the Dr. Michal Greisiger Museum (est. 1964 and 1994 respectively, in the houses which were thier birthplaces), as well as exhibitions from the Natonal Gallery of Slovakia at the manor - house in Strazky.