Gross-Born
| Borne Sulinowo | |||
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Town hall
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 Borne Sulinowo
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| Coordinates: 53°34′52″N 16°32′0″E / 53.58111°N 16.53333°E | |||
| Country |
 Poland
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| Voivodeship | West Pomeranian | ||
| County | Szczecinek | ||
| Gmina | Borne Sulinowo | ||
| Established | 15th century | ||
| Town rights | 1993 | ||
| Government | |||
| • Mayor | Renata Pietkiewicz-Chmyłkowska | ||
| Area | |||
| • Total | 18.15 km2 (7.01 sq mi) | ||
| Population (2006) | |||
| • Total | 4,224 | ||
| • Density | 230/km2 (600/sq mi) | ||
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | ||
| Postal code | 78-449 | ||
| Area code(s) | +48 94 | ||
| Car plates | ZSZ | ||
| Website | http://www.bornesulinowo.pl/ | ||
Borne Sulinowo [ˈbɔrnɛ sulʲiˈnɔvɔ] (former German name: Groß Born) is a town in Poland's Western Pomeranian Voivodship, in the Powiat of Szczecinek. It is a capital of a separate gmina and home to 4149 inhabitants (as of April 2005). The surrounding commune is inhabited by additional 5327 people.
The town is notable for the fact that between 1945 and 1992 it was a secret Soviet military base, erased from all maps and it was not transferred to Polish jurisdiction until October 1992.
The town of Borne Sulinowo traces back its roots to two distinct villages founded in the area in the 16th century by local Pomeranian nobility. Modern town occupies the place of the village of Linde (linden tree), which in 1590 had 12 inhabitants. A nearby village named Großborn was home to 14 peasants.
Both villages developed very slowly. In the late 19th century, the area of the village of Linde was bought by the Prussian government and converted into a military training ground. However, it was not until the advent of Nazism in Germany that changes really arrived there.
During the first World War, there was an outcamp from Schneidemuhl prisoner of war camp at Gross Born.
In 1933 the new German authorities bought all of the area and started the construction of a large military base, a training ground and various testing grounds there. Most of the local inhabitants were resettled and their homes razed to the ground. In place of the village of Linde, a small military garrison and a town was built. Paradoxically, it was given the name of the nearby village of Gross Born (which was also levelled), despite the fact that the actual namesake was located several kilometres to the south-east. All facilities were officially opened by Adolf Hitler on August 18, 1938. Soon afterwards the Artillery School of the Wehrmacht was moved there. Shortly before the outbreak of the Polish Defensive War of 1939, the training grounds housed Heinz Guderian's XIX Army Corps. During the later stages of World War II an artificial desert was built there for the units of Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps (the other such training ground was established in the Błędów Desert near Olkusz). At the same time the area became part of the so-called Pomeranian Rampart, a line of almost 1000 concrete bunkers guarding the pre-war Polish-German border and eastern approaches to Berlin.
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Wikipedia